Credit cards are the topic where everyone has an extreme opinion. Either they're a free travel hack or they're evil and you should cut them all up. Alex's take is neither. A credit card is a tool, and the tool isn't good or bad on its own. What matters is how you're using it, and I am living proof that you can use one very badly for a very long time.

The Solution

The four types of credit card users. The credit card company's favorite customer, who carries a balance and pays minimums. The rewards optimizer, who pays in full and uses the card strategically. The avoider, who usually got there by clawing out of debt and is now scared of the thing. And the fourth type we added mid-episode, which is me: pays it off, but has no idea what benefits the card even has.

How credit card companies actually make money. Interest, annual fees, late fees, and interchange fees paid by merchants. That last one is where your rewards come from. If you're paying 25 percent interest to earn 2 percent cash back, you are not beating the credit card company.

The biggest mistakes. Carrying a balance to "build credit," which does not work. Paying only the minimum, which your statement will tell you takes anywhere from five to fifteen years. Buying things you can't afford yet. Opening too many cards. And doing a balance transfer without changing the behavior, which can leave you back charged for all the interest you thought you skipped.

The four rules if you're using them well. Pay the full balance, not just the statement balance. Treat the card like a debit card, so if you have $500 in checking you have $500 to spend, not your $5,000 limit. Set up autopay. Know your due date and review your spending monthly.

Should you cancel old cards? Audit them first. Check for annual fees, how old the account is, whether you actually use the benefits, and what canceling would do to your credit utilization. And ask about a downgrade option before you close anything, because most companies would rather keep you than lose you.

How to maximize rewards without wrecking yourself. Pick a card that matches spending you already do. Never manufacture spending to hit a welcome bonus. Actually redeem your points. Alex parks her cash back in a high yield account earning three and a half percent, and she and Derek are sitting on about $6,000 in points earmarked for a cold plunge and a sauna, which is a choice.

This week's homework

Pull up one card. Look at your total spending, the rewards you earned, the interest you paid, and the annual fee. Then answer one question: am I making money from this card, or is this card making money from me?

Connect with us

Join the Patreon for the monthly Wallet Therapy Live plus the master spreadsheet with the credit utilization calculator: patreon.com/beckyhayter

Got a question or a money confession? info@forthehaters.com

Track your card spending in one place with Monarch Money: https://monarch.com/referral/ey3kkk8c7e

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TW: This episode discusses suicide attempts and methods, self-harm, domestic violence and strangulation, psychiatric hospitalization, postpartum depression, and the death of a child. Listener discretion is advised.

Nicole calls her life a beautiful disaster, and she means both words. By twenty-seven, she'd survived two suicide attempts in the same year, both times pulled back by her mother in the narrowest window imaginable. Not long after, she met a man who felt like the safest person she'd ever known. That feeling didn't last.

In this conversation, Nicole walks through the childhood that taught her to disappear so everyone else could be okay, the marriage that shrank her world down to who she was allowed to talk to and what she was allowed to wear, and the ordinary morning it turned physical in front of her son. She talks about the three days it took to pack his things, the twenty years of silence that followed, and the slow work of learning she was allowed to need things too.

This is a story about the version of survival nobody photographs: the therapy, the letters to the dead, the me-time in a locked bathroom, and one decision, made too many times to count, to stay.

Interview, narration, and editing by Becky Hayter, with post-production, scripting, and sound design by Emily Nadal.

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share to help us continue bringing these stories to light.

🔹 New episodes drop every Sunday!

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses child death, fentanyl poisoning, overdose, CPR, and suicide in detail. Listener discretion is advised.

On a snow day in January of 2024, Kathy Jones' daughter went upstairs to wake her two kids for school. Fifteen minutes later, this family's life split into before and after.

Skylar was 14, an honor roll student who never met a stranger. Gage was 10, obsessed with dinosaurs and his pet turtle, Vicky. That afternoon, a fentanyl poisoning took them both, and their family went from a hospital waiting room they never got to sit in straight to a coroner's office.

In this conversation, Kathy talks about the day that changed everything, the rumors and misinformation that followed, raising her surviving granddaughter, and why she now speaks at the Washington Monument and the White House so that Skylar and Gage are never just a headline. This is a story about a family that did everything right, and lost everything anyway.

For The Hayters is a podcast that normalizes hard conversations. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling, you can call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Interview, narration, and editing by Becky Hayter, with post-production, scripting, and sound design by Emily Nadal.

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share to help us continue bringing these stories to light.

🔹 New episodes drop every Sunday!

🔹 Join our community! patreon.com/beckyhayter

🔹 Follow us on Instagram: @forthehayters

🔹 Submit your story: info@forthehayters.com

🔹 Grab some merch! beckyhayter.com

🔹 A KILLR Network podcast! killrentertainment.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I had to pull cash out of my savings this week to pay for a patio, because apparently some people still only take cash in the year of our lord. So I am feeling some feelings about housing costs. Meanwhile Alex is under contract on a house, I just moved into a smaller one, and we both learned the same lesson from opposite directions: getting approved for a mortgage and being able to live comfortably with it are two completely different things.

The Solution

Approval is not a plan. The bank is measuring risk to the bank. It has no idea whether you want kids, want to retire early, or want to travel. Affording the payment is not the same as living with it.

