Dear Debt, You Saved My Life

Hey everyone! We have a great dear debt letter from Sarah Li Cain. Sarah Li Cain is the founder of High Fiving Dollars, a kick ass blog showing you that loving your money is not only a priority, but a necessity. You can download her free e-course “High Fiving Your Dollars” so you can have a loving relationship with your money. Oh yeah, her son thinks she’s pretty neat too.

Dear Debt,

Let me start off by saying thank you. I’m sure you don’t hear those two words too awful much, but I mean it. Thank you.

Why? Because, you debt, saved my life.

Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that the $9,000 I owed from swiping my credit card carelessly was your way of telling me that my current lifestyle was a sham. A bold-faced lie. In fact, watching those tears I shed drip down on that credit card statement was the moment of truth I had been seeking all along.

Someone I thought I was in love with was lying to me all along, and it took cold hard numbers to see what was really happening.

I took care of someone when I couldn’t take care of myself.  I spent all of my paycheck on this person. Actually now that I think about it, I was living paycheck to paycheck because of it. Using that credit card only helped to cover up the dire situation I was really in.

All those trips across Australia and New Zealand? You took care of it. My flight back to Canada so I could find a job to take care of the one I loved? You took care of that too. In fact, groceries and bus passes went on the credit card. And the more I spent, the more I felt like crap.

I thought the only way to feel worthy of anything was to spend money on other people. And the more worthless I felt, the more I spent.

I could shoot myself in the foot for spending that money on trips and gifts for this so-called loved one. But I’m not. In fact, debt, it taught me a valuable lesson that wasting all my time and energy on people and things that don’t matter can really take a toll on my overall well-being.

You taught me that I could further spiral down that destructive path of not loving myself, or buck up and get my life back on track.

And so I started saying goodbye. One credit card payment at a time. It wasn’t easy, and you didn’t let go so easily, but you knew our relationship wouldn’t last forever.

The less you were in my life, the more love I found. I found that loving myself was easier, and in turn loving others was too. When I finally said goodbye to you, I swore I saw a smile on that last credit card statement.

Even though we haven’t seen each other for over six years, I still think about you and what you did for me.

And don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.

Your loving friend,
Sarah

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Melanie

Melanie Lockert is the founder of the blog and author of the book, Dear Debt. Through her blog, she chronicled her journey out of $81,000 in student loan debt. She is also the co-founder of the Lola Retreat, which helps bold women face their fears, own their dreams and figure out a plan to be in control of their finances. She is passionate about empowering women, helping others get out of debt, and focuses on the intersection of debt and mental health. Every September she organizes a Suicide Prevention Awareness Blog Tour, to help share resources for those struggling with debt and suicide. In addition to her love of personal finance, art and music, she is also a karaoke master and a cat mom to Miles and Thelonious.

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