Being in debt feels like you’re always a step behind. It doesn’t help that debt is spoken about as something that’s your fault—too much online shopping, or too many pricey pitchers of mimosas at brunch.
“In our culture, in our country, we have a lot of noise about debt,” says Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based financial therapist and author of “The Financial Anxiety Solution.” “We make it mean a lot about who we are, our character, our willpower.”
In reality, debt isn’t always the result of things you can control. For example, 58 percent of debts in collections as of 2021 were medical debts, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau….