I am 29, carry ₹28 lakh in debt, and I fight for my existence every single day

This is not a success story. Not yet. This is what survival looks like from the inside.

8 min readPersonal FinanceApril 2026

It started with one ICICI credit card. ₹20,000 limit. I told myself it was just for emergencies.

That was the beginning of the most painful chapter of my life.

Today I am 29 years old. I have 13 credit cards, 9 running loans, ₹58,000 in monthly EMIs, and I left my job two months ago. The total debt stands at ₹28 lakh. I have told nobody — not my parents, not my closest friends. I have been carrying this completely alone since 2023.

I am writing this because someone out there is living this exact story in silence. And they need to know they are not alone.

How one card became thirteen

In 2020, I started trading in the stock market. Like millions of young Indians during the pandemic, I believed I had found a shortcut to wealth. For a while, it felt like I had.

Then the losses started. I kept going back, convinced the next trade would recover everything. From 2020 to today, I lost somewhere between ₹10 to ₹15 lakhs in the market. Each loss pushed me toward another loan, another card, another desperate attempt to stay afloat.

By 2022, I had ₹1 lakh in total debt. I thought that was bad. I had no idea what was coming.

From 2023 to 2026, the debt climbed like Everest. Different jobs. Different courses. Trading. Side hustles. Nothing gave me the stability I was desperately chasing. Every month I was robbing Peter to pay Paul — using one card to pay another, taking personal loans to cover EMIs.

This is how ₹1 lakh becomes ₹28 lakh. Not in one dramatic moment. In a thousand small desperate decisions made by someone just trying to survive.

The silence is the heaviest part

People talk about debt like it is just a number. It is not. It is isolation. It is pretending everything is fine at family dinners. It is watching friends talk about vacations and investments while you calculate whether you can afford groceries this week.

For three years I have smiled, nodded, and gone home to stare at EMI reminders on my phone.

The shame of debt is a special kind of loneliness.

Why I am not giving up

I start a new sales job tomorrow. I am studying cybersecurity every evening — a field where I can earn ₹10–12 LPA within a year. I made my first YouTube video talking about credit cards. I am writing this article right now.

None of this will clear ₹28 lakh overnight. I know that. The math is brutal and honest — this will take years of hard, unglamorous work.

But here is what I know about myself after three years of this:

I am not giving up. I am daily fighting for my existence. And that — just that — is enough to keep going.

If you are reading this in a similar situation — drowning in EMIs, too ashamed to tell anyone, lying awake doing math that never works out — I want you to know something.

You are not alone. You are not stupid. You are not a failure.

You are someone who got caught in a trap that millions of young Indians fall into every day. And you are still here. Still fighting.

That matters more than any credit score.

I will be documenting this entire journey — the debt payoff, the career rebuild, the good months and the brutal ones. Follow along if you want the unfiltered truth about getting out of debt in India.

There it is. My story. In my own words. 💙