Hi friends, and thanks for stopping by to read Single Women and Survival Debt, the seventh installment in my series on becoming a financially savvy single woman.
So, let’s do a fast breakdown on what exactly is survival debt. This is what happens when you’re going into debt because your income isn’t enough to cover necessities in the first place.
A place I’ve been more times in my life than I ever wanted to be. Forget the phrase living paycheck to paycheck. Reality is what happens to many of us single women when there’s no paycheck in the first place. Survival debt happens when just covering the basics of life is way more money than what the paycheck covers. That is, if there’s even a paycheck.
The only option is survival debt and whipping out a credit card to pay for the basics.
What if you’re not in debt because you’re bad with money? What if you’re in debt because you don’t have enough money?
I’ve been both the woman trying desperately to get out of debt. Also, I’ve been the woman who got into debt because there wasn’t enough money to pay the bills. They’re not the same thing.
I borrowed money aka used my credit cards or line of credit because I didn’t have enough income to pay the bills, and I kept trying to pay it back. It was just a vicious cycle. Every time I started to make some headway – WHAM! Life happened to bite me in the ass once again. Job loss. Car repairs. Dental work. It never ends.
I’m a victim of survival debt. I wasn’t irresponsible with money. There just wasn’t enough money.
Also – I’m a survivor of survival debt. Even though I don’t always feel that way. Once I finally got out of debt, I was determined to keep it that way.
Reading about high earners in debt = not relatable
Recently I was reading an article that linked to a Wall Street Journal article. And now I can’t even read it online anymore because apparently it’s a one and done click and then the WSJ wants readers to pay a subscription.
Uh, nope, not happening. I’m not a rich banker, a rich stock broker, or a rich businessman – the type of people I imagine are reading the Wall Street Journal. Even though I can’t see the article anymore – lucky us! I took notes.
It’s about Americans struggling with credit card debt, but the more I read, the more annoyed I became.
Not because the problem isn’t real. It is.
Not because people earning six figures can’t get themselves into financial trouble. They absolutely can.
But because once again, the personal finance conversation seemed to be missing an enormous group of people: the people who aren’t using credit cards because they want a nicer lifestyle.
They’re using them because they need to eat.
There’s a difference.
The Wall Street Journal article told the story of Catherine Clarke, an operations director at a New England hospital. Clarke earns $194,000 a year and had accumulated $15,000 in credit card debt.
The article says: “After working all day as an operations director at a busy New England hospital, Catherine Clarke would lie awake at night wondering where she went wrong.”
She had a $15,000 balance on her Chase Sapphire card, and while she could afford the $572 monthly minimum payment, the 26% interest rate meant she was barely making a dent in the balance.
I don’t mean to minimize her situation. $15,000 in credit card debt is a lot of money, and I can understand why anyone would be anxious about it.
But there’s no way I can relate to a woman earning nearly $200,000 a year struggling with $15,000 in debt.
What about us low-income earners?
I couldn’t stop thinking about women earning $30,000. Maybe not even earning that much.
What happens when $15,000 of credit card debt isn’t an unfortunate spending mistake but half of your annual income?
What happens when you charged groceries because there wasn’t enough money left in your bank account to buy them?
That’s what I call survival debt.
When your credit card becomes part of your paycheck
There’s a line in the Wall Street Journal article that I completely agree with: “When food, housing and healthcare is all more expensive, there is less money to pay off your credit card.”
Yup. Absolutely.
But if you’re earning $194,000 a year, you have considerably more room to manoeuver when those expenses increase.
If you’re earning $30,000, you don’t.
That’s the part of the credit card conversation that bothers me.
Personal finance advice often assumes that if you have credit card debt, you must have spent money you didn’t have on things you didn’t need.
Sometimes that’s true.
That’s what happens when the balance is there because you charged a vacation or a new television or ate too many dinners out.
But sometimes the credit card has become the only financial cushion between a person and the next unpaid bill.
Rent is due.
The hydro bill is due.
You need to put gas in the car so you can get to work.
The refrigerator is empty.
Oh no. The prescription needs to be filled. Do I buy my medicine or do I buy groceries?
Why is it cold in here? Did the furnace break?
I have a terrible toothache. The dental bill is going to be nuts.
My hours at work got cut.
My government benefit doesn’t increase nearly as quickly as my grocery bill.
And there isn’t enough money in the bank, so you pull out the credit card.
Not because you want to.
