When Ciara Zurita-Jackson started sharing details about her credit card debt with internet strangers last year, she was doing it to hold herself accountable. 

Growing up, Zurita-Jackson wasn’t taught much about personal finance. She had her first child at 17 years old and used credit cards to keep up with bills. For a while, she paid the balances off each month. But after she and her husband bought a house in San Antonio, Texas, their debt began to grow. 

Zurita-Jackson had been the sibling who paid for her family’s Thanksgiving dinner and bought everyone Christmas presents. “I just thought, ‘If I can make the minimum payment, I’m fine,’” she said. 

The balances on their credit cards, mortgage, car, and an ill-advised timeshare ballooned. By September 2024, she had accumulated $72,000 in credit card debt alone. Zurita-Jackson turned to the internet for help. But many of the existing personal finance creators she found were already debt-free, and others didn’t share her experience being a young parent from a low-income background.

“It was really hard for me to find somebody that I gravitated towards,” she said. “I had to make the content that I needed to see.” 

Zurita-Jackson began sharing her own debt journey on TikTok as @ciarastrynabudget_. She posts when she pays down a credit card balance and frankly discusses how she got into debt in the first place. Posting, she said, helps her stay accountable to her ultimate goal: being credit-card debt free.

“Time for another debt payoff update!”

If you scroll long enough on the personal finance side of TikTok, you’ll find countless videos that start off with, “Time for another debt payoff update!” The creator, almost always a millennial or Gen-Z woman, details her credit card and loan balances, how much she’s paid off so far, and her plan of attack going forward.

Personal finance content is hugely popular on social media — the hashtag “budget” has over one million posts on TikTok alone. But consumer-debt creators are in a league of their own: Rather than telling others how to manage their money, they share content about the highs and lows of their own, often deeply personal, financial situations.

A 2013-2023 St. Louis Federal Reserve study found that, except for 2020 and 2021 (years in which pandemic relief was at its highest), half of U.S. households had zero discretionary income. In order to make ends meet, many Americans literally must go into debt. 

Take groceries, for example: One in four U.S. households took on debt to pay for groceries in 2023, according to the Urban Institute. When food prices rose rapidly from 2022-2024, credit card delinquencies rose by 39.8%. 

In fact, the present share of credit card debt in delinquency is approaching a level not seen since the Great Recession.

Maybe it’s no surprise that as consumer debt climbs, we’ve grown more interested in watching people navigate it — especially because being in debt has historically been a taboo topic, according to Michael D. Sousa, a professor at University of Denver’s Law School who studies the stigma tied to consumer debt and bankruptcy.

“For ages [in Western Europe], if you filed bankruptcy or you were a debtor, you were literally branded,” Sousa said. “You had to wear different clothes and you'd be paraded through town square. You were stigmatized.” 

For people who have struggled or are currently struggling with debt, watching content others make about debt can be cathartic.

“When people get into financial trouble with debt or bankruptcy, most everyone believes that, ‘It's just me individually, I'm a failure, I'm a problem,’” Sousa said. “Particularly in our neoliberal economy, where we’re personally responsible for ourselves — if you fail, it's your fault.”

“It always comes back to what other people were going to think about me.”

Jocelyn, another social media creator, understands debt-related shame all too well. Marketplace is using only her first name, because she doesn’t share her last name on her TikTok, which some friends and family remain unaware of. 

Throughout her 20s, Jocelyn accumulated credit card debt and told no one but her now-husband. Most of the debt came from a combination of keeping up with peers in a high cost-of-living city and, after working with a therapist, what Jocelyn learned to identify as ADHD-driven impulsive spending. “I kept it to myself for so long because I was afraid of other people thinking that I was a failure or that I just wasn't smart with my money,” she said. 

She is far from alone in hiding and avoiding debt. Sousa at the University of Denver said many people in inescapable debt will pretend it doesn’t exist. Nearly 40% of debtors have lied about or downplayed the amount of debt they have, according to a LendingTree survey.

