In Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s fictional short story, “Minimum Payment Due,” the main character is trapped in credit card debt and desperate for a way out.

The fact that the experience is common — more than a third, or 38%, of adults in the U.S. have credit card debt, according to Bankrate — makes it no less scary for the narrator.

Collection agents won’t stop calling him. Meanwhile, he can’t even admit how much he owes to his therapist.

“He waited while I calculated the figure in my head, the various principals, the late fees, the penalties, the surcharges,” Sayrafiezadeh writes. “Then I did what everyone does when they are consumed with denial and shame: I rounded down and lowballed the figure. The lowball was still a lot.”

The narrator turns to self-help books, therapy and even a cult for advice, but he’s in too deep. No matter how much he directs toward the debt each month, it won’t go down.

Sayrafiezadeh is a fiction writer, memoirist and playwright who lives in New York City. CNBC interviewed Sayrafiezadeh this month about his story, which appeared in the New Yorker in November, and his choice to use fiction to explore credit card debt.

Annie Nova: You never tell us exactly how much the narrator owes in credit card debt. I’m curious, what was the point of that omission?

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh: It’s like with Jaws: You don’t want to show the monster too much. I thought it would be better for the reader to have to wonder about it, and to create a figure in their mind, rather than to give them a hard number.

AN: You do say the debt climbs from “four figures to five.” So we know that much. But that could be $10,000, and that could be $99,000.

SS: That’s exactly right.

AN: In the story, you mention that the compound interest is growing daily on his credit card debt. We get the feeling that the character will never be able to get out of this. It’s described in a really scary, vivid way. I wondered if credit card debt was something you’ve dealt with.

SS: I’m actually the opposite of this guy. I don’t even wait for my statement to pay it off. Knowing that I don’t owe anybody anything, there’s a pleasure for me in that.

AN: Did you do research on credit card debt for this story?

SS: No, I did not. I just put myself in the position of someone who was in this situation. I think I must just feel it. Maybe we all feel it, in a way. Even if you’re not in debt, it’s always there, hovering. What if I couldn’t pay my bills? Maybe something about 2008 when we had the Great Recession, and everybody was losing their homes. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem to be a hard stretch to imagine what it would be like to be this character.

AN: In the opening scenes of the story, the narrator gets a call. It turns out to be an old friend, but he’s convinced at first that it’s another call from a collection agent. Is the credit card debt so all-consuming for the narrator that he can’t see anything else?

SS: Yeah, absolutely. Everything he sees, he’s seeing through debt-colored glasses. Everything is his debt.

AN: The only person in the story that the narrator confides to about his debt is his therapist. But even to him, he lies, saying he owes less than he really does. Why can’t he tell the truth?

SS: There’s a certain amount of shame that he’s carrying around with it. Maybe there’s also some denial about it, as well. Saying the actual amount to the therapist would make it real, and that’s not something he can really face.

AN: I thought it was a really interesting detail that the narrator is a software engineer at a tech start-up. He’s in debt even though he presumably has a good, well-paying job. Why add these details about him?

SS: I wanted it to be about the algorithms that are operating on him, and on us, in our society. He says something about how the Tony Robbins book pops up in his Instagram feed. There are these algorithms that are targeting us with advertising that we’re susceptible to. But I wanted to also make him someone who is creating those kinds of algorithms, so that he’s a part of this cycle. I wanted to have the irony of him writing code, but also susceptible to the code that he writes.

AN: So how does this character find himself with so much credit card debt? Is it a spending problem?

SS: That’s a great question: Why is he in debt? The only thing he says is that he is susceptible. So that’s all he knows. And that’s not really an answer. But what it means is that he is vulnerable; he’s vulnerable to be preyed upon. The story really doesn’t get to the root causes of why he is operating the way he is. I wanted to have it be more of a mystery. He doesn’t know why he is who he is, why it’s come to all of this, with all of this debt.

AN: Do you think your story will make people feel a little less alone with their own debt?

SS: That would be great. I try to write about certain things that are troubling and that plague a solitary character. But yeah, the story could make someone feel like, Oh yeah, this is not just me. Maybe that’s how the story ends, with readers not feeling as alone.

Keith Harris, a 17-year-old high school senior at KIPP DC College Preparatory, has studied accounting, investing and budgeting, among other basic lessons, like his English, history and math curriculum.

Harris is enrolled in his high school’s NAF Academy of Business, a rigorous three-year finance program with a work-based learning component. 

Because Harris, who lives with his aunt, received a full scholarship to college next fall, he’s also able to set some of his part-time earnings aside and invest those funds.

“Through the program I developed a lot of skills, such as managing my finances and investing in stocks,” Harris said. “It laid down a good foundation for me.”

