Special Guest: My Journey Away from Shame and Toward Financial Freedom
We are so excited to welcome Jamie Alyson Feldman of @realgirlproject to the Friendseder Blog this week! In the essay below, Jamie shares her story of working towards financial freedom and the new appreciation she found for her community along the way - a beautiful representation of the journey toward freedom and friendship that we’re exploring during this holiday season! Follow her continuing journey on Instagram and TikTok.
“How much debt are you in?”
It’s an early summer morning and I am on a walk around Prospect Park in Brooklyn with my friend Rachel. It’s a beautiful day, in a beautiful park, during one of my favorite seasons in my favorite city.
And I am panicking.
As a writer, content creator and chronic oversharer, I have bared my soul to friends and internet strangers alike, countless times, about myriad sensitive topics. I don’t shy away from conversations about grief, family, romantic relationships (or lack thereof). But in the years since I started accumulating credit card debt, I have largely done it in secret – in isolation.
From the outside, you might forget that, until being laid off in 2021, I worked in the notoriously low paying field of journalism – while living in my hometown, which happens to be one of the most expensive cities in the country. My desire to spend was less rooted in wanting more things than it was in fear - fear of abandonment, fear of missing out. Fear that if I said no to an invitation, maybe the invitation would never come again. It’s what drove me to happily hand over my credit card at dinners, bachelorette parties and weddings I couldn’t afford.
Year after year, I watched the numbers spin further out of control. I naively believed that one day, things would just work themselves out. That the debt wasn’t having any real negative impact on my daily life. Aside from, you know, a nearly 20% interest rate.
The thing about shame is that it thrives in secrecy (The Shame Monster in Netflix’s Big Mouth is one of my all time favorite representations of its specific cruelty in adolescence). As an adult, the shame of my debt – the feeling that I was so financially irresponsible, that I was bad, kept me trapped in a shame spiral. I thought that, because I still had friends and healthy relationships, that I wasn’t isolated. But when you’re keeping a giant secret, it’s impossible to be fully present in those relationships – and impossible to truly connect.
It was that day in the park that I, for the first time, acknowledged the actual amount, out loud, to another person. I waited for judgment. But there wasn’t any. Instead, there were hours spent talking about making a budget, teaching me how to use Tiller, a budgeting software I now swear by. There was support. There was love. And then, I learned, there was so much more where that came from.
My friends didn’t balk when I asked to hang out at home instead of at an expensive restaurant. They came over for Potluck dinners, went on walks with me. They showed me that my worth is not defined by how much money I’m willing to spend. That they wanted to be around me because they…liked me? What a concept.
As soon as I started to be honest about my debt (all roughly $20,000 of it), I realized how much of a hit my mental health had taken from the years of keeping it hidden. I used to think I had money issues and I had mental health issues. Now I know that money health is mental health.
More importantly, I learned that I don’t need to hold onto, or confront painful truths, all on my own. It’s my relationships that saved me from the isolating shame I’d been attached to all these years. It’s my friendships that helped me realize I could not only face the issue but free myself from it. Since that day in the park I have paid off nearly half of my credit card debt, moved the bulk of the balance to a 0% APR card and have turned what I thought I needed my life to look like completely on its head. As Passover begins, I am reminded once again about the power of connection and community, and their pivotal role in getting through challenging times.
I am more connected to my loved ones, and on a road to financial freedom I never thought possible. And now, I officially have no more secrets.