The last thing I ever expected out of my otherwise well-planned life was a divorce. I didn’t expect my marriage to last just 10 years and to be a single father at 37. Living through the financial impact of divorce has been like watching a tornado destroy what little I had built in my 15 years since finishing college.

Almost 17 years ago, I fell in love with a smart, beautiful, fun woman. I was a future architect living in Baltimore, fresh out of school making $23,000. We dated for six years, mostly long-distance, and nearly all of my disposable income went to pay for phone calls and flights to visit her while she attended college 1,000 miles away. I pinched pennies and lived an ascetic existence on tuna noodle casseroles.

She liked nice things, but wasn’t a princess. I considered myself a value shopper—the type of person who likes to save, but occasionally spends money to buy quality things. To wit: I paid for her engagement ring by selling a mutual fund I had bought five years prior. Before we got married, we went through Pre-Cana, a life preparation course couples must take before getting married in a Catholic church. We discussed the goals we shared, lifestyles we wanted, our careers, kids—the usual stuff—and more or less agreed on things. I knew we were a little different in our handling of money, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome. We were in love and we got hitched.

Married life was good for about six years. We rented a place in Baltimore and lived off my salary while she was in law school. By then, I had a graduate degree and was making about $44,000. We went on simple, fun dates and traded reasonable gifts. Shopping was rare because we couldn’t afford it. Eating out was a well-enjoyed date night treat. Our spare dollars were socked away for trips to visit family, and we bought a few loose stocks with bonus money.

My wife finished law school, and not being a cutthroat type in a cutthroat market, she struggled to find a job she liked in the Baltimore and D.C. area. The implicit brass ring from law school was for her to take over her dad’s small practice, or perhaps open a branch office. After a couple years of underemployment (her friends were averaging $80,000 a year, while she was at $35,000), I got a transfer with my company to work in Jacksonville, Fla. so she could move back to her hometown and work for her dad. She’d have mentorship, familiarity, no competition, stability.

Six years in, I was doing well as an architect. The market was hot and I had just received an awesome pay raise by switching jobs. I now made nearly $70,000. Against my better judgment, we decided to upgrade and purchased a spectacular home at auction—offloading our very affordable home at the height of the real estate bubble. Our new home would now eat up 55 percent of our income. It was as if my raise never happened.

Although she was barred in two states (that’s a good thing for an attorney), my wife worked for peanuts for her dad doing small town law, never making more than $52,000, and more often $40,000, while we learned that her friends with less experience made $120,000. The promise of firm equity kept me going, but we planned to have children to fill the new house we bought, and I worried that we wouldn’t be able to afford the life we wanted if my wife didn’t start earning more.

When our daughter was born in 2008, my wife never went back to work full-time. This wasn’t planned—it was a unilateral decision that I objected to.

While we were married, my wife was dealing with mild depression, but it was manageable with meds you have heard of. After our daughter was born, things started to turn south. To summarize the last four years of her medical history (and avoid a HIPAA violation), she had some physical health issues (multiple bone fractures and surgeries) and mental health issues (onset of personality disorders). Note well: Financial strife follows closely on the heels of health issues.

In 2010, some of her mental health issues surfaced. The market tanked and she now worked even less, earning about $25,000 a year as an attorney with $130,000 in outstanding school loans. She became suicidal and went on long-term disability. We were left riding one income in a budget built for two, a house built for four, many medical bills and prescriptions to fill, and a growing toddler to raise.

One of the many unfortunate side effects of my wife’s mental health issues was shopping: chronic shopping; addictive shopping; shopping to fill a bottomless abyss of pain and sadness; shopping to “rebel and punish”. Those were words she used. Any reason to buy a gift was a license to shop. At first, it wasn’t grossly negligent—just some extra lunches or tops, a book, or an extravagant hair-mani-pedi outing. It was $50 or $80 a month of money we didn’t have. Then $100 a month. Then hundreds of dollars appeared on our three credit cards. She bought shoes, handbags, jewelry. She bought 21 different perfumes.

My wife never did grasp that our lifestyle had to change when we had less income to live on. Her spending increased. Imagine working a full day and coming home to a spouse who was not working, but shopping online all day. This was my Groundhog Day.

It was now January 2012, and I tried everything to communicate our dire situation to my wife and what it would mean: repossession of her beloved SUV, no money for clothes for our daughter, the loss of our home. In an attempt to scare home the point of us being broke due to her shopping, I approached my in-laws for help. They were very much on my side, although they were historically cowardly parents—the kind who’d rather be your best friend than an authority figure. Her six-foot four-inch dad-boss-attorney had a one-on-one with her. It didn’t work. Nothing did.

A month later, I began confiscating debit and credit cards from my wife because she couldn’t stop shopping—all 11 of them. New cards would appear. I would gather them, pay them off and put them in the shredder. She hid her booty, lied to my face about her shopping and getting more credit. Four months earlier, my wife took it upon herself to spend $6,000 during the first week of November—an amount that more than tripled what we had spent on Christmas, ever, for both families and ourselves. I changed the laptop login to keep her from using the credit card info saved on various websites. She was under house arrest.

By now, my situation had developed into a disaster drama on so many levels—suicidal tendencies, drug addictions, work disability, multiple fender benders, binge eating, checking out from child care duties—that my spouse was unrecognizable from the woman I had married. It was so bad that my very Catholic parents told me, their very Catholic son, that I needed to get a divorce.

Sadly, underlying all those issues was the undeniable reality of having to navigate the day-to-day. “I’m sorry” doesn’t pay the bills. I met with an attorney in June and we separated on July 5, my own independence day.

The Cost of Divorce

There are some decisions in life that you should only do once, so you have to get it right. I believe marriage should be one of those. When it’s not, divorce should be. You have to get the right team behind you because you are making decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life, or at least until your children turn 18.

Divorce is a process, not a transaction. Like a chess match, no “game” is alike, and it breaks down into three financial phases:

1. The Opening

Meeting with a family law attorney will most often cost you a consultation fee—sometimes flat, sometimes based on an hourly rate. Mine was $350 for about 90 minutes. This is like a two-way interview. You get to measure the candor of the attorney, whether you trust they will go to bat for you, whether they have the experience and skill for your case. When you find someone you want to move forward with, they will require a retainer. This is most often a non-refundable amount of money that “hires” them and gets them started on your case. My attorney’s retainer was $5,500. I suppose it’s open to some negotiation, but these are standard fees and rates. My experience with attorneys (other than the fact I was married into a family of them) was paying $250 to make a ridiculous speeding ticket go away, so yeah, it was a major sticker shock. The retainer rarely covers the total work effort, and mine lasted a few months. Ask a lot of questions about the typical process, hourly costs, monthly costs, total costs.

