Money
How to Stop Stressing Out Over Your Debt
There are a million articles about how to get out of debt. This is about how to cope with the mental and emotional burden while you do so.
I was super responsible with money all my life until I wasn’t. I made it through early childhood, college, and a year post-grad managing my yearly $20 Christmas gift money, balancing my checkbooks when I was old enough to get my own bank account, and never overspending. I was a finance wiz!
But in that second year after undergrad, my work life and my home life took their respective turns for the worse. And as those parts of my life spun out of control, my finances spun out of control with them. After several drinks and dinners out, failed businesses, and a car I couldn’t actually afford (because it just had to be new!)—I found myself in $30K+ debt.
Some people reading this will sigh in relief. I thought I was bad. Phew!
And others will think, Only $30K? That’s nothing!
Regardless of where you’re at, you know debt isn’t fun. It feels shameful. Money, in general, is a taboo subject. When I talk to my friends, I’m very transparent about how much I make and what my debt situation looks like at the time of the conversation, if that information is relevant.
But I don’t expect anyone to tell me exactly what they’ve got going on. Why? Because it’s totally personal. And I get that. In many aspects of life, I’m a private person. However, with money, I’m an open book. And I will always share because I know people benefit from knowing they’re not alone in their shame or their struggle.
If you take anything away from any of this, it should be the understanding that you’re not alone. There’s no way you could be. The average American, for example, is carrying over $90K in debt.
There are a million and one articles detailing how to get out of debt, and they all boil down to: increase your income and/or reduce your spending. These two tips, in combination, will help you reduce the financial burden of debt, but what about the mental and emotional burden?
But along my personal debt payoff journey, I learned a few things that helped ease my mind. Hopefully, these nuggets will do the same for you.
It’s Not Entirely My Fault
I believe that there’s a lot of beauty in this world, implicit and explicit. I believe that every human being has the capacity for great kindness, and I think many human beings practice it, too. That said, there’s also a whole lot of ugly out there.
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, right? Um, wrong.
You see, when you really want something, you find a workaround. When you couldn’t find a house key, you figured out how to use a bobby pin or other thin, pointy object. And when you didn’t have sour mix for your cocktail, you probably used lemon juice. It’s not the same, but it gets the job done.
In the same way, slavery didn’t disappear. We just found a few workarounds for it, including credit cards and loans.
By now, you already know that your debt is making someone else wealthy. Every dollar you borrow earns someone back their dollar, plus interest. This isn’t news. And you also know that if you don’t pay your debts, entities can legally take your money from you forcefully, at least, in the U.S. they can.
So until you pay off that money, your money isn’t even really yours. It’s earmarked for the people you owe. But that’s not your fault.
I know exactly how I got into debt. I didn’t realize what I was doing in the moment, but looking back, my path to debt was pretty clear.
Step 1: Pay for a bunch of different courses and development work for startups that I would ultimately never see through until the end.
Step 2: Go out to eat 3+ times per week when I had perfectly good food at home. (Bonus: Get an expensive coffee and fancy pastry from La Colombe 4 to 5 times per week.)
Step 3: Buy a car I couldn’t really afford. I could have always undone this decision and took the car back. But to this day, I still love this car. I’m not even a car person, but I loved her the second I laid eyes on her. My Toyota and I are inseparable.
Each time, I was the one who swiped the credit card. I was the one who signed the car contracts. No one forced my hand.
However, we’re socialized to carry debt to “build credit.” Get a credit card at 18 and just put little stuff on it so you can build credit.
The car has to be new so that 1) you don’t have to worry about fixing it any time soon, or 2) because it’s a really nice car and so and so has a nice car, so I need one, too.
Private education is the way to go! And to be anybody in [insert field of work], you neeeeed a graduate degree. So we take out loans to go to private schools without realizing or being told or doing the research ourselves or having access to scholarships and grants.
We’re peer pressured into debt and once the habit is established, we just keep at it until we can’t afford to keep at it anymore. While staying in the trap may be on you, the chances are decently high that it wasn’t your idea to fall into the trap in the first place.
Stressing Actually Doesn’t Help
But you know that, regardless of whether you make the active effort to not stress.
Stress is only good for causing health problems (and more stress!). So, stop stressing.
I know. Easier said than done. It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible.
