I promised I would use Don’t Short Yourself to be vulnerable about my own finances, so let’s rip the Band-Aid off: I have racked up $7,500 in credit-card debt. This is an embarrassing admission, considering I write about personal finance for a living. But I also don’t think having debt necessarily means you’re bad with money.
For me, the problem was that a bunch of expensive things happened at once, and I thought I could handle them. But those charges stacked up. Then add a healthy dose of FOMO that fueled more spending, and my outstanding balance ballooned.
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I’m not alone: The average American had $7,756 in credit-card debt in the first quarter of 2026, according to LendingTree. So, rather than feeling ashamed, I made a realistic plan to pay this debt down. Over the past few months, my debt began to snowball.
My fiancé and I were doing well with budgeting, but things started to unravel a bit after we moved to a new apartment in July. Paying for movers was a significant one-time expense ($830), and our monthly rent is $1,250 higher now. While my fiancé works multiple part-time jobs following a layoff in March, I’ve temporarily taken on a $2,250 share of our nearly $4,000 rent.
And it’s not just my rent. The cost of travel, food and pretty much everything else has also made it harder to stretch the same paycheck as far as I once could. Inflation didn’t put $7,500 on my credit cards — I did — but it has made the margin for error much smaller.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
