Debt: $86,000

Source: Student loans, car loans, credit card



Estimated years until debt-free: Uncertain

I’m the lead teller at a major national bank, a mother and a college graduate. I also have also been under a mountain of debt – around $86,000 – and have been struggling to pay my rent, student loans, credit card bills and car payments since 2014, the year I graduated college and a year after I started working at Wells Fargo.



When I first got a job at Wells Fargo, I was ecstatic. I am the first of my family to graduate high school and the first to graduate from college. They were so proud. Scraping together enough money to pay for the basics was hard growing up, but now I had secured a good, middle-class job. Or so I thought.

As a bank teller, I made around $12.10 an hour. I had a reasonable work schedule and I enjoyed interacting with customers. But surviving on $12 an hour between rent, student loans and car payments was incredibly difficult.

Then the unexpected happened. My husband got laid off, and somewhat ironically, we were forced to rely on the same credit cards my bank sold to pay for basic needs. We accrued around $10,000 in credit card debt, on top of my $65,000 in student loans and $11,000 in car loans.



I did everything I was taught I should do to get ahead. I went to school. I got good grades and earned a bachelor’s degree. I became employed at a major corporation. But I was never taught that I would be drowning in debt despite working at one of America’s biggest banks.



I had hope – with a bachelor’s degree and a job at a big bank, I thought hard work would eventually pay off. I would get a raise and maybe even a promotion. And I did – after over a year of working at Wells, I got a raise. It was $0.25 an hour.



Our expenses and our debt kept accruing and became more and more difficult to pay off.

In 2015, I became pregnant. Having a baby gave me the extra push to fight for better pay to provide for my family. So I applied to become a head teller, and because of my track record, I got the position. Yet despite my having more responsibilities, my pay increased to just $13 an hour.



My life collapsed when my daughter died. That didn't stop the debt collectors | Priscilla Blossom Read more

I am now a lead teller at a major bank but it remains difficult for me to provide for my baby, pay off my student loans and cover the loans on the car I use to drive to work.



I am not the only one. I know that there are bank workers across the nation who have mortgages, student loans and families, and they are also struggling every day to survive.



Bank workers like myself can make a little extra money by pushing financial products – like credit cards, new accounts and other services – on consumers, whether they can afford them or not. Many frontline workers have to meet unreasonably high sales quotas in order to receive that incentive pay. And many workers living in debt feel like they face an impossible choice between earning a living wage and pushing a cycle of credit card debt onto other consumers. And that’s just not right.



I know the financial industry can do better. It is an industry that boasts more than $100bn in profits. It is time that big banks lead by example and provide its frontline workers with a fair wage.



Frontline bank workers serving the public directly should be able to pay off our mortgages and our student loans, send our kids to college and put money in savings. We deserve a fair share of the profits our work creates. We deserve to live with dignity.

