My first time being in debt was in college as an undergrad. I had some small student loans and a credit card. 

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Altogether, though, it was miniscule. At the time, my mindset was to not take on too much debt during undergrad because I would need to take on a lot more debt when I went to grad school.

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So my debt in undergrad ended up only being a few thousand dollars. But then it snowballed once I went to grad school because of my mentality that “this is when you take on debt.”

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I started taking on major student loans in August of 2013 when I got into grad school. And then life happened.

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Life happens

First, while I was starting graduate studies, I ended up getting divorced from my first husband. 

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Here I am in grad school to become a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I’m getting divorced—ironic, kind of a cosmic joke. But the grief and loss I was experiencing at the time were very real.

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Then, a few months after the divorce, my dad passed away. And again I was confronted with enormous grief and loss. 

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I was doing my best to get by. Showing up to class, seeing my clients, but really I was just going through the motions. I was doing what I needed to do, but I wasn’t at my best, and definitely not feeling my best. 

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When life is like that, you’re in survival mode, and it’s just one foot in front of the other–you stop noticing things. I didn’t notice how deeply I was going into debt.

A wakeup call

Fast forward to 2016—that’s when I really had my eyes opened to what was going on with my life financially. My cousin got me a book about personal finances for Christmas. It included an exercise to calculate your net worth. I did it, and found out my net worth was negative $70,000.

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At that point, I was at a crossroads. I had a choice to make. I was going down this road, and it didn’t make me feel good, and if I stayed on it, I would only go deeper into debt. A lot of people, when they’re in this situation, get overwhelmed, they can’t entertain the thought of their circumstances being any different from what they are, so they bury their head in the sand.

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But in this case, being a therapist worked in my favor. I was teaching clients personal growth and development—I knew how to set goals and how to execute them. And I asked myself questions like: What if I got out of debt? How would I feel? What would it do for me? 

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And most importantly: How do I make it happen?

Changing your money mindset

I looked at my tax return for 2016, and my income for the year was $17,800. I was living just above poverty level—and I had a master’s degree.

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I was in this situation where a combination of financial illiteracy and the attitudes of other people in the industry were holding me back. I was told “you shouldn’t expect to make a lot of money as a therapist.”

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But it didn’t make sense. My master’s degree cost me money. Shouldn’t I be able to earn enough to pay it back, and also have a decent quality of life?

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So a lot of what was holding me back was psychological.

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Putting the gears in motion

In March 2017, I started getting serious about managing my money. I studied and I upgraded my financial literacy. I knew I would need to start working more and earning more if I wanted to pay off my debt. I was working in private practice part time, and I was teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas part time. 

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I started looking for a job, and that year I was hired to the mental treatment team at a juvenile detention center. I started working there full time on top of my other jobs. 

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And I started finding ways to decrease my cost of living. I sold a lot of stuff, and I moved in with my best friend. Pretty soon my expenses were way down, and my income was triple what it had been before.

Resisting “lifestyle creep”

What a lot of people do, when they get to this point, is they succumb to lifestyle creep. They have more income available to spend, so they start spending it on non-essentials—they make more money, they spend more money.

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What I did instead was, all the extra income I was earning, instead of changing my lifestyle, I used it to pay down debt. And that was my number one priority from 2017 to 2020.

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Just to be clear, though, it wasn’t perfect. There were some months where I didn’t pay anything towards my debt. I also left the juvenile detention center. I had started a non-profit, and I wanted to go on a service trip to Uganda, but the county wouldn’t give me time off. So I quit.

Planning for the future

I kept pushing. I found other work. I had this conviction. I was focused. And at this point I was starting to think more about the future. What if I were to get married again? What if I had kids? What was the best situation I could put myself in to prepare for that? 

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And also, how do I want to serve? How do I want to help other people? If I’m debt-free at age 30, I can invest for the rest of my life. I could leave the country. I could go wherever I felt called to be in order to serve. 

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I wasn’t even chained to being a therapist—I could change that, too. I didn’t have to lead a life ruled by desperately trying to pay off these loans.

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Life after debt

In May 2020, right before my 30th birthday, I paid off the last of my debt. By the time I was done, I’d paid off more than the original $70,000. It was closer to $94,000.

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Now, 2020 was a rollercoaster year for everyone. But the choices I had made in 2017 and the course I had set meant I was prepared for it. I started my online business. I got married, too—and now we’ve got kids.

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Even with my debts paid off, though, life kept happening. For example, my husband had paid off all his debts before we got married. But then, last year, he had a stroke. So it’s not like we don’t experience stress and challenges, even being debt free. But we’re more prepared than we would be if we had that debt.

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And maybe even more important, we know what we can do if we put our minds to it. I look back sometimes, and I almost can’t believe that it was me who did that, paying off all that debt in three years. But I know now that if I decide to do something, I can make it happen.

A healthy approach to debt

Right after I paid it off, I avoided new debt like snakes in the grass. But my attitude towards debt has evolved since then. I think that if you can manage your debt, and have a strategic plan around how to utilize debt, then more power to you. To say that, once you pay it off, you can never have debt again, is to say that you can never grow or change.

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I do think that people end up on a hamster wheel of paying down debt and then racking it back up again. But I think that’s because they’re only addressing the financial piece of it, and not the psychological piece. 

Showing others the way

That’s what I do with my students. I help them shift their identity when it comes to money, and understand what, on a psychological level, contributes to how they interact with money.

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If my students decide to leave debt alone and live debt free, then cool. But if they have a strategy for utilizing debt, and it’s in alignment with their vision, that’s good, too. Investing money and leveraging capital can be really helpful—otherwise, you’re forced to bootstrap everything you do. 

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The old way of thinking is that you need to control money. The new way, the way that I teach, is that you need to care for your money. I teach my students budgeting, investing, saving, and creating a plan that works for them.

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Instead of picking a cookie cutter approach off the internet—the 50/30/20 budget, Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps, or whatever—I think you need to have a more nuanced plan for your finances that fits your life and your needs. 

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The other part is the psychological piece: What’s getting in your way? Financial trauma and financial anxiety can be barriers. I have all my students read The Psychology of Self-Deception by Dr. Courtney Lauren. I also have them read The Twelve Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington.

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When my students come in, when we get to the planning piece of things, we’re also looking at the psychological piece. We’re combining them. Because it’s easy to get quick financial wins—but what we all really need is a sustainable approach to money, one that sets us on the path to the future we want for ourselves. 

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This post is to be used for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, business, or tax advice. Each person should consult their own attorney, business advisor, or tax advisor with respect to matters referenced in this post.

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Jacent Wamala, LMFT is the founder of Wamala Wellness LLC. She’s on a mission to educate, encourage, and empower women of color when it comes to finances. 

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Jacent aims to help her clients to manage money better, pay down debt, grow their savings, and lead peaceful, prosperous lives. Part of Jacent’s practice is informed by her personal experiences. Early in her career, she found herself facing a mountain of debt while navigating major changes in her personal life.

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But by modifying her money mindset and making a plan for achieving financial freedom, she managed to pay off over $90,000 in debt in just three years. For more from Jacent, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

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