Happy New Year! And welcome back to another episode of Money Files.
This is the last episode of the debt identity series and I am going to be talking to you about survival debt. The kind of debt that shows up after a divorce, a medical issue, a job loss, a major income shift, or a season you could not have planned for. Survival debt does not come from overspending or poor discipline. It comes from life happening faster than your savings could keep up, and it may be flavored with a little bit of the multiple types of debt that we’ve discussed in this series.
When you understand why the debt exists, you stop treating it like a personal failure and start managing it with clarity instead of shame. Join me as I walk you through how survival debt often gets misclassified as a spending problem, how fake math shows up when emotions are high, and why paying off debt aggressively without changing the story usually leads to burnout and repeat cycles.
If you have ever felt shame by debt that came from trying to survive a hard season, this episode will help you breathe again and move forward without self punishment.
Episode Highlights:
[01:47] Why naming your debt matters
[02:10] What survival debt actually is
[05:00] Life events that create survival debt
[08:45] When debt becomes a story about who you are
[11:30] How fake math shows up after hard seasons
[14:20] Why rushing payoff plans lead to burnout
[16:50] Renaming debt to reclaim control
[19:40] Five questions to neutralize survival debt
- What did this debt allow me to survive or protect?
- What story am I telling myself about what this debt means?
- How would I view this debt if it belonged to someone I love?
- What would neutralizing this debt emotionally look like for me?
- What would change if this debt wasn’t treated as a personal failure?
[23:00] Choosing a calmer path forward
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how naming survival debt helps you release shame, stop fake math, and build a sustainable plan rooted in clarity and self trust.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If this episode helped you name your survival debt, check out Episode 186: A Better Way to Handle Unexpected Expenses. It shows what becomes possible when you stop letting past seasons define your financial future.
Transcript for “[Debt Identity Series] Understanding Survival Debt: Why Your Debt Is Not a Personal Failure”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Welcome back to another episode of Money File. So today I’m recording the last episode of my debt identity series and I am going to be talking to you about survival debt. I want to name this type of debt because I think that for those of you who may have experienced this debt, maybe you haven’t actually talked to yourself about what’s on your credit cards in this way, because sometimes survival debt can also come with some of the other types of debts. It can come with some point chasing, it could come with some safety debt, but it’s really important for us to pause and be able to name what’s happening when it comes to our finances.
When I think about finances and the ability to give something a name, it neutralizes it. And when we can neutralize or even normalize what’s going on with our finances, we create space. And that space allows us to think about what’s next? What’s the vision that I want to move forward with? Versus always looking in the rear view mirror and thinking about what you should have done or where you could be. I am actually recording at the time of me recording this podcast episode, I have been doing some work for my clients and recording a shame series for them. And when I am thinking about the different reasons that people are stuck with their money, shame is the biggest component because shame makes us tell ourselves stories.
And when we’re telling ourselves these certain stories, we get overwhelmed, we become stuck, and we have, like, we can just be frozen and not move. And so when I’m thinking specifically about the survival debt and even the other podcasts that went along with this debt series, when we can name something in our lives, it doesn’t just have to be this abstract thing that happens to us, it can be something that we actually address. So if I can say, oh, you know what, my debt has been the result of survival or my debt has been the result of me point chasing, or my debt as been the result of me not having a safety net, we can actually talk about the thing that we’re fixing and maybe it’s a little bit of a flavor of multiple types of debt, right? That’s okay too.
But for me as a coach, it’s really, really important that I am able to support you in normalizing and neutralizing what’s going on because you are not the only one. I know that it feels like you are in this space where you’re like, oh my goodness, no one else is dealing with the things that I am am going through. And my friend, that is not true. I have worked with over hundreds of clients. I mean anywhere from someone making six figures to multiple six figures, people making $60,000 a year, people running a practice, attorneys, doctors, financial advisors even.
And so you are not alone with whatever you’re experiencing with your finances. And so that is the reason that I choose to talk about money in the way that I’m talking about money, because I don’t want you to be stuck. And if you are stuck, I want you to recognize that you’re stuck, why you’re stuck. And I want you to be able to choose the next steps that you want to be able to engage in. So when I talk about naming things in your life when it comes to your finances, it doesn’t mean that what you’re experiencing won’t show up again. Like it doesn’t immediately disappear, but it allows you to ask yourself questions like, what do I want to do? Or how do I want to feel? Or Why am I feeling the way that I’m feeling?
