College Credit

She usually holds it together under the stress, she says. But there are moments when she breaks down over the mistakes that led her to amass nearly $20,000 in credit card debt.

Fuller got married a few years ago, and her husband works with her at the Riviera. He's been instrumental in helping her chip away at her debt -- after all, it's become his debt, too. The young couple won't be able to buy a house or have a baby until it's taken care of, she says.

"I would love to buy a house, but within the next five years it's just not realistic because my credit is so bad," she says. "It's horrible. I'll be almost 30 and I won't be able to buy a house because my credit problems from when I was 19 are still haunting me."

Every month, Fuller's husband sorts through her bills, figuring out payment plans and making sure they avoid $25 late fees. Right now, Fuller estimates, they owe about $8,000. The couple operates strictly in cash -- when the money's gone for the week, it's gone. They've even considered trying to get by with just one car.

"I don't spend anything," says Fuller. "I can't remember the last time I really bought something, except for Christmas. And that was all in cash."

In the apartment Fuller shares with her husband sits a relic from her spending-spree days: a 50-inch television set that she bought at Conn's. It cost $2,500. She put it on a Conn's credit card, of course. She had a great TV already, but she felt she deserved a bigger one. "It's all about status," she says. "What you have and what you can get." The set loomed so large in her tiny first apartment that when she watched it, she felt like she was sitting on top of it.

If, at age 19, she had known that it would take her almost five years to pay the television off, and that with the interest rates and the late charges it would end up costing her almost $4,000, and that she would have to drop out of school and wait tables into the late hours of the night because of it…Well, if she had known, she never would have looked at the TV twice.

"If I had known more, I wouldn't have gotten myself into all of this," she says. "You don't build equity on a $4,000 television set and some clothes. But we're sending children out into the world and they don't know what's going on except for what they see, which is 'Put it on the card.' "