Am I always gonna be Debt Girl?

musings on progress, or lack thereof.

Welcome to Resolution Report, a new series for paid subscribers where we talk about goals and dreams, and I share weekly updates on resolutions I set for myself this year  – both the failures and successes – along the way. 

So far, we’ve discussed body image, learning how to read and more. To learn a little more about the Resolution Report, and to see a full list of my resolutions, read this intro post.

In honor of this week’s topic, I’m removing the paywall on this post. Enjoy!

Resolution Report #7: pay off my debt 

Psssst. I’m still in debt. 

I started talking about being in debt publicly for the first time in July 2022.

Now, as I’m sure you know, it’s March 2024.

And, as evidenced by the title of this post and everything else I say and do, I’m STILL talking about debt. 

That’s almost two whole years of my life spent talking about debt. And two years of your life listening to me talk about debt. I can’t believe it. 

But mostly, I can’t believe that I’m still IN debt. 

For a long stretch of time, I was fortunate to be making really serious, swift progress. I had a freelance job that was paying me more money than I’d made at any other job before. I threw a hefty amount toward my nearly $20,000 in debt each month, all while building up a healthy emergency fund, saving for retirement, putting money away for taxes, 

During that time I also made room for the things that make life worth living. For me, that’s travel and I didn’t skimp on that. I had a dedicated travel savings account and looked for creative ways to save money without sacrificing the pastime I love most in this world: taking Xanax on planes. (JK, it’s travel, duh). 

I was doing so well, and had socked away so much cash into savings, that eventually I felt confident I could spend a few months pursuing one of my own, big creative goals: producing my podcast - Debt Heads. It was time to stop mining my personal life and talent for other people and start doing it for myself. 

So, after months of saving and thinking and planning, I left the high-paying job. I left the security of knowing I would be able to stick to my debt repayment plan, and I put all my effort into making something new. I had $12,000 of debt left to pay down – and I knew it would be a risk. But it was a risk I was willing to take.

In fact, if I was going to live the creative life of my dreams, it was a risk I had to take. 

lol

In many ways, taking that risk paid off. After two years of hard work, TV and podcast interviews, thousands of TikTok comments (both good and bad) and committing actual time to a creative endeavor that means more to me than anything I’ve ever worked on before, we were given a quantifiable vote of confidence in both the work and the decision: a $20,000 grant to continue producing Debt Heads. 

All this work continues to lead to new opportunities. For example, you might want to keep your eyes peeled for the TIME Magazine issue coming out at the end of March. But they haven’t all been lucrative. Or lucrative enough to pay my debt. 

All the while, I kept saying to myself that if and when I really got desperate for full-time work, I’d get a job. I felt pretty confident that I’d be able to find something. And I did find some things – just not any that provided a real, liveable wage or that paid in a timely manner. I’d find myself chasing down a company for $400, by the time I received that money, it had to go directly to pay off my credit card.

This is the reality of working in media and an increasingly gig-focused economy today. To accomplish something big, you have to take big risks – but it’s becoming nearly impossible to do so without driving yourself into a debt hole. 

So, yes. I’ve accrued some debt during this time. My Chase card, which I’d proudly paid off in full, now has a $3,000 balance – bringing my total to $10,000, up from $7,500. That number is still way down from the original $20,000-ish. But recently, I’ve felt that familiar anxiety weighing on me when I open my bank account.

Now, though, I’m no longer afraid to look at my bank account. And as I’ve mentioned before, that’s the first step.

As my friend Moss pointed out - progress is a spiral, not a staircase. I was hesitant to even tell people that I’d added to my debt. But this is the truth, and since one of my other resolutions is to be more honest, it only seems right to share the bad stuff, too. 

The good news is, I did get a new gig. It’s still a gig, with no long term stability. But it’s one that came at the right time. I’m grateful for the job but I don’t regret any of the things I accomplished in the interim. 

So, maybe this debt won’t be paid off in full in 2024. Or maybe it will. Either way, I am reminding myself that I’m doing the best I can, and if you need to hear that, you’re doing the best you can, too. 

Love,

Jamie AF