2. The Middle Game

Depending on your case, whether it’s disputed or not, you will have monthly billings based on the attorney’s efforts. Mine cost $275 per hour. I heard of others paying upwards of $400 per hour. My total case lasted nine months. Some monthly invoices for me were under $1,000; others were $3,500. Everything is billed: emails, calls, research, paperwork, postage, and the expenses depend on the needs of your case. If you need extra effort—meetings, negotiations, court filings, hearings, depositions, expert testimony—expect to pay a lot. I needed all of the above at times, and that added up.

3) The End Game

Cases follow a typical trajectory: dispute, informal discussion between parties, organized meetings between parties (mediation), and if nothing can be settled, trial. Mediation ends many cases, some go to trial. After a day-long mediation, which cost $1,700 for the mediator, and about $2,500 for my attorney’s time, my former spouse and I came to an agreement—mostly to avoid court. All in, the divorce process cost me a hair over $30,000. Two minutes before agreeing to the settlement, I inquired about the cost of a trial, and he said “double what you’ve spent.” Enlightenment!

Lessons Learned

There have been so many for me, and I am offering things that engaged, seriously dating, and even unattached single people should be thinking about financially before marriage:

1. If you have assets of any sort to your name, get a prenuptial agreement.

Prenups are not just for trust fund babies and Donald Trump. Before marriage, I owned some loose stocks, mutual funds and my car—$20,000 max. My debts were about $20,000 in grad student loans. However, I had recently received a small five-figure inheritance. My wife’s assets: a car. Debts? $130,000 in law school loans. Naïve, trusting, and in love, I joint-titled everything, and lost half of the inheritance that was mine before the divorce. I will never marry again without a prenuptial agreement, unless I marry someone with far more assets than me, in which case I would completely understand having to sign one myself.

2. Keep your assets separately titled (car, property, credit cards, etc.).

If you like and drive each other’s cars, make it official and swap titles. If you ever need to sell something, like a house, it is easier if it is in one person’s name. There is no need to have joint credit cards unless one person has a horrific credit history; build your own credit individually.

3. Never co-sign on a partner’s debt.

I co-signed on part of my wife’s law school loans and realized later it was my credit history at risk if she/we should default. I was now responsible for decisions she made (law school, program cost, etc.). Those loans were the vicious variable rate government loans that could not be consolidated, so we paid those off first, but mostly with my salary.

4. If you’re a saver and don’t marry a saver, have separate pots of money.

Yes, I mean a joint checking account that pays the bills and separate accounts for playtime. Income disparity? Work it out. Who pays for what? Work it out. Don’t fall for the “we’re one team” and “what’s mine is yours” bullshit. Believe me, it saves resentment, and allows for true gifts and surprises to be given later. Bonus!

5. A spending addiction is every bit as serious as an alcohol or drug addiction.

The one time I was able to convince my wife to attend an AA meeting for spending, she was laughed out of the room and never went back. That was myopic and sad. An addiction is an addiction. My wife had both a drug and spending addiction, so I had a painful, protracted lesson in addictive behavior. An addict seeks an escape, rides a rush, experiences guilt, and then crashes. Repeat ad nauseum until there’s an intervention. No logic, no threat, no emotion can move an addict to change—it must come from within. After I asked for a divorce and we separated, my “shocked” wife racked up $18,000 in nine months shopping with her credit cards. She still has not hit bottom.

6. Deal with issues early and communicate.

If you notice a pattern, however small like a new Starbucks habit that costs $20 a week that goes against your couple’s philosophy or anything previously discussed, talk it over immediately. These things fester. Debt digs deep holes quickly.

7. Hold your spouse accountable for behavior.

If he or she goes on a spending bender, HE/SHE pays it back on HIS/HER credit card over time from HIS/HER paycheck. I paid off at least $35,000 in unauthorized spending from my wife in the past two years. I enabled too much for too long, and in the end, received no “credit” in the eyes of divorce law. In my case, it would have been much wiser for me to not have joint credit cards, and let the debt pile up on her cards. When we divorced, it would have been her debt to manage (unless it was for family purchases).

8. Be on top of family finances.

You don’t need to be a comptroller or do your own taxes by hand. There are no brownie points for that. Financial literacy might be an aspiration, but be on top of two things: balancing your checkbook monthly (with your bank statement in hand/online), and developing a reasonable budget (a bucket for every dollar you earn each month). Force yourself to track money trails. If you are lucky enough to underspend in an area, save or move that money so you won’t touch it. When you get those skills down (schedule them like a household chore if you have to), you can move on to investments and long-term savings goals like a house, grad school or retirement (highly recommended unless you pay someone to manage those for you). Online tools can help a great deal.

9. Don’t borrow from friends or family.

Unless you are starting a legitimate business, and they are truly investors, tapping friends and family for cash is cheating because there is a good chance what you need the cash for would not be loan-worthy from a bank (i.e. it’s to cover some irresponsibility or unnecessary purchase). If you borrow from friends or family, insist on drawing up a contract. Record whose debt, when, how much, repayment terms, interest, etc. Get it notarized. And especially if you borrow against an internal pot of money (401(k) loan, inheritance or earmarked account), create a formal IOU to pay yourself back. I lost thousands because I dipped into money that was mine or earmarked for a specific long-term goal with the intention we would pay ourselves back, and it never happened. As the law pretty much states, if it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist. The old saw “it’s not personal; it’s just business” readily applies.

10. Insist on keeping your kids’ needs at the forefront.

I would live in a shoebox before I would subject my child to substandard daycare or schooling. Clothes, medical care, food, books all come before my needs, and I suspect this is the same for most parents. When push comes to shove, providing for the kids will usually bring most parents back to the reality of needs versus wants.

11. Enforce equality.

This is critical, especially if one person is a saver and the other is a spender. In 10 years of marriage, my wife always got the new car and while I got the hand-me-down. As I watched our financial house crumble, I felt obligated to be a financial martyr. A new handbag for my wife shows up? I put off the suit I really needed for work. Do a temperature check with friends and coworkers. Other guy friends had toys and hobbies—motorcycles, expensive golf clubs, wine collections—and I had nothing. I didn’t want any of that, but more importantly, I felt I couldn’t have it even if I wanted it. I have a high threshold for pain, but that degree of subordination from selfishness was too much to overcome.

When Rules Are Broken

If you suspect internal financial malfeasance (i.e. someone raided the cookie jar):

1. Keep a paper trail.

Keep credit card statements, bank statements, investment accounts—any summary of your assets and dates. Know what you have just in case your checking account gets emptied, or so an investment is not mysteriously liquidated without your knowledge.

