Talking About Credit Card Debt With People in Your Life
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008Who do you talk to about your credit card debt? Some people don’t talk about their credit card debt with anyone, causing them to let negative feelings about it fester inside of them. Others talk about their credit card debt with everyone they encounter, even when it may be inappropriate to do so. If you fall into either extreme, you might want to think about the consequences of inappropriately addressing credit card problems in your every day conversations.
Everyone should talk about their credit card problems with someone in their lives. By keeping the issue bottled up inside, you create problems around your credit cards that don’t need to exist. For one thing, you cause yourself to experience unnecessary negative emotions. The longer you stay silent about the problem, the more shame that you’re going to feel surrounding it. By openly discussing your concerns and fears with people, you release yourself from shame and put yourself in a better position to actually deal with your credit card problems.
On the other hand, you don’t want to talk about your credit card issues with people that don’t have any business knowing that information. Some people just regularly complain about how hard it is to pay their bills. If you’ve ever known someone who did that in the workplace, especially where their bosses (or worse yet, their employees) could hear, you know that this comes off as tacky. It makes people uncomfortable. Additionally, giving so much importance to your credit card problems that it takes up part of your daily conversations means that you’re focusing too much on issues that deserve only a portion of your concern.
The key to talking about credit cards with people in your life is to identify the people that are best to talk about the issues with. These aren’t necessarily all of the people you are close to. Sometimes people we love are well-intentioned but take actions that aren’t helpful. For example, your mom may mean well in telling you that you need to get your credit card debt under control but her nagging isn’t helpful. Likewise, if every conversation about credit cards with your spouse turns into a battle, that’s probably not a person to speak with about the topic when you’re upset. You’ll want to think about which good friends, mentors or family members are most helpful to you when dealing with money matters and limit your conversations about credit card concerns to the times when you are speaking with those people.
