Illustration: Olivier Heiligers
Tariffs are coming, a trade war is looming, and most of us are overwhelmed with more debt than we can handle. Credit-card debt is at an all-time high, hitting a record $1.21 trillion last year, and people are having a harder time paying it off. More than 100 million people in the U.S. have some form of medical debt, and student-loan forgiveness now feels like a pipe dream. Even though debt is everywhere, there’s a persistent stigma around being in the red. It’s easy to accrue even more debt just to prop up the illusion that you’re staying afloat — even thriving.
Most of us are doing neither. The Cut asked 102 readers to tell us how much debt they have, how they racked it up — from necessities like education and medical expenses, to bachelorette parties, weddings, and Botox — and how they’re paying it down (or not).
How Much Debt Do You Currently Have?
Our readers reported a wide range, from as little as $5,000 to $1.5 million. The higher spectrum of debt, in the $200,000-plus range, often included mortgages. Roughly half of readers have $50,000 or less in debt, with most landing somewhere in the $21,000 to $50,000 range, either from credit-card debt, student loans, or both.
10 have $10,000 or less
12 have between $11,000 and $20,000
27 have between $21,000 and $50,000
15 have between $51,000 and $100,000
11 have between $101,000 and $150,000
6 have between $151,000 and $200,000
15 have more than $200,000
6 didn’t say
What Kind of Debt Do You Have?
76 people have credit-card debt
67 people have student loans. Of those, 36 have loans from undergrad, 13 have loans from grad school, and 18 have both
23 people have car loans
21 people have a mortgage
19 people have medical debt
11 people have debt from “buy now, pay later” services like Klarna and Affirm (including one person who owes $2,000)
7 people have personal loans
5 people have other forms of debt, like rent and back taxes they owe
More than three-quarters of survey respondents have credit-card debt.
12 people have $5,000 or less
12 have $6,000 to $10,000
17 have $11,000 to $20,000
15 have $21,000 to $40,000
2 have more than $40,000
How long have you been in debt?
A majority of respondents said they’ve been in debt for over five years‚ including 39 people who answered between five and ten years, and 33 people said they’d been in debt for more than 11 years.
How Did It All Start?
For the majority of respondents, it was with student loans or a credit card that they swiped a little too much. But for others, big life events like having a baby or needing an important surgery are what pushed them over the edge.
- “I got my first credit card around 27, but it wasn’t until I moved out of my parents’ house around 30 and started paying rent that it became an issue. It started with a surgery. As soon as I moved out I found out I needed to remove one of my ovaries and fallopian tubes for my endometriosis; even with insurance I had to pay $3,000 up front, so I charged that on a credit card with a $4,000 limit. I tried to haggle with the doctor. Insurance is a scam!”
- “My job required me to put a lot of work expenses on my credit card before reimbursing me. I was young and disorganized and lost track of my work expenses versus my personal expenses.”
- “We have been leaning hard on our credit cards since we had a baby — we have $8,000 in credit-card debt.”
- “The credit-card debt and my fraught relationship with money started when I was an undergraduate at NYU. When you’re in your early 20s, you think you’ll figure it out later. I bonded with my friends through shopping, restaurants, and bars; in the city it’s harder for people to just go for a walk or do something that’s entirely free. At the time, I thought, Well, this is the price I’m paying to maintain my relationships. After college none of us ended up in high-paying, high-flying careers. I came back to Chicago, and then traveling to see each other became another expense. But we never talked about money and all just assumed we had enough. For all I know we were driving each other into debt, and that’s sad to think about.”
What’s the Most Frivolous You’ve Gone Into Debt For?
- Lip filler
- Chanel shoes
- DoorDash
- “An ex, LOL”
- “Three years ago, I got ‘lunchtime lipo.’ Put the purchase on two separate credit cards, $6,000 on one and $2,000 on another. I’ve gained all the weight back and currently have $1,500 dollars in interest on top of the original $8,000 payment. And I got botched.”
- Lyft rides
- Wine
- Ozempic
- “My wedding. I took out a $20,000 personal loan.”
- “Fresh-cut flowers at my local farmers’ market.”
- “I spent $600 on a Dyson Airwrap. Then I bought a Dyson vacuum. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
- “$4,000 of my credit-card debt is from concerts and vacations. My friend and I bought Beyoncé floor seats for Renaissance — now I’m going to do it all again for Cowboy Carter.”
- “My education seems ‘frivolous’ at this point. I have a degree that I’ve never made any money from.”
Have You Accrued Debt Trying to Keep Up With Friends’ Lifestyles?
Thirty-eight respondents said yes. From casual restaurant get-togethers to group vacations, the cost of friendship upkeep is setting back readers by thousands of dollars.
- “My personal credit card has about $25,000 in debt and most of that is from a combination of vacations/fancy dinners/clothes. All things I objectively don’t need, but I want to feel like I’m able to afford the same things that my friends do. Even though I clearly can’t.”