2. Distance yourself from bad behavior that could affect you.

Close dormant or joint credit cards. Suggest opening a card in your name alone (pick one with different perks you want, as an excuse). Meet with bank personnel to protect accounts with passwords or limitations involving joint approval. Move non-essential funds from checking to savings, or better yet, make them disappear into short-term CDs.

3. Assemble your resources.

Prime your network of family, friends, coworkers—anyone you may need to rely on for advice, or, heaven forbid, financial or professional help. Make sure what’s happening to you is not normal couples behavior—you’d be surprised how distorted the view can be from the inside of something dysfunctional. Get commitments in case you need character witnesses or sworn statements about events or things like who is a better parent.

4. Keep a journal.

I would have overlooked so much about what was happening to me, even month-to-month, if I had not kept a journal. I uncovered patterns of behavior, and was able to remind myself to do, and not do things I would have otherwise forgotten. And it wasn’t always for bad times: my journal helped keep my morale up.

5. Get a lawyer.

An hour consultation with a family law specialist will run anywhere from free to $400 or more. A divorce is too important to opt out of an attorney because you don’t have the money. Call in favors, pay in tiny installments, barter, just find a way.

I’ve been living solo for almost a year. I took a few actions that provided some buffer from being flat broke when I filed for divorce. First, I was always the family money manager—I knew where the bodies were buried as an accountant might say. I knew how funds came in, what typical expenses were, and where I could borrow in the short-term to pay the next bill. Second, I insisted on carrying no balances on our credit cards. If not for this fact, I might still be living the charade. Not relying on credit shines true light on reality—what is sustainable behavior and what is not. My former wife made our financial life a farce. Third, no matter how badly we needed funds, I refused to stop contributing to my 401(k), so I knew we were never spending every single dollar, and were always saving something. Fourth, I refused to let us dip into easy money (my small inheritance I received) in order to pay for my wife’s shopping binges.

I had to give up half of everything worth anything. Due to our income disparity, I agreed to take on more of the costs associated with our house (I pay the mortgage until its sale) and daughter (daycare, health insurance), in order to avoid paying child support. We share custody of our daughter. I also negotiated a finite amount of alimony to be paid after the house sells—I’ll be truly financially emancipated when that’s done. And it’ll feel great.

Peter Pacer (a pseudonym) is an architect in Jacksonville making the best of his time tethered to Florida. He is an active parent, blogger, volunteer, runner, schemer, and scratch negotiator by necessity.

It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle-ground in which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.

—Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

There doesn’t seem to be as much cultural nostalgia for debtors’ prison as for other 19th century phenomena like absurd facial hair, backyard chickens, and churning your own artisanal butter. But allow me to defend a modest proposal: We should bring debtors’ prison back.

A new craze for voluntary imprisonment could solve our nation’s Student Debt Crisis woes, if we could just convince people what a great idea it is. I don’t think it’d be hard—even the names of British jails of Dickens’ day sound cool! Marshalsea, the Clink, the Fleet, the White Lion—somewhere between an inn from Game of Thrones and a ’60s garage band, very on-trend.

Like many people my age, I have a lot of student loans, let’s say roughly a mid-five-digit number. All federal, and all my own damn fault. I’m not asking for sympathy; it doesn’t matter how we got here, we’re here now. A couple of weeks ago I tried to set up a repayment plan on Mint.com with what I thought was a reasonable amount per month: $450.

Error: It will take longer than 50 years to repay this debt. Please increase your monthly contribution.

I tried again: $666. Nope.

Considering the fact that I will likely still be paying off my education when I’m 80 (maybe later if the interest rates go up on July 1), considering that I can’t discharge these loans in bankruptcy, considering that my offers to let the government repossess my brain/diploma have been ignored, sometimes I can’t help but fantasize: if only I could sign myself up for five years in a minimum security facility, banging out license plates 8 hours a day, and have it all erased! Then maybe I could possibly own a house before I die or have a kid before I hit menopause.

Surely I am not in alone in this. In a recent poll conducted over half-price margarita pitchers and free chips & salsa, four of five grad students said they’d consider it, depending on the logistics of conjugal visits. (Of course, these are students, like myself, in an MFA program, not known for good judgment or practicality.)

As David Graeber points out in his excellent Debt: The first 5,000 Years, the idea of the I.O.U. has been linked to morality, to our very souls, since long before currency ever existed. If to be in debt is to be in a state of moral disgrace, why not criminalize it? Are prostitution and smoking weed really that much worse than enrolling in a creative writing MFA program, in terms of both personal degradation and cumulative effect on society?

Graeber writes:

To be in debt was to have a weight placed on you by Death. To be under any sort of unfulfilled obligation, any unkept promise, to gods or to men, was to live in the shadow of Death. Often, even in the very early texts, debt seems to stand in for a broader sense of inner suffering, from which one begs the gods – particularly Agni, who represents the sacrificial fire – for release. It was only with the Brahmanas that commentators started trying to weave all this together into a more comprehensive philosophy. The conclusion: the human existence is itself a form of debt.

—Robert Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debtors’ prison would be open to all, although in the case of credit card, medical, or gambling debt, it would make more sense to declare bankruptcy. So I imagine it would become a kind of intellectual symposium behind bars, the feckless overeducated lifting weights in the yard and discussing Adorno and Arendt in the cafeteria, with the occasional stabbing over who didn’t return what book to the prison library on time.

Jailing us would be cheap—generally speaking, the student-loan-debt population is already literate, so we wouldn’t need education classes, although woodshop or small engine repair would be handy. Put us to work doing something useful, like patching roads, fixing America’s crumbling infrastructure, wiping oil off of sea birds, and in return we’d get three hots and a cot and free medical care, just like any other inmate. According to the VERA Institute of Justice, it costs anywhere from $17,285 (Alabama) to $60,076 (New York) a year to imprison an individual. To make it worth the state’s while, the prisoners would just have to be doing something worth that much money. Staff our public schools, maybe? Two crises solved at once!

Before the Bankruptcy Act of 1869 abolished debtors’ prisons, men and women in England were routinely imprisoned for debt at the pleasure of their creditors, sometimes for decades. When the breadwinner was jailed, their families were left to depend on charity, so the prisoners would often take their families with them. As a result, entire communities sprang up inside the debtors’ jails, with children born and raised there. —Marshalsea Prison, Wikipedia

Debtors’ prison would even be good for the economy at large: with so many college grads out of the work force, unemployment would drop substantially. Think of all the jobs created for correctional officers—privatized prisons are, after all, a growth industry. (Plus, if we jail the humanities majors, it might shift at least a few percentage points in the racial imbalance of our nation’s incarceration statistics.)

