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."

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 18 months. I was immediately intrigued when I saw that she was sharing daily updates with her 7,000-plus followers across Instagram and TikTok. For many, publicly documenting debt in real time helps ease feelings of guilt. Sharing about the experience, they say, keeps them on track financially. Some also monetize this content, using the income to pay down their debt.

I spoke to Martin and several others who have shared their debt journeys online.

In February, Martin, a VP of legal at an entertainment company, started posting about her debt. She had been divorced for two years and was managing a formerly two-income household alone: the three-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen that she and her husband once shared with their two children, now nine and six. Even with a six-figure salary, she struggled to cover monthly bills, including $4,000 for a nanny, $3,000 for Uber trips and $7,500 in rent.

Martin didn't feel she was overspending, but expenses kept mounting. "I'm like, what did I buy? What am I spending? What's happening?" she says. "I have the income." She ended up putting her credit card on a payment plan, taking out a personal loan and opening a home equity line of credit on the property she owns in Queens, which she rents to tenants.

When her Hell's Kitchen rent went up by $1,000, she consulted two financial advisers and ChatGPT, which she can now laugh about. "I looked at the numbers, and I'm like, 'You can't do this,'" she says. To save money, she and her kids moved back into her childhood home, where her mother still lived. "It was like packing up my apartment and packing up my ego too with it."

That same month, Martin made her Instagram account public and posted a video titled "DAY 1: WELCOME TO ERICA'S DEBT TAKEDOWN JOURNEY." Her posts included screenshots from a budgeting app: $33,575.63 in credit card debt, more than $78,000 in personal loans and $17,193.73 on her Bilt credit card, which, unlike other credit cards, offers rewards points on mortgage and rent payments.

"I was so afraid. I did not intend to be posting every day," she says. But she wanted to hold herself accountable.

Then came an outpouring of support. One commenter wrote: "This level of transparency and relatability deserves all the respect … You doing this for you is pushing people to reevaluate it for themselves too." One popular post – in which she tears up while celebrating paying off her credit card on day 66 – has more than 11,000 views on TikTok.

There was criticism, too: why put her bills on autopay if her bank balance was low? Why didn't she know the amortization schedule for her mortgage? One commenter accused her of discouraging Black people from buying homes.

"I'm looking at these comments like, why do you feel so strongly about this?" she says.

Yet she also gets it. "Seeing other people's decisions makes you question yours. People don't want to say, 'I have a spending problem,' because they don't want to be judged," she says. "Whether it's good or bad, there's judgment. So I was like, I'm gonna expose myself and get transparent and naked with it, and just deal with what comes."

Martin paid off $60,000 of her debt within 70 days. People she knew called her crying, thanking her for saving them from bleeding cash or filing for bankruptcy. "I think people like seeing a real person talk through something in real time," she says. "There's a difference between that and some white guy in a suit who's like, 'Do this and do that.'"

After graduating four years ago, Christian Juhl accumulated $80,000 in debt, split between car payments, student loans and credit cards. During a trip to Iceland in 2023, he charged $6,000 to his credit card. When his car's transmission blew, he put $5,000 in repairs on credit.

"I honestly was just never taught how to use credit cards properly," he says. "I started traveling and was like, Oh, you're supposed to put [travel expenses] on your credit card for points."

Last May, Juhl moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles to pursue acting full-time while working as a server. Seeing content creators post about their debt online inspired him. In January, he started posting and set a goal to pay off $80,000 by the end of 2026. "Or I was gonna embarrass myself severely trying," he jokes. In a debt breakdown video posted in June, he revealed that one of his credit cards carried $13,084.54 in debt; he's since shared updates with more than 28,000 Instagram followers.

He admits to living beyond his means. The monthly rent for his centrally located Hollywood apartment is $2,800, and he puts down $1,300 a month in minimum credit card payments. "Our entire lives, we're told we need to go to college because we need to get the job we want. And on top of that, every single thing around us is constantly selling us things," he says. "We're such a consumeristic society that I think it's interesting that we're ashamed of going into debt."

There's an obvious liability issue when posting about financial topics: viewers possibly confusing content creators with licensed financial advisers. (City and state government sites have shared warnings about trusting finfluencers.) There's also potential for bad actors to give poor advice or promote dubious financial products online for the sake of brand deals.

