Ruth Langsford spoke of her previous debt struggles on ITV's Loose Women.
She claimed that her bank manager cut up her shopping cards to help put a stop to her spending.
Hosting Loose Women today, Ruth and the panellists were discussing the idea of "buy now, pay later" shopping schemes and whether they had been tempted by them in the past.
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This is when Ruth chose to open up about her own experiences with increasing debt.
She said: "I remember at a very young age, when I got my first job, of getting into store card debt. So I remember going to Chelsea Girl - as it was then - and buying one thing.
"Then there was something on the counter that said, 'You can have £200-worth of clothes right now for just £5 a month!' And I was working and I was like, 'That's good actually!' So I said to her, 'Can I do that today?' And she was like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.'
"So I filled in the form, I had a bank account and so I got my £200 worth of clothes. But I didn't do just one store. I was somewhere else and I ended up with three store cards, which were all £5 a month and with my first wage.
"Suddenly it wasn't manageable any more and I started to panic."
Thanks to her bank manager's help, Ruth managed to turn her finances back around.
She explained that he called her as her bank account had been overdrawn for two months in a row.
Ruth said: "He called me in and said, 'What's going on here?' and I said, 'Oh, I've got these cards...' And he took the cards and he cut them up and said, 'Right, this is what we're going to do - I'm going to give you a loan, we're going to pay all of those off and you're never to use them again because you're not using them properly.'
"I was young - 18 was my first job - and he made me only have cash and I had to write down everything that I was spending. When you actually see the cash and not a card... and you start to panic."
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV and ITV Hub
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