We’re already partway there, as WND reports:

Thousands of poor Ohioans face the prospect of incarceration, according to the study [conducted by the ACLU], even though imprisoning someone for a debt that person cannot pay is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, a 1983 United States Supreme Court decision (declaring this practice to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution), the Ohio Constitution, the Ohio Revised Code and numerous decisions by the Ohio Supreme Court…”people facing jail time were informed of the total amount owed and, without any inquiry into their financial situations, assigned arbitrary monthly payment plans. At no time were they informed of their right to counsel.” The report continued, “The court informed them that, if they did not stay current in these payment plans, they would be required to turn themselves in to jail on a specific date several months in the future.” —Garth Kant, “Debtors’ Prisons Alive and Well in U.S.!, WND

In Ohio, prisoners burn off their debt at the rate of $50 a day. I’d be out in just over three years, years I am otherwise probably about to spend using my graduate degrees to work retail, be someone’s administrative assistant, collect unemployment, or enroll in yet another non-remunerative arts-related graduate degree program because it’s the only way I can afford health insurance. Because once Mint.com tells you you’ll never pay off your student loans, what’s another $40K? At that point it’s sheer abstraction: Well, If I’m fucked forever, I might as well spend it doing what I enjoy.

So hey Obama, lock me up! I can deal with cramped living quarters, bad food, really bad contraband booze, high risk of sexual assault, spending hours a day reading books or writing letters to the family I miss. It sounds a lot like freshman year of college.

Michelle Crouch lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Last week American Student Assistance released an 8-minute movie horror movie called THE RED. It’s about debt, and after the film ends, there’s a call to action to face your own debt (“you can’t outrun it, all you can do is face it and fight it”). I spoke with ASA managing director Sue Burton about her organization and what they’re doing to help people confront their student loans.

LS: Tell me about your organization, Sue Burton.

SB: American Student Assistance has been around for 57 years helping borrowers navigate repaying loans. SALT is our program to help students get ahead of their loans. We’ve found the best way to help students manage their loans is to help them when they’re make borrowing decisions, to get them informed and engaged for when they ultimately leave school.

LS: Your movie gave me a knot in my stomach.

SB: The goal is to drive awareness of the power of solutions. So much is written about the problem of student loan debt—but we want students to feel empowered to take action, to look at solutions, to get themselves informed about their options. You can ask people if they have student loans and they’ll say, oh yeah, but you ask much, they have no idea.

Students are disengaged from the details of their loans and how to manage those loans—they’re paralyzed.

LS: What would you say to someone who wasn’t that worried about their debt. Or maybe wasn’t paying back their debt. Maybe because they were banking on eventual loan forgiveness.

SB: We do encounter quite a bit of what I’d call magical thinking. Students hear rumors of forgiveness, or maybe heard that you worked in a certain job, your loans would be forgiven. And that can be true, for some federal loans.

But students have so little engagement with their loans, we have to unpack what type they have, the nature of the loans they have. A mortgage is one borrowing decision—but student loans are usually 4 to 6 different borrowing decisions, and they can all have different terms. People confuse public and private loans. They think private loans and public loans are created equal and they’re not. So the first step is know what you’ve got.

The terrible tragedy of student loans is that they’ll follow you around; denial and avoidance is really not an option. That’s the message we’re trying to portray in this movie THE RED. Just avoiding them will get you in the end.

LS: Are you just focused on current students and new graduates?

SB: Our organization helps people of all ages. Our programs are for everyone. The shape of traditional student has really changed—even many of our active college students are now are in 40s or 50s. We help a lot of people into their 60s and 70s—some have ignored their loans and are now finding that their social security is being garnished, which is really difficult. We help borrowers in any stage of repayment, but we’re trying to reach students.

LS: After they have loans, or before?

SB: Both. We have partnerships with 150 colleges and we work with students to help people borrow less—how can you borrow the least amount possible?—and to borrow smart—to know the difference between a federal loan with a fixed interest rate and a private loan. So those are our goals: borrow less, borrow smart, and ultimately repay well

LS: Can you talk me through what happens when I call you up?

SB: The first thing is diagnosis, understanding the magnitude of your current debt situation. We have a loan management tool on the website to figure out what you owe. Then we help you to understand the particulars of your situation. If you have federal loans there may be a way to renegotiate, and we can do that—most of the people that we can help immediately qualify for income based repayment for those federal loans. We can’t renegotiate private loans, but we can give specific language and coach you on how to do it yourself. For instance, some banks are open to a student loan short sale, and while we can’t do that for you, we can give you them some things to say to the bank.

We also try to get you thinking that no loan is an island. We want you to think about your cash flow. I hate the word budget, it’s like a root canal.

LS: It IS a terrible word.

SB: And for a lot of students, their income is really sporadic, even after graduation. A budget presumes you are getting a steady paycheck, and that’s unrealistic for many people. So we have a cash flow tool that takes into account money in and money out even if it’s irregular.

LS: I’m wondering if you’ve found it hard reaching students and young adults because it’s just not that cool to worry about this stuff. My own debt spiraled because in a way, I thought, I’m too young and free to worry about this.

SB: Money is never really the end in itself, it’s the means to an end. We really try to structure our content in a way that is engaging and compelling. My eyes glaze over when I read Suze Orman. We’re more interested in making content that is cool and shareable, content that will help you save money, that you’ll want to share with your friends-like Groupon when it first launched, oh cool, now I can spend less, and I’m going to tell my friends.

I just think the majority of financial content presumes a rational practicality that I don’t think everyone can possess.

LS: Did you have student loans?

SB: I did have student loans. They were a quaint amount by today’s standard, and it was 80% of my starting salary out of school. I had three jobs, and that’s how I ultimately came to pay them off. And true confession, I used to market private student loans. We weren’t trying to take advantage of anyone. We were trying to keep people from putting $500 in textbooks on their high-interest credit cards, or using their home as collateral for a loan. Still, sometimes I joke that this job is my redemption tour.

Mike: Why don’t you introduce yourself.

Single Mom: I’m 42 years old, divorced, and a single mom of three elementary school-age kids. I work in the administration of a non-profit. I live in a Maryland suburb of D.C.

M: How much are you currently earning at the non-profit?

SM: I earn $40,000 a year, and that is supplemented with child support that I receive from my children’s dad—about $1,500 a month.

M: Do you also have benefits?

