Client Exclusive: Masey H., Recovering From a Health Crisis With an Affordable Path Forward
Masey H. has spent her life in education. Born and raised in Louisiana, she has built a career as a teacher, speech and debate coach and now a university professor. Outside the classroom, she enjoys traveling, spending time with her husband and stepchildren and caring for her 18-year-old dachshund, Lapine.
But when a serious health crisis collided with the financial realities of a teacher’s salary, medical bills and everyday expenses began to pile up. Eventually, the weight of that debt forced Masey to look for a sustainable solution.
For me, it’s about getting the social experiences that we’re missing out on. I can’t wait to check it off my list and say that I put in all the work and I did it, and then I can be proud of that. .
Debt Amount: $33,331
Started: February 2025
Monthly Savings: $787.36 a month*
For Masey, joining Beyond Finance was about making a responsible choice for her debt. That included a realistic path forward that was affordable and allowed her focus on her health and family.
Meet Masey H.: A Passionate Educator Who Loves To Travel
Tell us a little about yourself.
I’ve been a teacher my whole life — I’ve always been on that teacher salary. I took a little break from the classroom to run a summer camp. And then I came back to the classroom and now I’m at a university. In my free time I coached speech and debate at the college level.
How did you get into debt?
I’ve had a chronic illness my entire life and for a long time it was managed… and then I had a very aggressive form of COVID in 2020 that attacked my body and sent me into a medical crisis.
I started taking a lot of medication and started to see my practitioners every month instead of once a year. It piled up.
And during COVID, the camp where I was working did reopen until 2021. I was behind by not making as much money while dealing with these medical issues. So, we got into debt.
You can decide if you need to go to that restaurant or not, but when it comes to your health, one of those things for me, it’s non-negotiable. So that’s sort of how we got here.
What was it like trying to manage the debt?
What we found ourselves doing is we would say, ‘Okay, our grocery budget is this much money this week. I’m going to make that much money in a payment to the credit card, but then I have to turn around and buy my groceries.’”
So it was like you’re just trading one for the other at that point.
Even if we throw every bit of extra money that we have at this, the interest… it’s just piling and piling. It’s not touching the debt that we have.
What made you realize it was time to seek help?
At the time, I had the lovely opportunity of working in K through 12 education and every morning we sat around in our little conference room and we would have our coffee together and start the day and then we would come back to that room and have our lunch together.
Because of that, we were sharing a lot of things about our life. At some point we all sort of started sharing the debt that we were in… and I was thinking about what we had.
Looking at all of my friends around that table, we were all putting in all the time and all the effort and all the energy to be good educators… and no matter how many good choices we made, it didn’t seem like any of us were getting ahead.”
So that’s when I started researching debt resources for teachers.
How did the debt affect you emotionally?
When you’ve spent your entire life overachieving and obtaining special goals that say a lot on paper, it’s really hard to personally have something that you would consider a failure. I think any overachiever probably shares similar sentiments.
People would say to me, “Wow, you’re so accomplished, you’re a university professor. Look at all the things that you’ve done.” And the other side of that was knowing that while I was able to achieve professionally, personally, I was drowning in debt.
I stopped thinking about what was good for me and I was depriving myself of so many things which only made my health crisis worse.
What advice would you give someone who is struggling with debt?
My best advice is to understand the process. It’s okay if you don’t trust it entirely. Everybody should ask questions and advocate for yourself. Once you understand the process you’ll see what’s the best for you, and can work in that direction.
What are you most looking forward to once you’re debt free?
I will sit down and do the bills and go, ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait until that $220 every two weeks can be $220 that we get to spend a weekend and we can fly instead of drive somewhere.’
For me in particular, it’s just about getting the social experiences that we’re sort of missing out on right now. And because I am an overachiever, I can’t wait to check it off my list and say that I put in all the work, I did the research and I did it, and then I can be proud of that too.
*About this testimonial: Masey is a real Beyond Finance client who was compensated for sharing her experience. Her savings were calculated by subtracting her program payment from her self-reported payments or tradeline minimums. Clients typically save $480 per month on their debt payments.