Picture walking up a down escalator. You're moving, you're sweating, you're doing everything right — and you're barely getting anywhere. Ease up for a moment and you slide backward.
Nobody sets out to ruin their finances with a $3,000 credit card balance.
It starts with something ordinary. A car repair. A few months of groceries after a job loss. A holiday that got a little out of hand. Three thousand dollars is not a catastrophe. It is a problem you plan to deal with "soon."
But credit card debt has a peculiar property. Left alone, or fed the wrong way, it does not sit still. It grows. It grows on itself. And it can keep growing long after the thing you bought is forgotten, broken, or thrown away.