Jocelyn first used TikTok to build a community around mental health. But her debt — $30,000 at its peak — weighed on her. It was intertwined with her mental wellbeing, and keeping it a secret felt dishonest. “I wanted to come clean so that it didn’t have so much power over me,” she said.

A friend suggested that discussing her situation online might alleviate that feeling, the same way sharing her mental health challenges had helped her stick to self-care goals.

“From the moment that I started posting about (the debt), what used to be this really heavy thing that I was carrying every day, (now) just feels like an obstacle that I know that I'm going to get over,” Jocelyn said.

Jocelyn and her husband made serious lifestyle changes to tackle her debt. A few years ago they moved from Portland, Oregon, to a more affordable city, which helped curb some habits. But they also cut back tremendously on shopping, travel, and eating out. She shares all this and more on her account. Internet strangers cheer her on.

“Knowing that there's people who are invested in seeing me pay down this debt and conquer this obstacle in my life is really uplifting and it has restored a lot of faith in humanity for me,” she said.

The student becomes the teacher

Zurita-Jackson and Jocelyn both said the majority of comments on their posts are kind. But it’s the internet, so people can be cruel. “As long as I'm able to help that one person, I don't care if there's X amount of negative remarks,” Zurita-Jackson said.

Both creators said followers reach out to them to ask for advice or share that they also struggle with debt.

“I quickly realized a lot of people are in the same boat, if not worse, possibly better,” said Zurita-Jackson. “They don't have the courage to find those answers or bring up their situation on the internet.”

She shares budgeting templates and other resources with her followers. Any payouts she gets from TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program all go straight toward her credit card payments.

“I turned into somebody that people actually watch,” she said. “We've paid off about $50k in less than a year, and I've literally documented every single step. So somebody could go all the way down to my videos and see that it's possible.”

Zurita-Jackson and her husband have also made a point of talking about budgeting and healthy financial habits to their older daughter, who’s almost 10 years old.

“When people talk about breaking generational curses, they think that it's only with income that comes in, or only with education or moving to the suburbs and things like that, but they don't realize that it's also the financial IQ that you give to your kids,” she said.

“How I’m paying off $25k in credit card debt without hating my life.”

Not everyone watching debt payoff content struggles with debt. But getting into debt at some point is a near-ubiquitous American experience.

“Most every one of us in this country, including myself, is one medical bill, one illness, one car accident, one unemployment away from declaring bankruptcy,” said Sousa. “Unlike other social democracies, we don't have a social safety net. It is on you to figure this out.”

It doesn’t help that lenders use myriad avenues to market credit cards: social media, snail mail, media ads featuring major celebrities. Once a consumer has a credit card, studies show they spend more money. New research reveals that once a person’s credit card behaviors are established, these habits are hard to change.

A recent post to Jocelyn’s account is titled “How I’m paying off $25k in credit card debt without hating my life.” In it, she explains that punishing yourself for being in debt — whether by beating yourself up or becoming totally frugal to “make up for it” — doesn’t help.

In a way, this attitude is part of a larger shift in the world of personal finance. In the 1990s and 2000s, authoritative personalities with aggressive approaches to money troubles, like Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman, were seen as trusted advisors. Some younger Americans, however, have eschewed those shame-based practices and embraced positive, relatable — though sometimes non-expert — personal finance creators.

In hindsight, Jocelyn said she regrets the countless material things she bought on credit. But experiences like being a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding? She doesn’t regret spending on those — it’s about finding a balance, she said.

Zurita-Jackson said her kids know they can’t go out to eat every night or buy new toys all the time. But once she pays off her credit card debt, she plans to take her daughters to Disney World. “That's the first thing that we're gonna do, and we're gonna be able to save for that trip, not just put it on a credit card,” she said.

Realistic videos about an individual’s credit card debt are understandably cathartic for viewers and creators alike, said Sousa. He just hopes everyone remembers that in this economy, people get in debt without a way out — through no fault of their own.

“The fact that someone is working hard at [paying off debt] and achieving it, I would celebrate that, and it is a moral and personal victory,” he said. “If that same person later on has a hiccup and can't pay it, I wouldn't want them to think psychologically now that they're a failure and they're a horrible person.”