Hopefully by now you realize that racking up your credit cards is a recipe for trouble. Buying stuff you can’t afford only leaves you in one place – debt!

You also probably realize that sometimes our impulse to buy stuff and put it on our credit card reaches a level of insanity. One friend of mine charged half the cost of a beat up used car on his credit cards. Yes, a car and yes again, credit cards, plural!!

He couldn’t remember exactly how much he paid for it, but he recalled not having enough credit on one card, so he put the rest on another. Granted, it wasn’t a Mercedes (it was a crappy, rusting old Subaru) but these payments haunted him for years afterwards. And what made it even worse was that the car died after two months and he was still stuck with the payments.

He easily paid for that car for five years. For the amount of money he ended up spending when factoring in the interest, he probably could have afforded a new car. How’s that for ridiculous?

Another friend wanted her dream wedding, so she charged it to the tune of $15,000. And it was lovely – white dress, big cake, lotsa bridesmaids. And guess what? She was still paying when they got divorced three years later. Fortunately, so was he. But imagine having to face that Visa bill every month, paying every month (with interest) for a wedding to someone you aren’t even married to anymore! (For more on this topic see our recent post, “Things You Should Never Charge: Weddings.”)

We’re all guilty of this in one form or another -- maybe not as extreme as my friends but we all charge things we shouldn’t be charging, leaving us paying months and months after the fact.

My own worst credit card disaster? It’s a toss up between the outrageously expensive jeans that were on sale that I needed to lose 5 pounds to fit into and the constant expense of a car that continually broke down. Needless to say I never lost those five pounds. And I was still paying for the car repairs for years after that car went to the junkyard in the sky.

What about you? What’s your worst credit card disaster?