And then that changes the narrative that we actually have with ourselves. And then we can choose the direction that we want to take. And so for many of my clients, the work that we’re doing helps them have these options. It helps them change how they’re talking to themselves about money. And in this episode, when I’m thinking about survival debt, as I’ve said countless times before, like I want you to be able to name what you’re experiencing in your life. I want you to be able to express gratitude where gratitude is necessary. And then I want you to be able to extend kindness to yourself. And I want you to be able to choose your next steps. I want you to be able to name where you need support, and I want you to be able to identify where do you want to lean in and be able to make decisions from that place. So survival debt isn’t about overspending, it’s usually coming because something has happened in your life.
You’ve entered into a new season that you couldn’t have predicted happening. And I don’t associate it with poor planning. So when I’m thinking about survival debt, it shouldn’t be treated the same as a shopping spree because it’s not. Survival debt, it can come from a divorce or a separation, it could come from legal fees, it could come from medical bills. Maybe it’s a job loss or a disruption in your income. Maybe you had to leave an environment that was unsafe or maybe your whole life just pivoted faster than your savings could keep up. So you didn’t actually take on this debt because you were upgrading your life. You took it on because your life shifted and you needed a bridge.
And the reason that matters is you don’t manage this bridge debt the same way you would manage spending debt, but most people don’t make that distinction. Instead it just gets collapsed all under the same umbrella where we tell ourselves I’m bad with money. That’s the general narrative that shows up. So when someone has survival debt, we have to understand that the numbers are only half the story. And what’s actually louder is this internal narrative that you have where you start to talk to yourself about the debt, where you start to tell yourself, I should have been more prepared, or I should be further along, or I shouldn’t be here. Maybe it’s even I shouldn’t need my parents’ help again. I see that a lot where someone may have gotten help from a parent to pay off some debt, maybe debt has come back because there was a survival situation.
And so now you’re talking to yourself about how you shouldn’t be where you are. And that should language turns your credit card balance into like an indictment on your life and on your character and how you view yourself financially. I was actually talking to a friend recently and she’s carrying some debt that’s actually from a mix of health issues and a career disruption. And so she was talking to me just casually and I am the friend that maybe gives a little bit of money advice unsolicited, but she was talking to me about her debt and I was telling her, I was like, I’m actually recording this debt series on my podcast, but I was reflecting back to her. I understand that you’re in debt right now, but I want you to know why you’re in debt. Like you’re in debt because you had some health issues that you had to actually address and you had some career disruptions that you couldn’t have planned for.
And so those two things have put you back where you are because one of the things that she’s looking forward to in 2026 is paying off her debt. And she was just telling herself a story about like, I had just, a couple years ago we paid off our debt and now we’re back like in the exact same amount of debt. And if you’re not mindful of this story, it’s like, I am bad with money. Here I go again. Why am I always back in this cycle? And so it can become this like self-fulfilling prophecy that you’re bad with money. And maybe several years ago when you were in debt, you were in debt because maybe you weren’t managing your money well. That is a total possibility and a reality. But in this new case, we want to be able to identify that there were different circumstances that brought you here.
So we can have the same number, the same amount of debt, but those two numbers have different stories. So if five years ago you were $10,000 worth in $10,000 of debt, get clear on what the story was for that $10,000. If you are five years later in $10,000 worth of debt, get clear on what that story is. Because if you don’t actually separate the story, you might treat the debt in the same way and it’s going to shape how you make financial goals, how you go about planning, paying off the debt, how you even go about earning more money, how you go about saving money. It literally changes everything, so we have to get clear on the story. And for my friend, her life was changing really quickly and her and her husband made some decisions to adapt to that, and it meant that she was taking on debt. So if you hear nothing else from this debt series, if you hear nothing else from this podcast, I want you to know that if you don’t tell yourself the correct story about why you’re in debt, you end up paying it off like you’re trying to erase a mistake, instead of managing your expectations of it. And thinking about the fact that no, I was managing a season in my life and that was a very different reason for me being in debt.
So survival debt usually feels like a numbers problem, but I would say it’s actually an interpretation problem. You’re not just seeing a balance, you are seeing proof that you feel like you failed. And when debt becomes proof to you, to your brain, then two things tend to happen. You either give up and think what’s the point? Or you get into a place where you’re in punishment mode and you try to pay it off as aggressively as possible. But both of those options in terms of how you’re thinking about paying off debt, they come from the same place and that’s shame. Shame is not going to allow you to be safe. Shame is like your internal emotion that’s going to make fear rise up in your body. It’s going to make overwhelm rise up in your body and it’s why you end up staying stuck. So when you’re paying off survival debt, you want to be mindful of where the fake mask shows up. I’m a fake math girl here, and fake math is going to tell you that if you were better with money, this wouldn’t exist.