- “My parents don’t help me out at all. Starting in college, I went in debt trying to keep up with friends. Moving to the city led me to just constantly trying to live the life I want to live and balance the fact that I don’t have that help that others with family money might have.”
- “I accrue around $250 extra debt a month just by going out with friends a few times a week.”
- “The first few years out of college, I accrued $10,000 in debt. Part of that was keeping up with friends — dinners, vacations — but also much of that was simply the cost of living in NYC on a $35,000 salary.”
- “In recent years, my income plummeted and I thought I could continue spending as I had before. I’ve gone on a few international trips with friends that I really couldn’t afford, around $3,000 total. All dumped onto my credit cards. It didn’t seem stressful at the time but since my income has been so erratic I regret it now.”
- “Birthday dinners, parties, lunches, bachelor parties. I’ve accrued probably $5,000 in total.”
- “I probably accrued $8,000 over the course of one year trying to keep up with friends.”
- “At least half of my debt is trying to keep up appearances.”
- “Seeing the lifestyle of people in the city on social media, I wanted to wear all the cool clothes and try the fancy new restaurants. My justification was, I’m probably only going to live in New York once in my life and not that long, so I’ve got to treat myself.”
- “It’s hard to admit that I’m in a different financial place than my friends who might be married or higher earners, and toward the end of the pandemic everyone was reemerging, getting their hair done, shopping, and getting filler and Botox because the pandemic had aged us. Instead of assessing my mental health, I was like, I’ve got to do all of that, I have to keep up with the Joneses. I decorated my apartment. I got Botox and lip filler in one sitting, for $1,200. That was 75 percent of my paycheck and I didn’t have that to spend, so I went out and took a loan. I took a trip to Arizona for a bachelorette party rather than saying no. It was a perfect storm of poor financial decisions, one after the other, and within a year I accrued $12,000 in personal-loan debt.”
Is That Wedding Really Worth It?
Down with the random destination wedding. Fourteen respondents said they went into debt trying to afford the costs of friends’ bachelorette trips and weddings.
- “I accrued debt going to weddings in my 20s. Being in a wedding is unbelievably expensive. I always thought I would be able to catch up.”
- “Being in friends’ weddings delayed moving out of my hometown to a more fun and expensive city because of my debt.”
- “Most of my frivolous spending is dining out and bachelorette trips. I’ve spent $20,000 on them.”
- “I am literally paying for some wedding gifts and costs using Visa gift cards I got for Christmas. It’s depressing.”
- “Two years ago, I planned a bachelorette party in Kansas City for a friend who made me her maid of honor. I paid upfront for the hotels, a Topgolf reservation for everyone, and a suite for the bride and I to share, which was my wedding gift to her. Hotel rooms were $300 per person, and $600 for those who didn’t want to share. I ended up paying $6,000, but then people started dropping out and did not pay me back. One bridesmaid made me send her receipts for what I was charging because she thought I was trying to make money. I ended up getting $4,000 back and ate the rest.”
Some respondents keep their debt a secret from their loved ones — or their loved ones have kept debt a secret from them.
- “I keep my $12,000 of credit-card debt a secret from my husband. Before I gave birth to our daughter, I was only $3,000 or $4,000 deep, but when I was eight months pregnant, my husband had a mental-health crisis and ended up needing to leave his job to get the care he needed. It was absolutely the right thing to do, but all of a sudden our income was cut in half and we had these medical bills — I accrued another $4,000 in credit-card debt from giving birth. During the months my husband wasn’t working, I put some of our utilities on a credit card, along with groceries, household expenses, and all the crap babies need. If I was ordering bottles in the middle of the night, that went on the credit card. If we needed work done on the home, that went on the credit card. I didn’t want my husband to curtail his treatment because he needed to get back to work right away. I always thought, We can figure out the money stuff. You have to stay in the hospital for however long you need. Now we have significant enough savings that if I were willing to have the conversation with him about the debt, we could just pay it off. But I’ve decided that it isn’t worth it to me. I’m trying to protect him from it. When I think about it, I’m like, That’s really fucked up. I should call my therapist.”
- “A few years ago, my husband racked up nearly $5,000 in debt on our shared credit card on mobile gaming. (I don’t know what kind of games they were; I’m sure it was something you have to buy power-ups for.) The credit card was under his login, so I wasn’t seeing it. It got bad enough that he eventually let me know it was happening. It was a combination of overwhelm and depression for my husband. Shortly after we had our first child his mother passed away very suddenly. I think he just put it in the back of his mind that the debt wasn’t happening.”
- “No one knows about my debt. Not even my husband really. He would be pissed.”
- “It took a lot of effort to tell my parents about my debt. As you can imagine, being in a financial crisis is VERY stressful and embarrassing. It took everything in me to admit I needed help. As bad as it feels to share this shame with people, I also feel relieved to not have to hide and feel so alone.”
