Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images Well actually Would you tell strangers how much debt you have? The people sharing how much money they owe online In an era of transparency, people are detailing their financial struggles on the internet, breaking one of the last social taboos
Prefer the Guardian on Google D iscussions regarding personal finances have traditionally been taboo. But gen Z and millennials in the US are finally normalizing conversations about money, openly sharing about salaries, rent and investment strategies, but also their (sometimes substantial) debt.
In recent years, financial influencers (finfluencers) – some licensed professionals, others not – have gained visibility, sharing advice on once-covert, perhaps unsexy topics such as Roth IRA contributions, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and maxing out 401(k)s. The most popular have a big audience: for instance, Humphrey Yang , a former financial adviser, has more than 2 million YouTube subscribers, and Erika Kullberg , an attorney and financial expert, has more than 20 million followers across social media.
Americans seem eager for guidance on money. In a small 2025 Gallup survey , 20% of respondents said they sought financial advice on social media, and half of those individuals followed finfluencers. Debt content, in particular, resonates, especially with the US wealth gap reaching its widest in more than 30 years. A Federal Reserve report in May found that credit card debt among US households reached an all-time high in 2025. Credit card balances in the first quarter of 2026 rose by 5.9% compared with a year earlier, along with higher mortgage, auto loans and home equity lines of credit.
Debt is uniquely steeped in emotion; those carrying excessive amounts are presumed to be careless, financially irresponsible or undisciplined. “People don’t talk about it, so that sets up a kind of container for shame,” says Thomas Faupl, a San Francisco-based psychotherapist who specializes in financial therapy . “If somebody’s … getting into debt, there’s this part of people that starts beating themselves up.”
Read more Financial analysts have long recognized that debt is not just an individual issue but the result of multiple factors, including economic policies, systemic gaps and financial illiteracy. In the US, individuals bear the consequences of unpaid debt, including the risk of bankruptcy and imprisonment. In their 2024 book The Political Development of American Debt Relief, Emily Zackin and Chloe N Thurston frame debt as an inevitable byproduct of US sociopolitical structures and economic policies that disproportionately favor creditors, emphasizing that “when people are expected to meet their basic needs by borrowing, access to debt relief and the terms of that access are especially important”.
So why does debt still feel like such a personal failing?
“As Americans, we associate our net worth with our self-worth,” says Tori Dunlap, a New York Times bestselling author and host of the podcast Financial Feminist, which aims to destigmatize debt. “The average American, in order to uplevel their life, has to take on debt, whether it’s to get a college degree, buy a home or start a business. Then, of course, we feel bad about it, but that’s the only way forward for a lot of us.”
Earlier this year, I noticed a childhood friend, Erica Grace Martin, posting about her goal to pay off $164,000 in debt in…