It took several months after the fact before I noticed that I let my financial situation go. And when I did, I would look at my credit card balance every day, multiple times a day. I wouldn’t make any extra payments (because I didn’t have the money to do that right away). I would just look at the balance and stress. Most times, I would cry. Sometimes I would scream. And sometimes, on my drive back from work, I would cry and scream at the same time. I lost a lot of sleep over it as well.
In college, I developed insomnia because I was away from home and worrying about how my mom was doing without me around. The answer was “not well,” by the way. And that made my insomnia worse. But once I graduated and moved back in with momma, insomnia went away. And then I got into debt, so insomnia came right back. So, I would lay there and cry some more. And kick myself. Because how could I let myself get here?
But about six months later, I started getting more in touch with religion and spirituality. Not because of the money; I needed something to distract me from how much of a sad, sorry mess I felt like I was.
I started meditating, journaling, praying, and I came to a solution that was way too simplistic, which is why it was so perfect: to ease the mental and emotional burden of my financial situation, all I had to do was convince myself that screaming and crying in my car while people looked at me in confusion actually didn’t make the debt going away. And it also didn’t make me feel better.
I’m all for crying as a form of catharsis. But the crappy part about crying over debt is that it doesn’t stop. There’s no catharsis until the debt is gone.
Having a Plan Makes All the Difference
For me, the best way to get me to stop stressing over my debt was to make a plan, execute the plan, and appreciate every small win as it came. If anything on this list will bring you peace of mind, it’s this.
In May of 2020, I decided to sit down and make a net worth calculator. I was inspired by The Dave Ramsey Show and besides, I had no idea what my net worth was anyway. I was curious.
And since I’m an Excel nerd, I created a template for myself and added some formulas to help me track month-over-month growth, liquid assets vs. illiquid assets, etc. In a way, it was therapeutic because it made me feel like I was taking a big step towards getting myself together. Full transparency gave me peace of mind. The situation was bad, but plotting it all out in my spreadsheet helped me realize it wasn’t that bad, all things considered.
And better than that, it helped me see a way forward. I updated my net worth calculator on the 15th of every month because the majority of my bills would be deducted prior to this. Plus, I received my first paycheck of the month by then, so it felt like the perfect day to start. And as I logged everything, it felt good to find and be able to send an extra $20 towards the credit card, and an extra $100 towards the car note. These were all small, small wins in the grand scheme of things. But a small win is still a win.
Comparisons Can Be Unhealthy, Unhelpful, and Unrealistic
I recently moved to a new town about 30 minutes from the apartment complex where I used to live. But only a week before I moved, I found out that I lived down the street from mansions. Multiple mansions (plural) tucked away just enough that as you’re speeding through, you miss them every time. But because there was a police officer nearby this time and I always drive the speed limit, I slowed down and caught a glimpse of one of them.
And then I caught a glimpse of another one. And then I caught a glimpse of a third one. Mansions big enough to drop my jaw, take my breath away, and have me questioning just what people do with all that space. My goodness! I had passed by those mansions multiple times a day for three years straight and I never noticed them until that day.
Someone will always have and/or be able to afford a bigger house than you. I recently bought a house and it’s tiny. Think of the smallest house you’ve seen and it’s most likely even smaller than that. I didn’t feel tempted to find something bigger, though, because “something bigger” just wasn’t in my price range. Boy, is Massachusetts e x p e n s i v e!
Someone will always have a nicer car.
Someone will always be thinner. Taller. More chiseled.
Someone will always make more money than you (and that same person might even end up having more debt than you, but you’ll never know).
And yet, it’s hard to shake our desire to compare because comparing is how we understand how we stack up. Except, comparing ourselves doesn’t actually show us how we stack up. It shows us how the worst part of our situation stacks up against the perfect situation we’re imagining someone else has.
You can’t count on strangers or even acquaintances to be transparent enough for you to see that they’re not as far ahead of you as you think they are. But I’m willing to bet money that the Joneses you’re trying to keep up with aren’t living their best life like you think they are.
Whatever your assumptions are about everyone else, throw them out. At the end of the day, we’re all putting our best foot forward and hiding the unglamorous parts. I know I am!
Eventually, the Debt Gets Paid Off. There Is an End, Even if It’s Not Completely in Sight Yet
As long as you have some sort of a plan, you’ll get out of it. I wish I could tell you you’ll get out of it tomorrow. I wish I got out of all my debt in 24 hours or less. And it does happen, for some. Inheritances just show up. The gates to trust funds unlock. People get crazy raises and bonuses at work. It happens for some, but it didn’t happen like any of that for me. And that’s OK.