After taxes, how much of your monthly take-home pay goes toward your debt?
Many respondents say they’re hanging out in the limbo of student-loan forbearance and are just paying the minimums on their credit cards. Others allocate as much as half their take-home pay toward paying down debt.
- “33 percent each month.”
- “$500 when I can manage it, which is pretty rare.”
- “$1,000 to $1,500, depending. Working hard to get after it now.”
- “35 to 50 percent.”
- “Two-thirds.”
- “One-eighth.”
- “As much as I can wrangle per month, which varies due to the instability of freelance payments.”
- “We try to put $200 toward our credit-card debts. Unfortunately, we had to let my medical debt go to collections. I know I’ll regret it later in life, but we didn’t have much of a choice.”
- “Currently unemployed so very screwed.”
- “I am not really even in a place where I can pay off any of my debt right now so I just pay the minimums on as few as I can.”
How Much Debt Have You Paid Off?
It’s a hamster wheel of interest.
- “None, interest keeps me in the same spot.”
- “In a never-ending cycle of paying the minimum and then having to use it for groceries. Damn inflation!!!”
- “Barely any.”
- “More than $60,000.”
- “Roughly $2,000 has been paid off so far, but we keep ending up having to max our cards.”
- “Over $15,000 in the past ten years.”
- “My parents paid off my undergrad loans when they sold their house, about $100,000. I have paid off about $15,000 in credit-card debt over the years, but it always creeps back up.”
- “Because of interest rates (and a brief stint of unemployment and irregular freelance work during COVID), I’ve barely made a dent in it.”
- “Maybe $100.”
- “I’ve paid off about $10,000 in student loans and at least $7,000 in credit-card debt.”
- “I’ve paid off approximately $65,000 in student-loan debt in ten years. I’m still paying it off.”
- “I have actually reduced it by a lot. But also my parents have helped a lot with the medical debt. I did just pay off a credit card that had about $4,000 on it.”
- “I paid off $20,000 in credit-card debt, then got $30,000 in debt right after.”
How Did You Pay Off Your Debt?
Married rich.
- “Luckily I married into a wealthy family, and my husband used some of his trust fund to pay off my student loans.”
- “The burden of my student-loan debt was so constant it kept me up at night. I come from a family of debtors and it just felt insurmountable. Honestly if I hadn’t found generational wealth through my marriage I’d be in a very different place.”
Moved in with parents.
- “I moved back home to San Diego last year and live with my parents so I can get back on my feet financially. They’re divorced and loaned me money so I wouldn’t have to pay interest on my debt. Now I pay my dad $400 a month and still owe my mom quite a bit. It’ll take two and a half years to pay off. I never want to put myself in that situation again. It was such a downward spiral. So now every time I’m faced with a purchase, I’m like, is this worth postponing being debt free?”
- “Two years ago I moved back in with my family to save on rent. My parents live in a wealthy neighborhood where everyone wants to show each other how much money they have. I feel like my life is just this game of make sure everyone knows you have enough, dress like it, drive the car like it. I can keep up these appearances to an extent, but beneath it all, I’m drowning in debt.”
Got professional help.
- “I paid off a credit card with nine years of payments and not using it. I joined Debtors Anonymous in 2016 and it was what I needed to finally stop incurring new debt and be realistic about how much money I had.”
- “For the last two years I’ve been working with a debt-management company to get out of what I did. You make regular payments into a savings account with them and they negotiate your debt with creditors. Once they reach a settlement amount, they’ll pay it off of what you’ve saved and take a percentage of what they settle. These debts still follow me and I’m throwing money at them, but I have a bit of relief that someone with more knowledge is handling them.”
I haven’t.
- “I’m in collections for a credit card I got to buy my ex an Xbox for his birthday when I was 19. $300 turned into something I couldn’t pay, and when I ignored the problem it went to collections. Haven’t dealt with it since.”
- “I lost my job in 2021 and ended up working in the service industry until last July. I got really behind on payments and couldn’t afford to pay my bills at the end of the month because my credit-card debt was so bad. My parents helped me pay some of it off, but I’m already basically back to the same amount because I wasn’t making enough, though I worked crazy long hours — at one point, I had three jobs and no days off for a year.”
- “My debt gets deeper every month, so while I do pay it off it is more like treading water rather than making an actual dent in it.”
- “I once defaulted on a credit-card debt, and I think they ended up just closing that account and sending it to collections. I’m just like Okay, whatever. I’m not just living to work. I need some fun. Literally everyone is in debt, I don’t know anyone who isn’t unless they’re a trust-fund kid or married rich.”
- “There are moments where I’m like, You need to be better, you need to save. And then I’m like, We’re doomed, just live your life. It’s fine. My student loans are in God’s hands.”
More From This Series
- How a Teacher Paid Off $65,000 of Medical Debt
- The Actor Whose Gigs Dried Up During the Pandemic
- What Happens If You Just Don’t Pay Your Student Loans?