Hey, my name is Chelsea Fagan, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Financial Diet, a totally independently owned and operated company of women who love to talk about money.

Welcome to the financial confessions, a weekly show where we talk to people about their personal finances, their professional industry, and how money shapes their lives.

You can listen to or watch new episodes of the financial confessions every week on YouTube or your preferred streaming platform.

You can also support TFD and get exclusive access to our entire catalog of ad-free bonus videos, workshops, Discord community, our book club and more by joining our members-only community on Patreon or

YouTube. Our 2024 goal is to be primarily supported by our incredible community, and joining

our membership program is the best way to do that. Enjoy the episode. As you might notice,

if you're watching this on YouTube, I am very much in that corporate

apartment. I'm here for a few of our episodes, although I, as you guys probably know, film

99.9% of the financial confessions in our studio, in our office. But there were a few

that I had on the calendar that I absolutely wanted to keep while I was traveling. As a lot of you probably

know, our focus this season for the financial confessions is real people. Now, that's not at all to

say that the various celebrities and influencers that I've interviewed on this platform in the past,

or just people who have a lot of money are not themselves real. But I really wanted to focus on

real issues that are probably more

relatable to a majority of people listening than someone who kind of has it all figured out

financially. Something you may not know about me, although if you are an OG TFD subscriber

slash listener, you definitely do, is that I used to be in credit card debt. Not only was I in

credit card debt, I actually went into

credit card collections. It ended up really derailing a lot of my financial and personal life and was

just one of the biggest sources of anxiety I've ever experienced. There was basically a period of time

where I couldn't even use my cell phone because it was constantly being inundated with

collection calls and texts and

...