For The Hayters: The Stories We Survive

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses financial trauma, debt, foreclosure and eviction, childhood dysfunction, the death of a family member, substance use, and a dark period of anxiety and self-blame. Listener discretion is advised.
Shannon has a master's degree. She was a teacher. On paper, she had it together. And for two years, she hid thousands of dollars of debt from the man she was about to marry.
It didn't start with a reckless swipe of a card. It started in childhood, in a house where money was a secret and "rob Peter to pay Paul" was the family motto. By 14, she was keeping her mother's financial secrets. By her late twenties, she'd bought a house alone, in her name only, and learned that asking for help made her physically sick.
In this conversation, Shannon walks me through the split mortgage payments, the predatory loans, the late notices in the trash, and the foreclosure letter she opened by herself. She tells me how the lie almost cost her the house, the marriage, and the person she thought she was, and what it finally took to stop hiding and say the two words that changed her marriage: same team.
For The Hayters is a podcast that normalizes hard conversations. Listener discretion is advised.
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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🔹 Follow us on Instagram: @forthehayters
🔹 Submit your story: info@forthehayters.com
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🔹 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.

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, alcoholism, a disclosure that wasn't believed, pregnancy loss, surrogacy, and estrangement from a parent. Listener discretion is advised.
For most of her life, Justine's family ran on one rule: keep mom happy, whatever it costs you. She started paying that bill as a kid trying to survive her father. At 14, she finally told someone the truth and got handed an ultimatum instead of help. She spent years after that finding new people to save, because saving herself was never on the table.
A husband. A son. And for a while, two strangers on the other side of the world she agreed to carry a baby for. In this conversation, Justine talks about a house that looked completely normal in the school photo, what it costs to keep protecting people who don't deserve it, and the morning she wrote two goodbye letters and drove across the country with a U-Haul running.
This is a story about the difference between the parent you thought you had and the one you actually did, and what finally happens when someone decides it stops with her.
For The Hayters is a podcast that normalizes hard conversations. Listener discretion is advised.
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.

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!
🔹 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.

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.