I never thought I’d be passionate about debt.

I’ll never forget sitting at a college football game with my dad at 20-years-old. He had a napkin in has hand and was trying to paint a picture of my financial future, which was looking grim. He wasn’t the disappointed type or even the nagging type – but he could see something I couldn’t. I was racking up debt in the tens of thousands of dollars at my private university and I was radically indifferent to the number. I had enough other things to worry about – making friends, working internships, and finding fulfillment – worrying about debt could wait. Besides, none of my friends ever talked about it either – it really didn’t seem like a big deal.

I recently looked up some statistics on household debt and found that this mindset of “carrying debt” isn’t just limited to me and my friends. According to an extensive study done last year by “Nerdwallet” (which is referenced by almost every major financial column):

“The average household with credit card debt has balances totaling $16,883, and the average household with any kind of debt owes $137,063, including mortgage.”

It shouldn’t be surprising that their report begins with the line “Debt is a way of life for Americans…” A way of life. It is how we structure our finances: with debt, around debt, held back by debt, afforded opportunity by debt. Debt is quickly becoming something we’re hardly even ashamed of.

Take for example the 2016 election. We heard speech after speech about healthcare and social issues and immigration and abortion. But the one topic that never even came up in a single debate between Clinton and Trump? The $19,000,000,000 in debt that they were about to inherit and what their plan was to reduce it.

Perhaps even more startling is that the majority of American people didn’t even seem to care. Just so long as the debt is being spent on issues we believe in, it seemed we were indifferent to whether the debt remained, shrank, or grew.

Back to the football game. On the left sits a man who will retire with a more-than-comfortable salary at 65, on the right sits a kid who’s hoping to scrape by the minimum payments working a job that fulfills her dreams. Of course I hadn’t thought about retirement – I wasn’t even thinking about 22 yet.

Fast forward two years and a slightly-older-kid who finally pulled up her academic bootstraps. I was no longer skipping class and taking out extra loans for “fun money.” But I still graduated with $42,000 in debt and a degree that would never make that much in a year. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do but felt like God was telling me to get out of debt by my 25th birthday. (I reference God here not as a way of sounding sappy, but because it truly took a force that powerful to help me make a decision that would affect something more than a week from now). Long story short, I did (I’ll tell the longer story in a later episode) and in hindsight that little sidestep in my career path was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

It was a decision that literally brought me to the wild west and an adventure I couldn’t have written myself. And at 25 I had the financial freedom (and wisdom) to do just about anything I wanted. (Which is good because about a year later a shaggy-haired missionary would ask me to move to Asia with him as his wife).

I wanted to write a series about a few friends I know that chose to take on this courageous battle and won in more ways than just debt freedom. I want to tell you about Tom & Katie – a couple who paid off $100,000 in school loans in just over 2 years as an act of sheer determination and commitment. My friend Natalie who paid off $30,000 by her 25th birthday working a desk job in Minneapolis. And my (now) husband Travis who bought a pair of Carhartts and work boots and took the ugliest job in the oil field to pay off $15,000 in 8 months.

The 5 of us have almost nothing in common (we’re from different cities and all have different degrees from different universities) but we all made a simple decision to make our debt a priority. While many of our friends were out in the job market looking for a dream job, we were out looking for paychecks in fields we didn’t study. We washed dishes, walked dogs, cleaned oil tanks, inspected buildings, took side jobs and said “yes” to things that felt unfamiliar. (And “no” to a lot of things that did…)

And before any of us turned 30 we were already putting our extra funds towards saving and the future – not debt and the past.

I’m writing this not as a subtle way to brag about myself or my friends. I truly think getting out of debt is one of the best decisions anyone can make and sometimes hearing a success story you can relate to is enough of a nudge in the right direction.

Yes, each one of us put our dreams on hold for a few years, but I can tell you (because I’ve already read the next 4 blogs) that not a single one of us regrets that season of life. In fact, most of us are thankful for it and the unorthodox lessons we learned from it. (I literally didn’t know people eat their steaks at different temperatures).

If you feel stranded or stuck in debt (or know someone who is), I want to encourage you to read through this series and believe that you could have a similar story. There is absolutely nothing special about the 5 of us that afforded us this opportunity. We all took that simple first step of saying “I can do this, what’s it going to take?”

I chose to name this series “The Debt Rebellion” because the very act of being rebellious is choosing to defy an expectation. It would be “normal” for you to be carrying student loan debt, a car payment, a mortgage, and some credit card debt. But as I look at my friends who are debt free I see a freedom I don’t see in others. They say yes to things others can’t, they take risks that others really shouldn’t, and they take adventures and pay for them with cash.

We’ve written this series together and even prayed that this is a value our generation will adopt. We believe that anyone with a willing attitude and determination can dig themselves out of debt and be living in the black in a few short years.

Why not you?

…stay tuned…