Because what other choice do you have?
I need to just cover my basic living expenses. Sigh… Survival debt.
My survival debt
I was that woman earning $30,000/year. If I was lucky. Many years I wasn’t earning even that much money. And for sure I was that woman who had $15,000 of survival debt on my credit card. Maybe even a couple of thousand higher than that at times thanks to interest rates.
I wasn’t buying fancy clothes or splurging on luxuries. Here’s the reality of the items charged on my credit card: a hot-water heater, car repairs, vet bills, mortgage payments, and regular bills.
Of course the Wall Street Journal is writing about a hospital director
Well, of course we can’t expect the Wall Street Journal to feature a woman working in a restaurant or a gas station or any of the millions of ordinary low paying jobs us women have endured in our lives.
This is the Wall Street Journal after all.
On the other hand, the average low-income woman struggling to make ends meet probably isn’t sitting around reading the Wall Street Journal for personal finance advice. Its readership is much more likely to include people in business, finance, investing and professional careers.
So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me that the person featured in the article earns $194,000 a year. But that’s precisely why I wanted to write about this. Because there are millions of women whose financial reality looks nothing like hers.
They aren’t earning $194,000.
They might be earning $30,000. Maybe less.
And when they have $15,000 in credit card debt, that’s not 7.7% of their annual income.
It’s half of it.
I know because I’ve been there – accumulating $15,000 in debt when my income has never been anywhere close to $194,000.
There were always bills and it always turned into the classic financial game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. We’ve all been there, taking a cash advance on one credit card to cover the minimum payment due on another credit card. Transferring a credit card balance to a different card, and then taking out cash on that card that’s now down to zero to pay the minimum on the credit card we just transferred the balance over to. Always circling, trying to stay one jump ahead.
Except eventually Peter wants his money back. And Paul is still waiting.
That is survival debt.
It wasn’t fun. It was stressful. And it certainly wasn’t the result of me deciding I deserved a more luxurious lifestyle. It was what happened when my income wasn’t enough to cover everything life was throwing at me.
And I suspect I’m far from the only woman who has lived through that.
Survival debt doesn’t always look like delinquency
Sometimes survival debt looks like a woman who pays her minimum payment every month on those damned credit cards because she’s terrified of what will happen if she doesn’t.
And then she charges another $300 in groceries because there isn’t enough money in her chequing account to buy them.
That’s the survival debt conversation that seems to be missing.
There’s also a huge amount of shame attached to debt. We’re constantly told that financially responsible people pay their credit cards off every month, have emergency savings and never spend money they don’t have. Well, that’s great advice when you actually have enough money. When you don’t, you can end up feeling like a financial failure when the real problem is that your income simply doesn’t cover your life.
Single Women and Survival Debt
I’m a victim of survival debt, but I’m also a survivor of survival debt.
I eventually got out of it. And once I did, I was determined to stay out of it.
That doesn’t mean I never made stupid financial decisions. Of course I did. Who hasn’t? But my $15,000 of debt wasn’t a sign that I was living some wildly irresponsible lifestyle. I wasn’t spending my way into debt because I wanted more stuff. I was trying to keep a roof over my head, keep my car running, pay the bills and deal with all the unexpected things that life throws at you.
That’s the difference I wish more personal finance articles would acknowledge.
Not all debt is created equal. Sometimes debt is the result of wanting things you can’t afford. And sometimes debt is the result of not being able to afford the things you need.
If you’re a single woman who has found herself in survival debt, I hope you know you’re not alone, and I hope you don’t confuse your debt with your worth.
A credit card balance is a number.
It doesn’t know how hard you worked and it doesn’t know how many times you went without something so you could pay another bill. And it doesn’t know how many times you lay awake wondering how you were going to make everything work.
It doesn’t know your story.
I do.
Because I’ve been there.
And if I can go from being the woman with $15,000 of survival debt to the woman who is determined never to go back there again, then I can tell you this: Survival debt doesn’t have to be the end of your financial story.
Published by Cheryl @ The Lifestyle Digs on September 24, 2026.
More reading:
Check out more articles in the financially savvy single women series.
Read Part 1: Single Women and Banking
Read Part 2: Single Women and Choosing Basic Financial Services
Read Part 3: Single Women and Investing
Read Part 4: Single Women and Busting Debt
Read Part 5: Single Women and Paying Bills
Read Part 6: Single Women and Building an Emergency Fund
