Stacey Abrams is a woman who has always kept irons in the fire. She’s an Ivy League educated lawyer—Yale class of ‘99—and the writer of eight romance novels, all published under the pen name Selena Montgomery. She’s a business consultant and the co-founder of a beverage company that focuses on infants and toddlers. She’s the former Minority Leader of the Georgia General Assembly and the first Black woman to lead in the House of Representatives, where she served for a decade. Oh—and she’s currently running for governor of the Peach State. Suffice to say: She’s got a lot going on.
Yet, despite all the bona fides, boundary breaking, and her rising star status in state government, Abrams is far from immune to a problem that plagues a lot of people in America: crushing debt. In an essay she wrote for Fortune this week, the gubernatorial candidate opened up about the $50,000 in deferred taxes she owes the IRS as well as the more than $170,000 in credit card and student loan debt she’s trying to pay off.
“I am in debt, but I am not alone,” she wrote. “Debt is a millstone that weighs down more than three-quarters of Americans.” It’s also an issue that especially affects women, who hold an estimated two-thirds of student loan debt in the U.S., as well as 63% of credit card debt. But, as Abrams went on: “It should not—and cannot—be a disqualification for ambition.”
In her case: It hasn’t been. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been hard, and even sometimes humiliating. Glamour spoke to Abrams about making the choice to go out on a financial limb—and why even if it’s cost her, it’s been well worth it.
GLAMOUR: Debt is fairly normalized in our culture. But I think it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around $200,000. Can you explain how that came to be?
SA: I’ve always been very cognizant of how much time I’ve spent in my head weighing whether I can take chances or opportunities because of money, and sometimes because of my mistakes with money. I learned financial literacy by racking up credit card and student loan debt. I managed to pay off the credit card when I started practicing law in 1999.
But five years later I was back in debt again because my parents had the catastrophic experience of Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out the community in which they served as ministers. I became their primary source of income. A year later, they adopted my niece because my brother and his girlfriend weren’t able to care for their child, and that has also been my financial responsibility for the past 15 years. In order to pay for that, I had to defer my taxes. What I decided is: I can defer taxes. But I can’t defer cancer treatment for my parent, I can’t defer healthcare insurance, I can’t defer food and shelter for my niece.
Do you feel like there is a gendered element to those expectations that goes beyond family loyalty?
Women are often called upon to be the backbone. Not just in the moral and emotional way, but in a very real financial way. It’s often daughters who take in aging parents; it’s the moms and grandmas who take in children who need support. That’s not to diminish the role that men play, but for women—especially in Western culture—there’s an expectation that we’re responsible. When you layer that with the wealth gap and the income gap, we’re expected to do more but we know that we make less, and we have to cover more. And it winds up having a crippling effect of women’s access to power.
Can you also talk to me about how debt has affected you emotionally?
It’s been the constant conversation for me for the last 20 years. Every time I wanted to make a decision. Every time I wanted to make a leap. Deciding to run for office, I had to think about what that would mean for all of the people who rely on me—partly because I had to hope that I could continue to make up the difference. For me, the ‘side hustle’ has been a necessity. I’ve always had more obligations, and so I’ve had to find multiple ways to meet those responsibilities. I made the choice that I don’t want me niece or my parents to have to struggle and worry. They aren’t living anywhere near the lap of luxury. But I wanted to have them the stability of knowing that they didn’t have to struggle again, and always. So if that means taking on two responsibilities or doing another job: So be it.
Plus, I want wealth. I want more than income. People of color, women, people from marginalized communities—we’re not encouraged to seek wealth. I want to get to the place where my children, if I have them, do not have the same anxiety I had. I want them to have the freedom to risk and to fail, which you never have if you don’t have access to wealth.
Women seeking wealth is so often thought of as ‘greedy’ in a way that isn’t true for men, yet we also shame people for being poor. How have you witnessed that stigma?
When I started the New Georgia Project, I raised more than $3.5 million dollars in under seven months, which is a pretty hefty lift. I also managed a project that led to the registration of 86,000 people and we hired almost 800 people to make it happen. Yet, I have been dinged, several times, for the salary I was being paid, of $177,000. The implicit question is: Why didn’t you do it for less—or for free? I can’t imagine that any man at the head of a nonprofit, who achieved what we achieved, and raised the kind of money that we raised, would be asked that question.
There is this underlying question of how dare I seek or accept a salary of that level. And it’s tied to that sense that women should just do because it must be done—that it’s somehow ignoble to accept compensation. Or even worse, that there’s some avarice associated with wanting to be compensated for our work—and yet we’re also supposed to have that largesse in every other aspect of our lives.
What’s the financial advice you wish you would have been given earlier on in your own life?
That credit scores last forever. When I finished law school and had to start paying down credit card bills, I remember realizing that a $300 I’d spent on a television had wound up costing me $1000. I didn’t understand interest rates. I didn’t understand that Discover was not being nice to me when they just let me pay $15 a month. Because when you come from a lack of wealth and a lack of economic mobility, you don’t always know that no one is being nice to you.
You wrote that you’re on a repayment plan with the IRS. But right now you’re on a full-time campaign—what does that mean for your finances?
When you see someone running full-time for office, someone has to pay for their mortgage and their insurance. I’m a single woman. I don’t have a spouse who is supporting me. I do not have current employment. I wrote a book and luckily that income has supported my campaign. But I had to resign from my company. I resigned from the legislature. I haven’t had a steady paycheck in quite a while. If you’re running for office, you’re literally forfeiting your income to run.
The upside is, if you win, there will be a salary. But you do it because you want to help people. I want to be the person who delivers for families like my own a way out of this. I want to be the governor who says: I’ve been where you are. I’ve grappled with these issues issues; I have a brother who has struggled with addiction and mental illness; I know what it’s like to not know if you can afford to be treated for cancer, because had to help my father pay for cancer treatments. I know what it means to not go to the dentist because you don’t know if you can afford the bill, and then it turns into something else. I’ve been down there myself. But what that means is that I know the way out.
*This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Stacey Abrams is the author of Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change, which debuted April 24, 2018. She is currently running for governor of Georgia.
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