SM: I have health insurance. It was a hard decision to make on whether or not to get insurance for myself. My employer pays two-thirds of the premium, but even the one-third I pay takes a significant bite out of my paycheck. I have it for now, but I may have to drop it. I don’t have any retirement benefits or anything.

M: There aren’t retirement plan options like a 403(b) or anything like that at the non-profit?

SM: No, nothing. I work for a very small non-profit. The budget and staff are both very small so the insurance isn’t even a group plan. I had to find my own insurance and I submit my premium bills to my employer.

M: How long have you worked at this particular job?

SM: I have been there since last August. I was working in the private sector prior to that, earning a bit more in salary and benefits but I was laid off. I was unemployed for just under three months before finding this job.

M: Do you have full custody of your three children?

SM: No, I do share custody of the kids. But I am responsible for paying all the child care costs, which has translated in practice to me paying all school-related costs: lunches, field trips, equipment, as well as the before and after care costs.

M: I’m sure that’s very difficult to do as a single mother living on your salary. How do you make it work?

SM: It is very difficult. I definitely live paycheck-to-paycheck and that’s not an exaggeration. My bank balance by payday is often $0. I have no savings at all. My priorities as far as bills go are rent and childcare. I am lucky that I don’t have a lot of credit card debt, but even without that I can’t always pay all my bills. I have a very strict budget that I stick to. I can’t always pay utility bills in full, but I have figured out how much I have to pay to keep the utility companies from shutting off my service. My gas usage is higher in the winter, but goes way down in the summer so I am able to catch up on that bill by the next winter. I rent a very rundown house in a good school system and pay below market rent. Even then I have negotiated that rent to keep it low—not asking for a lot of work to be done, doing work on the house myself, etc.

I have really learned to negotiate a lot. For the summer, I simply could not afford the cost of full-time care for all three kids—it was more than I earn! So I contacted the child care provider and was very frank about my situation and was able to work out an arrangement for payment that allows me to keep them in child care. Then there are bills that I just can’t pay. I was saddled with a large debt in my divorce and I have just no money to pay that with—I know it will catch up with me eventually but for right now my priority is keeping my kids sheltered, fed and cared for.

I stick to a strict budget as far as groceries. I make menus, never shop without a list and rarely have “treats” for the kids. Our big night is when I order pizza and watch a movie on Netflix. My kids are growing so fast and I really can’t keep up with buying clothes for three of them so I have learned to swallow my pride and ask for donations. I belong to a listserv of single mothers and just put it out there that I needed clothes and received a lot of donations which got us through the winter.

I don’t take vacations—alone or with the kids. We rarely go out and when the kids are with their dad, I don’t go out. It’s very isolating because not having any “extra” money means I can’t go out and socialize.

M: Can you break down some of the numbers for us? How much do you allocate toward rent and utility bills, child care, and things like gas and groceries?

SM: I pay $1,480 per month in rent, $1,386 per month in child care, and I usually pay about $75 to gas and electric, though as I said, my bills are often higher than that. I keep my groceries to $400 per month, and that includes things like toiletries and household supplies. One of my children has some medical issues so I pay around $100 in medication for him per month, I do have Internet and phone and basic cable, which is bundled and has recently gone up in price to $130 per month so I will most likely have to cut back that service in some way..

I try not to drive too much—I take the bus and metro, but that can even be expensive during peak hours. I have a prepaid cell phone and only pay $25 per month for that. My phone is very old but I am planning on keeping it for as long as possible because the plan will increase by $10 if I get a newer phone. I pay about $150 per month to credit card debt. One is a card that I have closed and I am paying off the balance. I am almost done paying it. I negotiated with the bank that issued the card to pay a lower monthly amount in but it has taken longer to pay off

M: Do you have student loan debt or other debt besides the credit card?

SM: Well, that’s complicated. I personally do not have actual student loan debt but while I was married, my husband and I consolidated our loans with the Department of Education. Since I had the loan with the DoE, we consolidated in my name. He got his master’s overseas with private loans so he had a lot of debt. In the divorce, that debt landed with me since it was in my name. So there is a $48,000 student loan debt that I have for an education my ex-husband got. I have been able to put it in forbearance and even deferment when I was unemployed but it’s in repayment now. I have not been able to pay one penny of that debt. I have to deal with it but it seems so daunting, I am just incapable of figuring out a solution.

M: Your ex-husband is not making an attempt to pay off that loan?

SM: No, he is quite happy that he doesn’t have to pay it!

M: That’s terrible. Is the loan sitting there accruing interest?

SM: Interest and late payments. I have been getting calls from the company recently and they offer to “help” me figure out a payment, but the reality is that I don’t have anything to give them. You’ll be happy to hear that the master’s my ex got has allowed him to earn a great salary, though!

M: It’s really unbelievable. Have you looked into legal help with it?

SM: I am in the process of looking into that. I have been trying to find the a copy of the original paperwork I submitted to consolidate, which would list the loans and prove that they are not mine. I no longer have that paperwork and the loan has been sold so it’s hard to figure out where that record is. I’ve also looked into Chapter 7 bankruptcy because I’ve recently read that in spite of popular belief, it can be possible to dispatch student loans through Chapter 7. But as I said, it’s so stressful and daunting—I’ve ignored it for too long. I’ll add that I only have a B.A. from a state school.

M: I’m glad to hear there’s some hope of getting that loan discharged. What did you study, and how much was your college education?

SM: I have a degree in theater—very useful, I know. But I started college at 17 and wasn’t ready so I dropped out. By the time I figured I better get a degree, I was so close to the theater degree and, since I was paying my own way, I figured that was better than nothing. I don’t really remember how much my education cost. I got a combination of grants and loans but it wasn’t much, as I said, it was a state school and I had in-state tuition.

M: You’re living paycheck-to-paycheck now, but has it always been like that?

SM: When I was married, things were definitely better. We were pretty solidly middle class. We had our financial struggles, but were doing fairly well. I used to have a savings and a small retirement fund, but I had to cash out and spend it during the divorce.

M: And I’m sure you’re really caught up living in the day-to-day, but do you also think about things like retirement? Do you no longer believe that’s an option, or are you figuring out a way to do it?

SM: I just can’t think about it. I know that I will be one of those people who works until they drop dead. It’s just not my reality. My priority is my kids and making sure they have a better future than I have. I feel like I’ve kind of just given up any thoughts of having a better life for myself, and really just try to focus on my kids.

M: What kind of life did you have growing up?

SM: I was raised in a pretty typically middle class environment. My siblings and I weren’t spoiled but we never really wanted for much. I have learned in my adulthood that my father was not very good with money. He spent what he had and was no good at saving, which has left my mom in a less than great place since his death. I worry that I have inherited that trait. I mean, sometimes I wonder if I should be making my finances work better—if it’s not that I have a low salary and high expenses, but if it’s also that I am just no good with money.

