Internet Money

In July, a 33-year-old flight attendant named Rodney Morgan posted a TikTok with his head in one hand. On screen was one number: $40,058.44. That’s what he owed.

His popular videos usually got about 100,000 views. This one got 1.5 million. Then a personal finance app offered him the biggest brand deal of his social media career. He plans to use it to clear the last $800 or so on Home Depot and Lowe’s cards he opened while fixing up his home.

Welcome to DebtTok. The Wall Street Journal just wrote about it, and it’s bigger than you’d think.

How it works. You post your exact balance, to the cent. Then you post updates as it goes down, or back up after a surprise bill. Strangers cheer you on, send tips, and keep watching. Analytics firm Tubular Labs counted more than 28,000 debt videos on TikTok in a single year.

How the money works. TikTok pays creators for popular videos, but only after you hit 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the last 30 days, and the videos have to be at least a minute long. Viewers can also send virtual gifts during livestreams. The bigger money is brand deals and affiliate links.

It’s working for some people. Kayla Rose, 29, an influencer in Palm Beach, Fla., told her followers in March that she had more than $25,000 in credit card debt. Her following grew. She paid it all off in August. “The reason I was able to pay off my credit card debt is because of these little videos you’re watching right now,” she told them.

A school district HR director in Harrisburg, Pa., posts her balance every night. It’s $54,057.93. The money from her posts goes to childcare and her debt.

Why people watch. A Cornell professor told the Journal that viewers like comparing someone else’s money choices with their own. It’s money gossip, with a happy ending you can follow.

For scale: Americans owe $1.26 trillion on credit cards, per the New York Fed. Almost none of it will get a brand deal.

Zypper’s take. The magic here isn’t the sponsorship. It’s the number. A balance you avoid looking at is easy to keep adding to. DebtTok drags the number into the open, every day, with an audience. You don’t need 1.5 million viewers to get that effect. Write down your total, to the cent, and check it every week. One honest viewer is enough. Just know the catch: when your debt is your content, paying it off ends the show.

The setup. Whitney Anderson, 45, spent more than 30 years in New York as an interior stylist who fixed up old houses. About 10 years ago, she started hunting for a church she could afford to live in. In spring 2024 she found one on Zillow: a Michigan parsonage house listed at $125,000 that came with a “free” church. The church was built in 1898 and had “human-sized holes” in the roof. She had to sign a waiver and wear a respirator just to tour it.

The numbers. Here’s what she shared with CNBC Make It:

Zypper’s take.

The building was the cheap part. $45,000 bought it. Fixing it has cost more than four times that, and she’s not done. Price plus repairs is about $239,000, nearly her whole $250,000 fund. Her renovation cap of $400,000 is almost 9x what she paid.

Going viral paid for real things. A 30-second video of the church hit 16 million views and landed her on Magnolia Network’s “Home Reimagined.” The show didn’t pay her. But it brought sponsors, free kitchen cabinets, appliances, countertops, some flooring, and carpenters who built her library wall for free. She says there’s “zero chance” she’d be this far without social media.

The hidden cost was her paycheck. The TV timeline meant about eight months of round-the-clock work, living off savings because she couldn’t take clients. Now she has to restart her styling business to fund the next $40,000.

She knows the odds. “It’s still 50/50 if this is going to be a sustainable chouse … or if it’s going to be what bankrupts me,” she says. Paying cash means no mortgage. It also means almost everything she saved now lives inside one building. Her plan to turn it into a bed and breakfast is how the church starts paying her back.

The national average for regular gas was $4.36 on Thursday, more than 45% higher than when the Iran war began on Feb. 28. Diesel is $6.28, up almost 70%. Brent crude jumped above $105 a barrel as the White House weighs new strikes. The wildest number: shipping one tanker of U.S. oil to Asia now costs about $77 million, per Bloomberg. Last year it averaged $9.2 million.

Minutes from the Fed’s September meeting show most officials expect another rate hike this year. The Fed raised its key rate to about 3.9% in September, its first increase in three years. Traders expect a pause at the Oct. 28–29 meeting and a hike in December. Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield, which steers mortgage rates, hit 5.35% on Thursday. Most card rates move with the Fed, so a balance you carry gets pricier with each hike.

LendingTree priced 100 pumpkin products against their plain twins. Pumpkin costs 8.9% more on average, up from 8.4% last year. Starbucks had the biggest average markup at 19.7%. The worst single item: Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s, 75.4% more per ounce than regular Joe’s O’s. The good news: 45 of the 100 cost the same or less than the plain version. Check the per-ounce price before you grab the orange box.

A Kansas shopper filmed a $1 rollback sign on Chef Boyardee lasagna at Walmart, then scanned a can at self-checkout. It rang up $1.44, more than even the old $1.34 price. An employee fixed it. In Kansas, charging more than the posted price is illegal, and state inspectors scan 100 items per store visit to check. Walmart has said that when prices don’t match, the customer gets the lower one. Watch the screen, not just the sign.

Two $600,000 retirements that aren’t the same — One neighbor has a Roth, the other a traditional 401(k). At a 22% tax rate, the 401(k) is really worth $468,000. Part of that statement belongs to the IRS.

They sold $600,000 in stocks during a scare. Now they’re fighting about it. — Eight months later, stocks have recovered and the cash is still in savings. Bonus problem: if it’s all in one joint account at one bank, up to $100,000 could be over the FDIC limit. Panic got expensive twice.

He inherited $3 million and wants a $1.2 million vacation home — She’d rather give each kid $750,000 toward a house. MarketWatch’s Moneyist suggests $250,000 each. A very nice problem that still sounds like a real fight.

Prepper videos almost cost a 57-year-old $70,000 — He wanted to pull $200,000 from his 401(k) before a crash he saw coming on YouTube. Taxes and penalties would have eaten about $70,000. His wife talked him out of it. The only guaranteed crash in that plan was the penalty.

A brand offers to pay off your $5,000 credit card. The catch: you post your exact balance, and every payment, on TikTok for a year.

Hit reply and tell me why. I read every one.