The people I spoke to say they include regular disclaimers on their posts, stating that they're just sharing what works for them and aren't licensed experts. "I'm not a coach, but I think it's important to share what you're learning because people come to learn or laugh or both," says Juhl. "I can't be hard on myself because I am doing the right things. I'm watching what I'm spending. I cut back on so much."

Even if he misses his goal, Juhl says he enjoys the community and accountability. "I really want to see it through, so that I can actually pursue what I want to do full-time without having to be weighed down," he says. "The payoff has been difficult. But the pressure, the nerves and the fear have been helpful in the grand scheme of things."

What about those who can't hit their payoff goal and end up feeling worse than when they started?

Faupl believes the people who choose to share their debt online are risking privacy – ie, their personal finances becoming searchable – and future employment, or even relapse. "A certain percentage of people who are carrying a large amount of debt repeat that experience," he says. "It's fine to share information. But when people get into repetitive cycles of debt, they're not addressing the trauma or the compulsive behavior."

On Ramit Sethi's podcast, Money For Couples, the New York Times bestselling author digs into guests' family histories and trauma around money, performing a meticulous autopsy of their income, expenses, debt, investments and spending habits. Some couples report hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Predictably, comments on these episodes skew judgmental. Depending on each couple's unique circumstances, YouTube reactions vary: from fair ("They don't lack intelligence, they lack discipline") to astonished ("My jaw is on the floor at him staying quiet about the debt while she shopped for a fifty-thousand-dollar car") or scathing ("I never understand going into debt for a wedding, it's the fucking dumbest thing in the world"). Generally, the higher the debt, the more disparaging the remarks.

Becca Droz, a rock-climbing guide based in Boulder, Colorado, applied to be on the show to get an honest financial evaluation before marrying her partner, Nikki Nichols, a dentist turned postpartum doula.

"I like being able to hear these things nobody ever talks about – how much they make a month, what they spend it on, their net worth," says Droz. "That these people who are making as much as we make in a year in a single month still feel that they're not making enough money or that they're still spending beyond their means was encouraging to me, in a way. Like, 'Oh, we're actually OK.'"

When couples talk about money on the podcast, relationship dynamics come to the fore. "Some of the tougher stories seem like so much of a reflection of the relationship," says Nichols. "There are moments when I'm listening that I feel frustrated, like, Oh my God, how could you?"

On their August 2025 episode, Droz discussed her $18,000 in student loan debt and feeling financially incompetent. YouTube commenters praised the couple's maturity, noting that they seemed more "equally engaged" in the process than previous guests. The responses were overwhelmingly positive.

Droz found the experience affirming. "Money is the thing we think about every day, and impacts our lives in the biggest ways," she says. "Even if it doesn't change anything about your reality to say 'This is how much debt I have,' [for that] to be witnessed is very powerful and liberating."

Watsamon Chattroranongsak, a CPA based in central Los Angeles who goes by the nickname Ice, also embarked on her journey after seeing other content creators post about their debt online. "I was carrying a lot of shame," she says. "With friends, we don't sit and talk about how much debt you're in or what you put in your 401(k). There's a lot of pressure to be the best version of yourself to people around you."

Like many others, she treated debt payoff as a personal challenge, posting an Instagram video in which she pledged to pay off $35,000 in credit card and student loan debt. She has since paid off $30,000 of her debt. "Even though you get negative comments, you're still going to be working toward that goal," she says. "There's so much more positive that comes out of that."

Whether in private or in front of faceless people online, Faupl says individuals should, at some point, address unresolved trauma related to money. "If people don't address the trauma, they're going to be stuck in that cycle and talking about their debt a lot," he says, pointing out that resources like Debtors Anonymous have been available for decades. "That's why programs have steps. Part of it is sharing. Part of it is digging deep, and the other part is the action phase. We need to internally interrogate, have some resolution, and then go back and build that literacy muscle."

Sharing financial struggles with strangers online felt somehow less intimidating to Chattroranongsak than facing judgment from family members. "I used to fear people close to me finding out," she says. "I told them, 'If you see my account, don't comment on anything. Just leave it.' I wanted to work towards this goal without having voices that would stop me. I'm just doing an experiment for myself."