Chris

I have never had a credit card (I'm now 30). Missus has one for getting the shopping - the only reason for this was that it was a Boots Advantage Egg Card, which was extremely generous with the Advantage points you got for using it. So generous, in fact, that they canned it, so now she has a plain old Egg Card, which gives a little cashback but is otherwise of little use. We keep the credit limit at £1,000 and I have had to write to Egg more than once to ensure this, because as others have said, Egg would love it to run higher and higher. This has resulted in us getting a £20 charge a couple of times for exceeding the limit, but I bear with it because it's better to get a £20 kick up the bum than to get out of control.

Missus is a full-time mum so we live on one salary, which means we have less than some of our friends, but I'm blessed with a job that pays more than the combined salaries of some of our other friends, so we have nothing to complain about - especially as some of them got married and bought houses more recently than we did, so their mortgages are sky high.

All in all, we've avoided debt by being very careful, but my experience of having just one child for a year has been a very expensive one so I can see how anybody can get in trouble, no matter how careful they are.

Kronas - a friend of mine with teenage children used to have a sign in her kitchen:

NOTICE TO TEENAGERS:

Quick! Leave home, get a job and start paying bills, while you still know everything!

Life is not nearly as easy as you seem to think.