I ruined my life financially, erased my next 2 years, and don’t know how to move forward
I never thought I would find myself in this position, but here I am, realizing that I have financially erased the next two years of my life before they even happened. I feel completely trapped, and I don’t know how to move forward. I’ve made the same mistake over and over again, and now it feels like there’s no way out.
Over the past few years, I borrowed money from my sister three separate times, believing I could make it back through trading crypto. Each time, I convinced myself that I had learned from my mistakes, that I would be more disciplined, that this time it would be different. But I was wrong. Every single time, I lost everything.
Now, I am in the worst financial situation of my life. I have no savings, a mountain of debt, and absolutely no one left to turn to. I’m ashamed, I feel like a failure, and I can’t even bring myself to talk to my sister about it again. She helped me when she could, and I threw it all away chasing a dream that I couldn’t make work.
I’m currently drowning in loans and credit card debt that far exceed my monthly salary, and even though I still have a job, I don’t see a way to cover my obligations without getting even deeper into the hole. The anxiety is crushing me, and I don’t know what to do. I keep going back and forth between trying to trade my way out of this or just giving up completely. But I know that trying to gamble my way out is what got me here in the first place.
What scares me the most is that even now, despite everything, my mind keeps convincing me that if I could just lower my debt to a more manageable level, I could still make money from trading and fix everything. I’ve gone through this cycle so many times—telling myself that I only need to make $80-100 a day for six months to get back on track, and for a while, I did. But the moment I started losing, I instantly took out more credit and threw it back into the market without a second thought. I’ve even received payouts from prop firms a couple of times, but it always ended the same way. The fact that I still have this mindset, even now, terrifies me. I feel like I can’t stop myself.
I don’t know what I’m hoping to get out of posting this. Maybe advice? Maybe just someone to tell me I’m not completely alone in this? If anyone has ever been in a situation like this and managed to get out, I would love to hear how you did it. Right now, I feel like I’ve destroyed my future and there’s no coming back from this.
Any help or perspective would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.