<prompt> Human: For me there was a clear line: I was dating a guy in college and we got pretty serious. Like many college students Id run up some credit-card and revolving-account debt, to the tune of about 5500, and was making minimum payments on it.My boyfriend learned of my debt and broke up with me, saying he couldnt get engaged to someone who was irresponsible with her money. I was defensive, insulted, and angry, but after I cooled off and then some - it was probably six months before I could look at the situation rationally I knew that if I wanted to eventually meet and marry a man who had his shit together then I needed to get my own shit together, and one of those aspects was definitely my money. In addition I saw that I needed to get my fiscal house in order just for myself, that I was an adult and needed to act like one.I stopped charging to my card 100, and when I got my first job after university I lived like I was still a broke college student so that I could pay the cards off. Thankfully my hole wasnt so deep I couldnt crawl out of it.I see many folks on this sub who are actively working to get out of the mess theyre in, and a lot who were formerly in over their head but have completely turned it around. What made you all realize that you couldnt go on the way you were before?  <response>: Ha! I wrote this yesterday so I can just copypaste it.I didnt turn my shit around until September 2010 when I went to an ATM to pay a buddy 150 I owed him and found my account balance was hold on, I can look up the exact amount since Ive taken insanely detailed notes since then... 131.11 when I expected it to be over 5k I accidentally auto-payed a credit card that I had been holding a balance of over 4k on... I wonder if I did it subconsciously.At that point, I only had that money in my checking and 462.62 in an investment account as available liquid cash and debts over over 17k including 12k on my student loans.I spent the next three months cleaning house and getting my shit in order. I was out of credit card debt by 11 and have been mostly on top of things ever since. 