You’re probably going to tell yourself this fantasy story about how if you had have done something differently 15 years ago then you would’ve been prepared for this catastrophe that happened in your life or this season that happened in your life. And you wouldn’t be where you are today. So fake math likes to clear everything up and it puts you in a place where there it’s giving you the cleanest context of your life. Fake math is also going to say like, I should have handled this differently. I should have seen this coming. But if you go back to a space where you’re honest with yourself, you were making decisions under emotional stress, you may have been making decisions with limited time. You were in the middle of a real life situation, you maybe didn’t have full information or even full life like expertise on different options that maybe you could have taken at the time.
And so now fake math has inserted itself and it’s causing you to judge yourself for your choices and telling you that you should have had a level of clarity back then that you didn’t actually have access to. For whatever reason, you didn’t have access to that clarity. So if you have survival debt, I want you to hear that doesn’t mean that you’re bad with money. It means that something required more cash than you had available in that moment. And if you talk to yourself in that way, you can take the shame out of that number that you see in front of you. Imagine if you just tell yourself like, yeah, I have this $20,000 and I underestimated how much cash that I needed. Or I didn’t have $20,000 available to me in that moment.
And like I’m thinking about like if I was talking to myself about survival debt in that way, I would be thinking about like, okay, I didn’t have $20,000 available to me in that moment, but I feel like I could make a plan to pay off $5,000 for the next four years and not make it mean anything. And some of you might be listening to me and thinking like, oh my goodness, Keina, that’s so slow. But imagine what else you can do as you’re paying off $5,000 a year for the next four years on that $20,000. If you could do that while you were saving money, what would you believe about yourself? If you could do that while investing in your 401k, if you could do that while also making sure that maybe you were investing in your health, your mental health, whatever it is that you needed, what would you be thinking about yourself? Because right now you may not be paying off the debt at all, or you’re paying it off in such a way that you try to pay off lump sums, but then it pops back up. But it’s because you’re not managing the story around the debt. And shame is managing the story around the debt.
So it’s very important to listen to how you talk to yourself about the debt that you actually have. And most advice about paying off debt assumes that the debt came from behavior that needs to be fixed. So when you hear people talk about the debt and paying off the debt, they’re telling you, you need to cut everything. You need to get really extreme, you need to throw every single dollar at it. But with survival debt, I would say that the urgency isn’t as much financial as it is emotional. You’re not trying to get rid of the balance. You are trying to get rid of what the balance makes you feel or how the balance makes you feel about yourself. And I think that’s why people burn out when they’re paying off this type of debt. Because this shouldn’t have ever, going back to the should story, if you’re telling yourself, this shouldn’t have ever happened and I shouldn’t be here, then you’re thinking about ways that you can make this debt disappear really quickly.
And what I want you to do is separate the debt from your identity. And I think that one of the simplest ways to do that is to be able to actually rename the debt. So I’m not even talking about paying off the debt right now or building a payment plan to pay off the debt. I am literally talking about the conversation that you’re having with yourself as it relates to the debt. So if I had debt from divorce, I would tell you, maybe you want to call this your transition debt. I had a client that she would refer her attorney fees, she called it her freedom debt. And so she was paying it off as we were working together, but every time she was paying it, she was like, this is my freedom debt. Like I got to leave a relationship that wasn’t good for me. This was totally worth it. If you had medical debt, can that debt become your care debt?
If you had debt from a job loss, maybe you lost your job or you went from making 200,000 to 150,000, you didn’t really understand what that transition would be like for you. Maybe you have some what we could call bridge debt. And so just thinking about what’s another name that you can give for your debt that allows you to be in control of the story. And so the name matters. So that way you get to be in control of it. And once you feel like you understand why you’re in debt, whether it relates to this episode or it relates to one of the other episodes within this series, then that’s when I think you can actually start to think about what is the path forward for how I want to actually pay off this debt. That’s when you can start to look at the balance.
That’s when you can start to look at your interest rates. That’s when you can look at what do I want to pay? How much is the minimum? How much over the minimum do I want to pay? Do I feel like I have a budget in place and I maybe I want to explore a balance transfer so you can decide what you can pay without destabilizing your life. Not what you necessarily should pay, but like I want you to do it in a way that it feels sustainable. You’re able to actually build buffers within how you’re managing your money. So I want to make sure that you have money saved and I want to make sure that you’re not having to rely on your credit card because you don’t necessarily have emergency funds.
