Your Credit Card Debt is Morally Neutral
This blog post is for all my friends who have any amount of credit card debt. (raises hand 🙋🏻♀️)
Maybe it's $250, maybe it's $68,784.37. Doesn't matter. If you have debt, this post is for you.
If you have debt and you're struggling emotionally with it, I'm coming to you to today with a pep talk / permission slip/ gentle reminder. And here it is:
Your credit card debt is morally neutral.
I'm telling you this because there's a good chunk of people for whom growing up, credit card debt was looked at as, well, maybe not a mortal sin, but definitely a moral failing of sorts. (again, raises hand )
That you failed, that you made bad decisions. That you should have been able to accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish on your own.
I'm not entirely sure where this comes from, but I'm guessing it's from the "pick yourself up by the bootstraps, if you don't have the cash you simply don't buy it" school of thought.
Which is awesome if you're working a job that pays you a thriving wage, housing prices are sustainable, and health care isn't a leading cause of bankruptcy.
OR if you're not a person who is trying to build a business when the vast majority of loans, venture capital, etc goes to, well, shall we say, people who AREN'T women, people of color, queer, neurodivergent, enter-chosen-non-white-male adjective here.
If neither of those scenarios are the case, sometimes credit card debt is one's only option. To pay for everyday things, let alone trying to build a business!
It's not a moral failing to need start-up capital of your business (or to fund investments in an already-started business).
It simply means that you:
don't have family who can loan you funds (or you don't want to ask for a loan for whatever reason)
don't have access to venture capital
don’t own a home with equity to spare
and as such credit cards are pretty much your only option to raise the capital you need!
Now, of course, I'm not advocating for mindless "it's okay, I'll just put it on my credit card" spending.
But an adult making purposeful decisions about their spending is COMPLETELY different than a college kid wracking up debt buying pizza and clothes.
So yeah. Your credit card debt is morally neutral.
Also: you're doing great. Keep going.
Also (again): if you have credit card debt (or debt of any kind, really), and want a handy way to track it, you can use this tracking spreadsheet I created. (It's got colors! And graphs! #becausepretty)
I made it for myself because I don't know about you, but I always feel better when I can see everything all laid out. Get everything out of my head and onto paper, so to speak. There's room to track 4 credit cards. If you're interested, but have more than 4 cards to track, let me know, and we'll see about expanding it!