M: But I think raising three children on what you are earning is quite an accomplishment and deserves recognition. Do you not agree?

SM: I do feel a sense of pride that my kids don’t know the struggles I go through. I am particularly proud of the fact that they never knew I was unemployed—nothing about their lives changed.

M: After your father passed, your mom was left in less of a great place because he wasn’t good with money. How is your mother now?

SM: I mean, he always managed to pay the bills, but he was a very generous guy too—he just didn’t plan and save for retirement. So my mother, who is in her early 70s is still working.

M: Are you close with your mother? Do you talk about money with her?

SM: I am very close to my mom (though not physically—she is in the Midwest with the rest of my family). I try very hard not to discuss my financial situation with her, though it comes up because I am not able to take the kids to visit, etc. We do discuss her finances a little and I know she’s not in a horrible place but just not in great place. I don’t like to discuss the extent of my financial struggles with her because I don’t want her to worry, and I don’t want her to feel the need to give me what little she has and needs.

M: Do you also worry about her? Since she’s still working?

SM: I worry, but see some of her problems as solvable, she is just hesitant to do things like sell her house and move in closer to my sister. That would be a big help for her. She is fairly good with money. I think she just never took charge while my dad was alive, and she seems to be doing OK. I do think she would prefer to stop working and she is trying to figure out a way to make that happen.

M: You said something pretty bleak before in that you have given up on having a better life for yourself, but talking with you so far, you seem like a very resilient person. I know that your income is the biggest barrier at the moment. Are you thinking about ways to earn more money? Do you have the spare time to look for a better-paying job?

SM: Yeah, I guess I am resilient. I feel like I have to be for my kids. I am always thinking of ways to earn extra income. I have often in my working life worked a part-time job in addition to my full-time work, but that was while I was married. It’s tougher to find the time now that I have blocks of time without another parent around. I would be working just to pay for babysitting. I would love a better paying job but have concerns about my tenure at jobs. I was not at my previous job very long (about 12 months) before I was laid off, and I haven’t been at my current job for a year yet, I want to build experience and a bit of longevity because I think in the longer term, that would help me get a better job or advance my career.

M: Do you have the sense that the situation you are now is not permanent? That you believe that there will be a time when you are no longer living paycheck to paycheck?

SM: Honestly, I don’t. I think about where other people my age are financially—home owners, retirement accounts, college funds—and the amount of catching up I would have to do just seems impossible. I do tend to think of my situation as just the way things are for me—not in a “victimy” way, I take responsibility for the life choices I have made that have put me here—but I think I am just too far behind in terms of financial health to ever be in a significantly better place.

M: You mentioned that things were easier when you had another parent around to help with parenting duties. Do you think having another partner to help out in the future is something that could happen?

SM: No, I don’t. For a variety of reasons. One of which is my financial state. I feel that I would be bringing someone down if I partnered with them, financially I mean, and I don’t want to do that. I mean, there are other reasons I’m not really looking for another marriage or partner, but the financial reasons are something I definitely think about.

M: What is your social life like? Are you able to do simple things like meet a friend for coffee?

SM: I don’t have much of a social life to be honest. It is a struggle to do even little things like meet for coffee or lunch and definitely no money for a night out. I live in the suburbs and my single friends live in the city and among my friends who are parents, I am really the only single person. So I’m kind of in a gray area in terms of friends and not having the means to go out doesn’t help.

M: Because of this gray area, does that mean you’re lacking a support system that could help you do certain things? For example, having a friend who could look after the kids while you went on an interview or a networking event?

SM: For the most part, that is the case. I do have some neighbors and friends who have helped out on rare occasions, but really no one who could help on a regular basis. I don’t have any family in the area, as I said before.

M: Do you ever consider moving back to the Midwest to have a better support system of friends and family around?

SM: I would love to! I want to! But, because of custody laws, I am not able to relocate unless I gave up custody of my kids, which I would never even consider. I would love to be in the Midwest. It’s much cheaper to live there and I would love to be closer to my family.

M: That sounds like it would be ideal for you—to be able to move to the Midwest where things are cheaper and to have a family support system and your children with you. Is there no legal pathway to make this a possibility?

SM: Unfortunately, no. And I spent a lot of time and money trying to make this happen when my husband initiated a divorce. But the laws are such that unless my ex consented, I cannot take the kids out of the area to live. And my ex will not consent so I have to stay in the D.C. area.

M: So if your ex wanted to move, he’d have to get your consent as well?

SM: Yes, that’s correct.

M: I imagine it’d be difficult to convince him that moving would be good because it’d mean providing your children with a better situation?

SM: I really tried that approach during the separation/divorce process, but he was adamant that he wanted the children to remain in close proximity to him. And I do think it is important for the kids to have regular time with both parents, so I can see the point. But it was very difficult because I didn’t want to move to this area, but did because he got a job here. I mean that while we were married he got a job in D.C., I had no desire to move here, but did so to support him.

M: It just seems totally unfair that it appears like he gets to have things the way he wants them to be (though I know you already know this).

SM: Yeah, it was an eye-opening experience for sure. I try really hard not to be bitter about it.

M: I know you have to go pick up your children soon, but I would love to know if you see some tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel—because I do think you are resilient and resilient people figure out how to get to a better place, even if there’s a bunch of hard tiny things you have to do along the way to eventually get there.

SM: Well, I guess the light is that my kids are fantastic and I really believe that they will have great lives and do the things they want to do. I struggle a lot, I do, and I think about what might have been or what I could have done but I guess at the end of the day if all I manage to do with my life is raise great, good people, then that’s a pretty big accomplishment.

M: I’d love to follow up with you maybe a few months or a year from now to see how you are doing if you are open to that.

SM: Yeah, that would be cool. I tend to hope for the best but expect the worse—so you never know, things could be better in a few months or a year. I’m sorry that this was so bleak.

M: Not everybody’s story comes with a tidy, happy ending. This is the reality of things, and I think it’s important that we can show that. So thank you for being so open and taking the time to talk to me.

Previously: Living on $15,000 a Year

Interested in having a conversation about what you do, how much you earn, and how you make it work? Get in touch.

Over at LearnVest, Jill Davi shares her story about how she racked up $30,000 in credit card debt, and then paid it all off. It’s a nice “taking control of your finances” story, but like a lot of other narratives about people getting themselves out of debt, it follows a familiar storyline: Person with massive credit card debt decides to cut up her credit cards, then makes major life changes to cut back on spending (i.e. moving in with another person to pay less in rent, cutting out shopping completely, creating spreadsheets), and then pays off the massive debt load in a relatively short period of time (for Davi, it was paying off $30K in 18 months, while earning a little more than $30K a year—which is extraordinary).

I like a good “getting out of debt” story—they can be inspiring. I just wish they were sometimes a bit more relatable, because stories like these can make it sound like pulling yourself out of debt can be an easy thing to do, when it’s something a lot of people struggle with. I’d love to read a piece about someone who got herself or himself out of debt, but about how it wasn’t easy, how it took a lot of time to fix some deep-rooted, unhealthy habits, and how it’s fine if you fail a few times along the way, but that it can eventually be done. Anyone have a story like that?

God grant me the will to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the things I cannot. Is that how the prayer goes?

Late last year I knew that when it came to my finances, I was doing okay with the first part, but failing entirely on the second. It had been more than two years since I’d lived paycheck to paycheck, but I was still acting like it. Worse, I was obsessed with something I couldn’t change—at least not in a short-term way—my five-figure, mortgage-sized student loan debt.

When I finished grad school in 2010, I knew in theory that I would be paying my students loans until I was at least 30-something, if not 40-something. But the theoretical becomes very real when you know you’re never going back to school and this, as they say, is it.

I’m fortunate to have been employed since that graduation day, and in jobs that allow me to make my monthly payments with a decent cushion left over. But looking at the math made me crazy. What if I added $50 more a month? I typed in a lot of potential payments of my student loans, trying to get myself below a certain amount at milestones (30th birthday? This time next year?).

I imagined modest windfalls to see how I’d proportion it out, but be annoyed when I realized it wouldn’t make much of a dent. I confirmed it when I threw an entire tax rebate at the largest loan, and ended up saving, drumroll, $8 a month, on interest.

The obsession was good, for a while. My spreadsheets (oh I have multiple), tell me that I’m almost $5,000 ahead of where I should be from my original payment plan. And I’ve still been able to go on vacations and probably spend too much money at restaurants.

But if not prayers, economics should have taught me that at a certain point that the returns start to diminish.

I’d log in into my student loan account in the middle of the month, just to see where the total was. Never mind I’d already calculated how much I was paying each day in interest and had a calendar that told me where I’d be in 12 months, 24 months—hell 53 and half months. Why was I bothering looking at the balance?

But what was really scary was that I realized it was possible that my absent-minded obsession with paying off my student loans was likely losing me money. I calculated how I could get below a certain goal and ended up forgetting to pack a lunch. I spent more time looking for freelance ghost-writing I had no passion for instead of working to further my career, the very thing I’d spent my future money on.

I’m not a resolution-type person, but the new year brought a good excuse for a new mindset. I decided to stop checking and calculating—as cold-turkey as I could. Everything was set to be automatic, so I could spend my time better.

The Serenity prayer, it turns out, is a much-more compelling version than my half-remembered attempt. It’s the often-used mantra of many 12-step groups. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

It’s going better, but old habits, especially Internet history habits, die hard. When I sat down to write this, it was because I woke up from the same over-calculating auto-pilot that had wasted so much of my 2012. There I was, looking at the largest loan’s balance in the middle of the month. I closed the window, shut the computer and slowly, slowly walked away.

Taylor Kate Brown is a professional American. She tweets here. Photo: annrkiszt

Thanks to my grandparents, I finished undergrad with zero debt. But then I went to grad school and got two degrees. One is a law degree (quite useful), the other is basically a conversation piece. (My boss: “Did you actually earn that degree, or did you buy the diploma on eBay?”) For these, I have just over $239,000 in student loan debt, down from the approximately $253,000 I started with.

I have a lot of feelings about my debt. Mostly I am ashamed that I complain about it. Because as huge as it is, my personal privilege is correspondingly huge. I didn’t waste my money. I bought myself a present and now I am paying for it by leveraging the present—I have a job! And my job is REALLY GOOD. My job makes even my ludicrous debt totally manageable with money to spare to live comfortably. So I am ashamed that I feel the burden at all when compared to what so most people face, I live in the penthouse at Number One Easy Street. And yet I still bitch and moan.

I really thought I knew what I was getting into, though I completely did not at all. Somehow I thought my payments would be around $1800 a month in a 10-year repayment plan, which seemed tough but not impossible. I was wrong about that: Ten-year repayment requires just over $3,000 per month. But even then I really didn’t think about it too much, at first. When I started law school in 2006, my plan was to do public interest work. I knew there were a lot of programs that helped public interest lawyers pay off their school loans, so I figured that’s how I’d make it work.

Then 2008 blah blah blah, the public interest market for law jobs became nonexistent unless you went or Harvard or could do it for free or you wanted to move to Kentucky. I did not want to move to Kentucky. So I went to a firm. And here I am.

It’s hard to decide how much to structure my life around getting rid of my debt. When I finished law school, I had every intention of staying in my super cheap student’s apartment and continuing to drive my beat up old car, complete with its leaky, broken sunroof and unpredictable starting. I planned on putting as much money towards my debt as possible.

But bedbugs (eeeegh, so horrible, and SO EXPENSIVE) took me out of the apartment. Peer pressure got me into a new car. A bad investment chipped away a bit here; a shopping binge for (totally necessary!) work clothes chipped away a bit there. I got slightly fancier cable, because all I want to watch are the movie channels anyway. I bought a flatscreen TV.

And suddenly I find myself locked into my life. Suddenly I could not afford to make much less than I do now, despite being a single person whose only dependent is a very fat and insistent cat. I have obligations. The absolute minimum payment I can get away with paying per month on the loan is $2,300 per month. And that’s for the next 30 years. I’m currently paying $2,500.

I guess this is what they mean when they talk about golden handcuffs. Or is this completely NOT A BIG DEAL and I should stop complaining? I do not know.

I should probably just be insanely grateful that I have the resources to deal with this (I am); live as austerely as possible (I don’t); and throw every penny I have into getting this monkey off my back until it’s gone (I am not doing that).

And this is where my thoughts trail off into swirls of self-recriminations, justifications, and a very strong desire for a very large drink. There’s something I’ve wondered wondered about for some time: Is there anyone else on earth with as much student loan debt as me? Put another way, how many actual total idiots does this world contain?

I’m just curious.

M.L. is a lawyer.

Mike: One of the things we examined this week was what debt means to us as individuals. What should we think about when paying it off? There is no one right answer, of course, because debt means something different to each of us. So let’s talk about this. Logan, your debt is all consumer, right? You don’t have any student loans.

