Former Credit Junkie Fesses Up So We Can Learn From Her Mistakes

When Beverly Harzog met her future husband, she never told him about her history of credit problems. In fact, she kept it a secret from him for the first 25 years of their marriage. He only found about her past self-proclaimed "credit card addiction" when she wrote an article about it a few years ago.

It wasn't just her spouse: Harzog kept her debt a secret from everyone. "I didn't even tell my parents because I didn't want to worry them." Now, with the release of her new book, "Confessions of a Credit Junkie: Everything You Need to Know to Avoid the Mistakes I Made," Harzog has outed herself extremely publicly.

And after all these years, Harzog said that one of her biggest regrets is keeping her credit addiction from her husband. "Now I realize that it's better to talk about it. Couples in a serious relationship talk about whether they want to have kids, but they should also talk about money."

She Thought It Was Easy Money. She Was Wrong.

Harzog got into trouble with credit card debt almost the minute she got out of college in the 1980s. She said she wasn't raised in a family with a lot of extra spending money, so when she got a good job and the credit card offers poured in, she accepted them all.

She called this period her "decade of debt."

"I maxed out seven credit cards on things like designer suits, expensive makeup and accessories and shoes. What's sad is that I had a degree in accounting, so I should have known better. But I worked with almost all men, and I thought I needed designer clothes to boost my confidence."

The worst thing she did was book a cruise to Mexico with the one card that still had available credit, even though at that time she had about $1 in the bank. "I felt like I deserved it because I worked hard. It seemed normal to me to carry a balance on every credit card every month," she said.

When she started being afraid to open her bills -- or add up how much she owed -- that Harzog realized she was in trouble. When she got up the nerve to face her financial truth, she was around $20,000 in debt -- an overwhelming amount in today's dollars, and even more so in the 1980s.

That's when Harzog put herself on a strict cash budget and stopped relying on credit to fund a lifestyle she could not afford. She said she ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, avoided restaurants and didn't buy anything for about two years. Even now, she doesn't buy anything without waiting and thinking about whether she really needs it.

Money Sense Should Be Part of Healthy Relationships

"I became a CPA so I could increase my salary, and cut everything from my budget, so by the time I got married I had paid off all my debt."

Although her debt issues were behind her, keeping her past a secret from her husband was not healthy. That's why she advises couples to put money front-and-center in their relationship and deal with past, existing and potential financial problems head-on.