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Unlike other one-semester high school personal finance courses across the country, more than 160 students enrolled in the KIPP DC College Preparatory’s NAF Academy of Business program study budgeting, saving, investing and managing risk, as well as other topics, right through graduation. Some receive NAFTrack certification, a credential that demonstrates a high standard of college and career readiness.

Many students also choose to enroll in the First Generation Investors program, where they can complete capstone projects while being tutored by students from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. 

Additionally, internship opportunities pair students with nearby employers, including Ernst & Young, the Navy Federal Credit Union and Verizon.

The program is paid for, in part, through federal and local funding and administered by the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

The goal of the program, according to Shavar Jeffries, chief executive officer of the the non-profit KIPP Foundation, is “breaking cycles of poverty.”

KIPP DC College Prep caters to an underserved population of teens, and yet 100% of the senior class are accepted into at least one college, Jeffries noted, which is largely consistent with last year’s numbers.

“Economic security has to be a key part of it,” Jeffries said. “We have too many young people who don’t have the knowledge base to make smart financial decisions. When we can add that value and students bring these lessons home, that is also very powerful.”

Donyae Vaughan, 18, a senior at KIPP DC College Prep, will graduate this spring with a number of financial classes under her belt, including Accounting 1 and 2. She also landed a summer internship at consulting firm Accenture.

“Most people my age don’t get to learn about this stuff,” she said. 

Vaughan, who has plans to attend dental school, said the coursework compliments what she has been taught at home. “My family is big on saving,” she said.

“Last year we learned a lot about investments, savings and stocks and how we can grow our money,” she said. “Every time I learn something new, I would go home and talk about it with my mom.”

Vaughan said she also learned about the merit of locking in a top-yielding certificate of deposit through the program.

As of 2024, about half of all states require or are in the process of requiring high school students to take at least one financial literacy course before they graduate, according to the latest data from Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit focused on providing financial education to middle and high school students.

Although some schools and school districts have required students receive some financial education even without a state mandate, it is the schools that serve students from lower socio-economic backgrounds that tend to fall short in financial education offerings, according to Newberry.

“When a state requires it, that helps close that gap,” she said.

In addition, a 2018 report by the Brookings Institution found that teenage financial literacy is positively correlated with asset accumulation and net worth by age 25.

Among adults, those with greater financial literacy find it easier to make ends meet in a typical month, are more likely to make loan payments in full and on time and less likely to be constrained by debt or be considered financially fragile.

They are also more likely to save and plan for retirement, according to data from the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index based on research collected annually since 2017.

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Many people, especially those with debt, will be discouraged by the recent Federal Reserve forecast of a slower pace of interest rate cuts than previously forecast.

However, others with money in high-yield cash accounts will benefit from a “higher for longer” regime, experts say.

“If you’ve got your money in the right place, 2025 is going to be a good year for savers — much like 2024 was,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.

The Fed increased its benchmark rate aggressively in 2022 and 2023 to rein in high inflation, ultimately bringing borrowing costs from rock-bottom rates to their highest level in more than 22 years.  

It started throttling them back in September. However, Fed officials projected this month that it would cut rates just twice in 2025 instead of the four it had expected three months earlier.

“Higher for longer is the mantra headed into 2025,” McBride said. “The big change since September is explained by notable upward revisions to the Fed’s own inflation projections for 2025.”

The bad news for consumers is that higher interest rates increase the cost of borrowing, said Marguerita Cheng, a certified financial planner and CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

“[But] higher interest rates can help individuals of all ages and stages build savings and prepare for any emergencies or opportunities that may arise — that’s the good news,” said Cheng, who is a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.

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High-yield savings accounts that pay an interest rate between 4% and 5% are “still prevalent,” McBride said.

By comparison, top-yielding accounts paid about 0.5% in 2020 and 2021, he said.

The story is similar for money market funds, he explained.

Money market fund interest rates vary by fund and institution, but top-yielding funds are generally in the 4% to 5% range.

However, not all financial institutions pay these rates.

The most competitive returns for high-yield savings accounts are from online banks, not the traditional brick-and-mortar shop down the street, which might pay a 0.1% return, for example, McBride said.

Further, not all institutions offering a high-yield savings account are necessarily covered by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. protections, said McBride. Deposits up to $250,000 are automatically protected at each FDIC-insured bank in the event of a failure.

“Make sure you’re sending your money directly to a federally insured bank,” McBride said. “I’d avoid fintech middlemen that rely on third-party partnerships with banks for FDIC insurance.”

A recent bankruptcy by one fintech company, Synapse, highlights that “unappreciated risk,” McBride said. Many Synapse customers have been unable to access most or all of their savings.