Logan: Yes, mine is consumer debt. Consumption. Ha. Yes. But it is an interesting division. Does the kind of debt matter, psychologically? When I had a car loan, I thought about that debt differently than I thought about my credit card debt.

Mike: How so?

Logan: I’m not sure. I didn’t think about the car debt, at all. So much that when I was adding up my debt last year, I had to be reminded to factor in it. To me it was another bill. But the credit card debt totally felt like this disgusting black cloud. DARK. TERRIBLE. DANGEROUS.

Mike: Maybe it’s because the car is something you needed and were happy to pay for, while your consumer debt was mostly a bunch of stuff that you wanted, but could have survived fine without. I feel that way about my student loans. I’d probably freak out about credit card debt and would want to pay it all off ASAP, but with my loans, they’re there, I pay them every month and don’t really think about it. My interest rates are pretty low and the interest accrued adds up to less than $2,500 a year, which is the deduction limit for student loan interest come tax time. Anyway, that’s boring tax talk, but what I’m getting at is that I’m not too worried about it. I know they’ll be paid off by the time I’m in my 40s—possibly sooner. And in the meantime, I can live pretty comfortably.

Logan: The car was a decision made with a sound mind, and it’s a decision that I didn’t have to validate or feel bad about. I needed a car, I bought a car, I got insurance, I made my payments. It was a good car but a modest car. The payments were reasonable. There was no sense of, I’ve really screwed myself here (though there were months when, sure, I bemoaned my month payment and thought, I’ve really screwed myself here!). The credit card debt was different in that it was a lot of tiny decisions that I validated at the time (I deserve this dinner out, I need this haircut to feel better about myself) but added up were not so easily defensible. “I spent $20K to make myself feel better,” just doesn’t work the same way, “I spent $20K to get to and from work” does. Sometimes I’ve toyed with the idea of thinking about it almost like a medical debt. I spent that money on regular sessions with a not very good or effective a therapist, called dinner and a bottle of wine.

Mike: But you also don’t feel the need to pay it off ASAP, right? I mean, the way I’d feel about it, or the way Lisette and her partner have decided to tackle it so aggressively. I don’t think I would tackle it as aggressively as they did/are, but I do think I’d make paying it off a priority.

Logan: Well, there was a time when I for sure felt like I had ruined my life by racking up this credit card debt, and that I wouldn’t be able to “start my life” until I paid it off. I’ve since changed my mind about that, mostly. I don’t feel ashamed about it anymore, mostly. But I didn’t ever feel that way about my car debt. I didn’t feel like the car payment held me back in the same, way, psychologically. Even though the payments, well at least for a long time, was pretty similar. I think it has something to do with the fact that interest rates on the cards are high, and so there’s this sort of feeling that I can’t save any money, that I need to pay off the cards first. But … I also don’t want to not spend any money? So in my head, it’s always been, pay bills, live, pay off cards further with extra if there is extra (the only time I’ve managed to have “extra” is when I’m close to paying off a card and just want it gone!), and then ONE DAY, I’ll save for …. something.

Mike: It’s all about finding that balance and whatever will work for you to reverse that debt back to zero. I think it’d be unrealistic for you to go from charging things without thinking about it to magically breaking all your bad habits and focusing all of your money to get your credit cards paid off. But I also think it’s fine for people to want to do that—to go through a period of misery in pursuit of some bigger goal in mind. I think about my parents—how when they were my age, I was already old enough to start school. And I think about how we lived in this awful one-bedroom apartment together—my family of five—for a few years until they had saved up enough money for a down payment for a house. I don’t remember it being so miserable, but I’m sure it was for them. They made it seem like we were one big happy family in that single bedroom, but I’m sure in the back of their minds, they were like, “The kids need their own rooms! We need our own space!” And then I was in third grade, and we had a house, and a backyard, and all that temporary misery was worth it. So, I don’t know why Lisette and her partner are putting themselves through hell while shedding their debt or what their end goal is, but I do have an understanding of why people do it.

Logan: I used to wish I was the kind of person who could do that, I used to daydream about moving somewhere and doing a job—oil fields! cruise ship dishwasher! I don’t know—where I’d work all the time and have zero places to spend money and I’d just do it for a year and then I’d pay off my debt and I’d start fresh. I do like the idea of starting fresh. But it’s not something I’m actually interested in doing. And to people who are? Bravo.

Mike: Bravo, indeed. Bravo to anyone who figures out the thing that works for them when it comes to debt (or savings, or just living, basically).

This does not impress me, Occupiers. @bw: #OWS is raising money to forgive random citizens’ debt | buswk.co/TXEFF9 by @nicksumm

— Janet Paskin (@JPaskin) November 13, 2012

Tomorrow, Strike Debt is holding their fundraiser for its Rolling Jubilee, their project to buy loads of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then forgive it. There is much love for the movement: We’ve mentioned how much we’re into it, Forbes is getting behind it, and the New York Times, which seemed a little resistant when it came to covering the Occupy movement, is even giving the Jubilee some ink.

But there has been some criticism as well, or at least, some questions about what the Rolling Jubilee will actually be able to accomplish in the grand scheme of things (it won’t, for example, actually get the banks to change any of their unfair lending practices, or prevent people from accruing debt again after their debt is forgiven). Bloomberg Businessweek’s new managing editor Janet Paskin (and my former boss) is not impressed. In addition, Dissent has a terrific email discussion about the Jubilee between Andrew Ross, an organizer with Strike Debt and a professor at NYU, and Seth Ackerman, an editor at Jacobin, which has been critical of the project. I do think experiments like these are helpful to do. Will it do anything to fix the system? Probably not. But it’s a starting point.

Has a month gone by already? It’s time to check in with our debt payments. If you’re joining us for the first time, you can read about our decision to publicly keep track of our debt here. Please join us if you like—we’re all in this together.

Logan is paying off her J. Crew Credit Card, which currently has an APR of 24.99 percent, and a minimum monthly payment of $29.
Sept. 2012 Balance: $497.30
Oct. 2012 Balance: $282.74

Logan paid much more than she usually does this month because she moved and sold her six-month-old queen size mattress to the person moving into her old room for $200, and decided to apply that money to her J. Crew card. (She’s now sleeping on a twin size mattress she bought from Ikea for $79.)

I’m paying off one of my Sallie Mae Private Student Loans, with a current interest rate of 4.5 percent, and a minimum monthly payment of $55.
Sept. 2012 Balance: $1,402.33
Oct. 2012 Balance: $1,334.69

Give us your updates below. If you pay off a debt, email me, and I’ll mail you a personal note to congratulate you. (I know I have a few outstanding notes to send to a few of you—they’re coming soon, I promise!)

See previous months here.