Why this feels so hard right now. The median US home is around $435,000 and the median household income is about $88,000. To comfortably afford that house you'd need closer to $110,000. If buying feels out of reach, you are not imagining it.

Renting is not throwing money away. Renting buys flexibility, predictable costs, and way fewer maintenance surprises. Alex rented for two years after selling in Naples specifically so she could figure out where she actually wanted to live. Renting isn't wasted money if what it's buying you is options.

What ready actually looks like. Three to six month emergency fund still fully funded after you close. Stable income. A down payment you understand, including whether PMI applies. Closing costs of roughly 2 to 5 percent. And a maintenance budget of about 2 percent of the home's value each year for new construction, closer to 5 percent for an older home.

The hidden line items. Property taxes, homeowners insurance, HOA dues, lawn care, utilities, appliances, furniture. Alex was paying close to $1,500 a month in HOA fees in Naples for a gym she didn't even like.

The listener question that says it all. A couple got approved for $800,000 but planned to spend $550,000. Alex runs both numbers: about $3,000 a month versus $4,320 a month. That's $1,350 a month, over $16,000 a year, and close to $500,000 across a 30 year mortgage before you even count what that money could have grown into.

This week's homework

Calculate your true monthly housing cost. Not the mortgage or rent number, the real one. Add taxes, insurance, HOA, maintenance, and utilities. Then ask yourself two questions. Would I feel financially comfortable if one unexpected expense hit next month? And if no one ever saw my house, would I still want this one?

Connect with us

Join the Patreon for episodes early plus Wallet Therapy Live: patreon.com/beckyhayter

Got a question or a money confession? info@forthehaters.com

Track every dollar of that true housing cost in one place with Monarch Money: https://monarch.com/referral/ey3kkk8c7e

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TW: cancer, medical trauma, death of a loved one, grief, body image. At 32, Jess found a lump adjusting a bra she'd bought herself for Christmas. What followed was a year of aggressive treatment, a gene she didn't know she carried, and a body that screamed for six weeks before the system let anyone say the word.

For The Hayters is a podcast that normalizes hard conversations. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling, you can call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Interview, narration, and editing by Becky Hayter, with post-production, scripting, and sound design by Emily Nadal.

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share to help us continue bringing these stories to light.

🔹 New episodes drop every Sunday!

🔹 Join our community! patreon.com/beckyhayter

🔹 Follow us on Instagram: @forthehayters

🔹 Submit your story: info@forthehayters.com

🔹 Grab some merch! beckyhayter.com

🔹 A KILLR Network podcast! killrentertainment.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Val was diagnosed with hydrocephalus before she was born, and the doctors gave her mom a number and a recommendation. She's 27 now, married, teaching special education, finishing her master's, and living with hardware in her head and her back that has to be replaced when it fails. We talked about what it costs to build a completely ordinary life inside a body that keeps interrupting it, and how much of that life you have to go out and take.

For The Hayters is a podcast that normalizes hard conversations. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling, you can call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Interview, narration, and editing by Becky Hayter, with post-production, scripting, and sound design by Emily Nadal.

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share to help us continue bringing these stories to light.

🔹 New episodes drop every Sunday!

🔹 Join our community! patreon.com/beckyhayter

🔹 Follow us on Instagram: @forthehayters

🔹 Submit your story: info@forthehayters.com

🔹 Grab some merch! beckyhayter.com

🔹 A KILLR Network podcast! killrentertainment.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today’s episode is a little different because Becky is away on her podcast tour, so Alex is flying solo and answering your money questions.

From $18,000 in credit card debt and feeling overwhelmed, to figuring out how to prioritize an emergency fund, Roth IRA, HSA, student loans, and future goals, Alex talks through the real-life financial decisions that can feel complicated when you’re trying to do everything at once.

She also breaks down snowball vs. avalanche debt payoff, what to consider when your student loans are in deferment, and whether apps like Acorns and Fetch are actually helping you—or just making it easier to spend.

Plus, a rapid-fire round covering mortgages, investing, checking your investments, combining finances with a partner, and one of the biggest financial mistakes people make in their 30s: waiting.

But underneath all of these questions is something bigger.

Fear of making the wrong decision.

Fear of falling behind.

Fear of not knowing enough.

You don't need to have everything figured out to start feeling more confident with money.

Sometimes you just need to make the next right decision.

Money is emotional—and you deserve to feel safe with it. 💚

Send us your money questions for a future episode!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TW: opioid addiction, drug poisoning and overdose, suicide loss, incarceration, newborn withdrawal, loss of custody.

Lauren was 16 when a doctor handed her a prescription for straight oxycodone for a cheerleading injury. No warning, no follow up, just take this for the pain. What happened in the eleven years between that waiting room and the house with the backyard she lives in now is the whole conversation. She talks about the parts that don't make her look good, on purpose, because she thinks somebody out there needs to hear them.

For The Hayters is a podcast that normalizes hard conversations. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling, you can call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Interview, narration, and editing by Becky Hayter, with post-production, scripting, and sound design by Emily Nadal.

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share to help us continue bringing these stories to light.

🔹 New episodes drop every Sunday!

🔹 Join our community! patreon.com/beckyhayter

🔹 Follow us on Instagram: @forthehayters

🔹 Submit your story: info@forthehayters.com

🔹 Grab some merch! beckyhayter.com

🔹 A KILLR Network podcast! killrentertainment.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.