Debt gave me freedom from toxic deprivation culture

Gemma Hartley on letting go of the background noise of budget culture weighing down her mental load

Throughout my 20s, I lived my life fully enveloped in the cult of Dave Ramsey budget culture. As a young woman raised in evangelical culture, it spoke a language I already understood well: sacrifice, discipline and self-denial. I listened to Ramsey’s live radio show as I soaked dried beans, and I balanced my budget obsessively — tracking every last penny and receipt like it was my job.

I quickly became obsessed with paying down debt, especially after the combination of Obama's first-time homebuyer tax credit and the recession allowed my husband and me to buy a home in our mid-20s. I dreamed about being one of those couples in their 30s or 40s, screaming out that we were debt-free on the Dave Ramsey radio show. I imagined that moment would be joyful beyond comparison.

But on the flip side, it meant all the time until then would be joyless and full of deprivation. This was what it meant to “live like no one else, so you can live like no one else,” one of Ramsey’s pithy catch phrases. First the suffering, then the freedom.

One problem with paying down our debt was that we bought our home well before we were financially ready, and our finances became so tight we eventually needed food stamps. Neither of us were yet employed in our professional fields, and working in retail (and later child care) brought home poverty wages. Our financial straits became more strained once we had kids. Still, I tried to tighten our proverbial belt to the point where we could barely breathe. No meals out, ever. No convenience foods. No date nights. No hobbies. No new clothing. No new anything. It was a tough life, but I was determined to prove I was tougher.

Eventually, moving into our professional fields (my husband as an engineer, I as a freelance writer) gave us a little financial breathing room. It could have been an opportunity to reassess our super-frugal lifestyle, but instead I restricted further, deciding to refinance to a 15-year mortgage to eliminate the "enemy" of debt our home represented. I did this even as our family was beginning to outgrow the house, and we knew it wasn’t meeting our needs.

This pursuit of debt freedom wasn’t just about creating financial ease. The truth was we were fully capable of relieving our financial stress — I was simply choosing not to because of my dogmatic belief about what debt represented. Ramsey’s religious language made me equate budget deprivation with moral goodness, and debt with moral depravity. I was unable to see that what was truly depraved was the idea that we should put off living a full and enjoyable life until we found “debt freedom.” It was a senseless sort of sacrifice when you put it into perspective, but perspective is hard to come by when you live in the echo-chamber of budget culture.

I was actively making our life harder during the intense early years of parenting, which is what finally broke me. Making baby food every day and cloth diapering because we “couldn’t afford” otherwise and not giving myself any breaks with extracurriculars for either myself or my kids was a truly miserable way to live. I would stress about the budget implications of going out for an ice cream cone as if it would make or break our long-term goals. As you might imagine, I was not a particularly pleasant mom or partner to be around. Not with that kind of budget culture background noise contributing to my mental load.

I realized the excessive restriction I enforced would get me to debt freedom, but it would come at the expense of enjoying my kids' childhoods, my relationship and my life. We would never vacation together; never eat out; never enjoy events, extracurriculars or hobbies; and never feel at ease, if I didn't learn to let go of the idea that debt was a moral failing.

So, with the gentle nudging from my partner, we decided to move out of our first home and take on a lot more debt in the process. Three times our debt, to be exact, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was no longer feasible to see the finish line of debt freedom, and for a while, my money worries skyrocketed. But I soon realized that debt, and a lot of it, wasn’t actually an enemy. It was the tool that allowed us to finally enjoy life and one another.

Slowly, I began to make more sound decisions about what truly mattered — freedom with my time, enjoyment with my family, enrichment for my kids. Debt became a tool for living a more full and aligned version of my life. I took on more debt to become a yoga instructor, to let my kids try new sports, to experience the joy of travel. I began living in the present, rather than the hypothetical future of debt freedom.

I sometimes think about our old life, and the fact that right about now, we could have owned our first home outright. We could have gone on the Dave Ramsey Show to scream that we were debt free — that joyful moment fulfilled by our discipline. But I also think about how our marriage would be suffering or over. How my kids would be living with parents who were unhappy and stressed out. How our lives would be significantly worse for the wear of deprivation-based budget culture. I don’t yearn for that goal anymore.

While it is still a work in progress, healing from Dave Ramsey’s particularly harsh brand of budget culture has given me a life more full than I ever dreamed of when I was working toward debt freedom. I have a life where debt gives me a more expansive world, rather than making it feel small and scarce. One where I get to enjoy time and pleasure with my family, instead of martyring myself for the sake of moral superiority. It is a far better life than the one I pursued before.

Sometimes debt is not the enemy, but the key that sets you free.

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