Relief + Claude + ChatGPT = financial recovery. (Coming soon).

The average U.S. household carries $9,371 in credit card debt at ~21% APR. This chart shows what happens if you stop using the card completely and only make the minimum payment: 21+ years to pay it off. $14,940 in interest. That's today's average, not a worst case.

Today, I may have ended my career. At a time I am heads-down raising our Series B, I did something some people will consider adversarial: I wrote directly to the leaders of America’s biggest banks. Why? I was looking through data from the hundreds of thousands of people who have downloaded Relief and engaged with our platform, and what I saw made me sick to my stomach. Falling behind has become a business model. Americans have paid billions of dollars a year in credit-card late fees alone. And the people paying those fees are, by definition, often the people already struggling to keep up. There’s something fundamentally backwards about that. Relief exists to help people understand their debt, protect themselves, reduce what they owe, and ultimately resolve it. And as we grow, we’re increasingly helping money flow back to creditors that might otherwise have gone uncollected. So this isn’t an anti-bank letter. It’s an argument that there is a better model. Give some of that late-fee economics back to consumers. Give people who are struggling a little breathing room. That money doesn’t disappear. It gets spent on groceries, rent, childcare, transportation, local businesses, and eventually back into the economy. Banks might make a little less on certain fees in the short term. But healthier consumers are better customers, and a healthier consumer economy is better for everyone. As Relief becomes larger, I want to make sure we never forget whose side we are supposed to be on. It’s not always about extracting the maximum dollar. It’s about treating people like human beings. And, at the very least, making sure the financial system doesn’t make a difficult moment in someone’s life even harder.

Since launching @startrelief, we’ve helped people with a cumulative total of >$8 billion in debt. Over the course of my career, I’ve personally talked to thousands of good people drowning in bills. You know what a lot of them have in common? They bought shit to impress people who don’t care. That watch. That bag. That trip on a payment plan. Real wealth isn’t what you show off. It’s what you keep. Stop performing.

“Why help people in debt? They borrowed more than they could afford.” Actually — no. Studies show 86% of the rise in consumer debt since 2020 is due to inflation, not reckless spending. I’m stoked to help millions of Americans dig their way out using simple, transparent technology with @startrelief

Excited to officially announce our latest strategic round of funding w/ National Debt Relief. 🚀 finance.yahoo.com/news/relie…