Beware Gambling Can Increase Your Debt Problems

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 27th, 2010

Are you the type of person who likes to take a gamble from time to time on things such as the result of a horse race? Would you say that you have an addiction to gambling? Do you lose more money than you win when gambling? Are you in debt? Are you hoping to reduce your debts by gambling? In this article, I write about a friend of mine who tried to gamble her way out of debt, however she was not successful and ended up with an even bigger debt problem.

My friend is called Emma. She is not exactly what you would call good with money and I am often amazed at the amounts she spends when we go out shopping together. Emma earns a fairly good wage but many people would probably expect that she earns three times this amount by her attitude towards money. If there is a store card available, Emma will sign up for it. I have often tried to advise her that she could find herself in a nasty position if she does not take more care with her finances, but she would never listen and thought that I was just too careful and even tight with my own money.

About a year ago, Emma confided to me that she was in quite a large amount of debt. She had bought a lot of items on her credit cards and had been unable to make all of the repayments. Emma also had a car loan which she also found hard to pay back, she of course had to drive around in the best car. Emma said that it was not a problem as she was looking into ways of reducing these debts and had read many debt consolidation articles on the internet, which had provided her with some useful information.

Six months later, Emma confided in me again. She now stated that she was in too deep and that she had been stupid as she had tried to gamble her way out of debt. I could not believe it, however tried to remain positive for her sake. I asked her to explain what had happened. She replied that she had started to play poker on the internet. Originally it was only for a bit of fun and in the first two months she was up around three hundred dollars. Emma then thought that this was a possible way to help her to reduce her debts and started to play for much higher stakes. Her winning streak was not to last and she ended up losing a lot of money.

Emma is still finding it hard to pay back all of the money she owes various people and companies, but has realised that gambling is not a form of debt solution for her.