And so you can build a timeline that feels reasonable to you. Earlier in the episode I said, if I had $20,000 of debt, I could make a plan to pay off $5,000 a year, or maybe I make a plan to pay off $6,000 a year. That’s $500 a month. That might feel really sustainable for me and it allows me to save money so that, also if other things pop up that would make me use my credit card, I have money in the bank. And so that’s going to allow you to build some momentum as you pay off the debt in your life. Please hear me clearly. I’m not saying that you have to automatically engage in like a, oh my goodness, I need to take a payment plan and and break it all down. But the thing that I want you to hear over and over again when I am thinking about paying off debt, I am also thinking about what else is going on. Paying off debt is a minor symptom, if you will, to a bigger problem.
And thinking about like what do we need? What do I actually want to make sure that I’m preparing myself for? Sometimes I think that with my clients, that they are so focused to getting to zero, that they overlook all the other things that they need in their life. And so that’s how they end up back in the cycle. And they can need different things. Some of my clients need to practice pausing. Some of my clients need to rewrite the story about what it means being in debt. Some of my clients, we got to parse out like are we chasing points? Is this survival debt? Like it can be multiple things, but we want to make sure we have the right story so that way, how we go about paying off the debt matches the story and matches what we need on the other side of when the debt actually gets to zero. Because when the debt gets to zero, the hope and intention is like that I don’t have to use the debt again.
Or if I do have to use the debt again that I know how I’m going to use it. And so we want to make sure that we change our relationship with debt first before we go to immediately paying it off. And it may sound like a slower step, but I would rather you go slower to go faster later. So when you stop actually fighting survival debt and you can actually integrate with it, your debt is going to take up less mental space, you’re going to stop hiding from it. You can stop measuring yourself against it, stop making every decision from this place of urgency. And you’re going to notice where, maybe you talked to yourself about your debt being a failure that I have this debt because I needed to make a decision in that season of my life. And so that’s the shift that you’re going to be able to adopt.
That’s the shift that is going to move you forward when it comes to the survival debt. And questions that I love if you are in a space where you have survival debt and just really getting in a space where you make peace with it, I’m going to give you five questions. The first is, what did this debt allow me to survive or protect? But thinking about what did it give you? Did it give you safety? Did it give you time? Did it give you the ability to keep your kids stable during a transition? Did it give you medical care that you needed? But just being able to name what the debt funded in your life?
And then second question is, what story am I telling myself about what this debt means? Are you telling yourself that you’re irresponsible, that you should have done better, that you’re behind, that you’re not where you should be, but like write the story down if you need to and look at, is this true or is it just the loudest thing in my head, is this the loudest story in my head? Question three is, how would I view this debt if it belonged to someone I love? I love this shift whenever, it’s like what would you tell a friend? What would you tell a loved one? And just imagine, what would you tell them? Would you tell them that they failed? Would you tell them that they should have been in a better place, but just thinking about what would you tell them and why would you tell them that story? And why aren’t you able to tell yourself that story. What’s the difference?
Question four is, what would neutralizing this debt emotionally look like for you? Not paying it off but neutralizing it. What would it feel like to see this debt as a line item and not a judgment against your character? What would it change if you stopped letting this debt mean something about who you are. Because that’s what’s happening you’re making it mean something about you. And the last question is, what would change if this debt wasn’t treated as a personal failure? Like how would you handle it differently? Would you pay it off faster, slower, or the same? Would you feel less urgency? Would you make different choices? And so what would happen if that shame was gone?
So just sit with these, there’s no perfect answers. You don’t need to like email me you’re open essay responses, but I want you to always invite in questions because it’s going to allow you to see what you’re telling yourself about money. And that’s the real work, because you want to make sure that you are telling yourself the correct story so that you can actually address the correct problem in your life. So if you’re carrying survival debt, you don’t need a different approach. Survival debt doesn’t mean you messed up, it means you kept going. And I don’t want you to just treat your survival debt like it is consumer debt. This debt is in your life because something in your life required more than you had on hand at the time, and you used the tools that you had.
So now you’re managing the debt that you have in front of you. You don’t have to be ashamed about that. You’re not alone, but you do get to choose how you want to move beyond this space in this place in your life. So when you stop letting this debt define you, you are going to be able to pay it off in a calmer, cleaner way and in a way that makes you really, really proud, whether it takes you six months, whether it takes you a day, or maybe it even takes you three years to pay it off. But I want you to be excited about what you’ve been able to accomplish and who you’ve become as you’ve actually paid off this step. So thank you so much for tuning into the debt series. Happy New Year, and I look forward to joining you in 2026.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