Slow and steady wins the race, they say.
In March 2020, I wrote a list of 300 things that I wanted. It was a Steve Harvey challenge. The goal was to try your hardest to come up with the 300 things you want the most and revisit that list a year later. He said you’ll be shocked to see that more than 1/3 of your list will have come through. It’s about programming your subconscious by writing things down and speaking your desires into existence, or something like that. Law of attraction stuff (and it’s very much still lost on me).
I started struggling with this list after number 5. I’m a simple girl. I only crave happiness, friendship, and freedom. But still, I played the game and made it through the whole list of 300.
Well, I found my list eight months later and 60/300 things had come true as I wrote them. Granted, I was doing so poorly with coming up with 300 unique things that I ended up writing multiple repeats. Oops!
It was actually a really cool concept, and I think there’s something special to it. I wrote my list and forgot about it. I didn’t look at it every day. I didn’t obsess over it. I just wrote it and went on with my life. Likewise, once I got into a regular payoff plan with my debt, I did the same thing. I set it and forget it unless I came upon a few extra dollars to throw at the mountain of debt. Otherwise, it was a set and forget situation.
And honestly, I finally started to feel good knowing that the debt was disappearing, no matter how slowly. The system was solid so I didn’t have to watch it and obsess over the debt still being there after 1–2 payments.
Slow and steady wins the race.
It’s Nice to Imagine All the Things You’ll Get to Do When You’re Over the Hump
One thing that helped me as I was climbing my mountain of debt was visualizing all the things I was excited to be able to do once that burden was off my shoulders. I’m not really talking about the law of attraction here either. I just know that for me, it was easier to pass up expenses I didn’t need to incur by thinking of what I could use that kind of money for instead, once the debt was behind me.
I have grand plans including grad school, a trip to Bali, a trip to South Korea. Lots of traveling, concerts, events, conferences, etc. And sure, I could have done all these things while still in debt, thus catapulting me into more debt. But, instead, I chose to hold off and use these things as rewards. The visualization gave me a taste of what I could enjoy once I got myself together. And I know that I, personally, enjoy a vacation more when I’m not constantly worrying that I’ll go bankrupt because of it.
The beach is for relaxing, not stressing!
Quick Fixes Usually End Up Being a Quicker Way to Go Broke
In life, we have to go through many tests. Will we take a shortcut, or will we stay the tried-and-true course? The choice is all ours; and the repercussions of a bad choice are all ours, too.
Winning a Powerball jackpot sure will get rid of every ounce of debt you’ve got, and then some! But, the chances you’ll win are slim. For full transparency, winning the lottery was not a part of my debt reduction strategy and I wouldn’t recommend it as a part of anyone else.
Play if you’d like to. It’s nice to dream. And some people really do win. Besides, depending on where you live, the lottery supports a lot of local programs. So there’s nothing wrong with the lottery, as long as you remind yourself that the lottery is designed to run at a profit. And a profit for the lottery commission usually means a loss for you and others who play the lottery.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I know a lot of people who play the lottery, hoping it’ll fix their lives. And guess what? Unfortunately, they’re all still broke.
But I get the idea of buying lottery tickets as a chance to quickly dig oneself out of a hole. I get it because once in a while, I did the same. More than once in a while actually. $50 here. $100 there. $300 there. In the grand scheme of things, most of the amounts I spent in a given lottery run were small. And sometimes I won something! But those small amounts could’ve gone towards my car loan or a credit card bill. And I almost never took my profits and ran. I usually reinvested them in the lottery, only to lose everything.
By playing the lottery, I put my hope in something external because I had proven to myself, or so I thought, that internally, I didn’t have the ability to get myself out of the mess I made. I felt like I needed the lottery to save me because I couldn’t save myself.
If anything, this is the bigger issue with playing the lottery out of desperation. The lottery isn’t your savior. As much as things suck, I promise you can do it on your own.
Some Final Thoughts
If I had to summarize a few key ideas that helped me center myself as I dug my way out of the debt hole, it would be as follows:
- It’s not your fault, and you’re not alone.
- Where you’re headed matters so much more than where you’ve been, and you have the chance to change your trajectory at any moment.
- You can do this, just take it one dollar at a time.