Back to Research Library and Insights
From intention to action: What it really takes to help people navigate debt
Understanding how people experience debt, what holds them back, and what actually helps them move forward.
People are already working hard to manage their debt—cutting back, juggling bills, and trying to make progress where they can. The challenge is not a lack of effort. It is that the path forward is often unclear, overwhelming, or out of reach.
For many SaverLife members, debt is not a one-time challenge. It is a cycle where keeping up with monthly expenses can require additional borrowing, pushing financial stability further out of reach over time.*
Through our Credit Conundrum initiative, SaverLife set out to better understand what it takes to help people reduce debt—and where existing systems and solutions fall short. Drawing on surveys, interviews, and interventions with more than 100,000 SaverLife members, we examined how people manage debt in their everyday lives and what kinds of support actually make a difference.
What we found is simple, but important: moving from intention to action isn’t just a financial calculation. It’s often shaped by emotional weight, trust, timing, and how manageable the next step feels.
This page brings some of our early insights together, combining member voices and perspectives, behavioral research, findings from our Financial Navigator, and real-world intervention results, to show where people get stuck, what helps them move forward, and how we are applying these learnings to design and test solutions that better support people in taking the next step.
The reality people are navigating
We know from years of listening to and engaging with our members that people are already actively managing their debt while balancing everything else happening in their financial lives. Every day, they are making difficult decisions and navigating competing priorities. They are:
- cutting back on spending
- prioritizing essential bills
- juggling multiple financial goals at once
And often, they are doing all of this with very little room for error.
When our members consider managing debt alongside rent, mortgage, and other obligations, they often describe the burden of debt as “overwhelming”, “stressful,” and ever-present in their thoughts and daily routines. Revealing that debt isn’t always seen as a separate issue, but part of day-to-day existence.
“It’s tough sometimes because I feel like I’m always trying to juggle things to make my income work with the expenses I have. I usually exhaust all my income by the end of the month, so I have to be really careful with my money. You really second guess everything that you do; you’re constantly trying to decide what’s important and what you can go without. – Jose, NY”
Why action is hard
Over time, we’ve learned that taking action on debt is about more than making payments. It can include calling a lender to negotiate a lower interest rate, exploring repayment options, talking with a nonprofit credit counselor, or enrolling in a debt management plan. Yet wanting to take these steps is not the same as being able to take them.
For many people, the path forward feels unclear, inaccessible, or simply unrealistic within the realities of daily life. To better understand how to support our members in making meaningful progress, we first needed to understand the barriers that make taking action so difficult. Below are two of the most significant barriers we identified.
People are not making decisions in a vacuum. They are navigating stress, uncertainty, and competing demands at the same time. When debt feels overwhelming, it can take a toll on a person’s emotional and mental well-being, which may influence how they weigh options and make decisions.* In moments where choices are unclear, resources are limited, and priorities are constantly shifting, taking action is often far more complicated than it may appear from the outside.
Members described experiences such as:
- Fear of making things worse
- Shame and avoidance
- Feeling overwhelmed by options
In many cases, hesitation appeared to reflect self-protection rather than disengagement. Even when people know debt relief solutions exist, many hesitate to pursue them because the path forward feels uncertain, risky, or difficult to trust. While 73% of SaverLife members are aware of available options, far fewer actually use them, often due to concerns about scams, hidden fees, or unclear outcomes.* Many also feel their situation is not yet “bad enough” to justify seeking help, leading them to continue managing on their own for as long as possible.
Members are concerned about or believe:
- Scams
- Hidden fees
- Unclear outcomes
- Their situation is not “bad enough” yet.
What actions people take instead
We know our members are resilient and resourceful, constantly finding ways to manage debt and take action whenever they can. Members have shared how they rely on their own strategies to make progress, stay afloat, and keep their finances in balance. Often, this means making difficult tradeoffs, juggling competing priorities, and stretching limited resources in order to make ends meet.
We also recognize that progress doesn’t always look like paying down debt. Sometimes, taking a small step toward addressing it is meaningful progress, especially when larger changes aren’t immediately possible.
Without clear or trusted pathways, people develop their own strategies to stay afloat and make debt feel more manageable within the realities of their daily lives:
- Cutting discretionary spending
- Meal planning, reducing gas use
- Prioritizing rent, car, and minimum payments
What we tested
By better understanding both the challenges members face in making progress on debt and the strategies they already use to manage it on their own, SaverLife designed interventions grounded in the realities of members’ lives and financial decision-making. SaverLife tested a range of interventions through our outreach channels, including the Debt Check-In, Debt Challenge, and Debt Tips, to explore whether clearer, more trusted, and more actionable guidance could help members feel more confident navigating their debt journeys.
These interventions were designed to build on members’ existing resilience and behaviors while attempting to reduce some of the friction, uncertainty, and overwhelm. The following are brief descriptions of several of the initial interventions we explored.
SaverLife’s AI-powered debt diagnostic is designed to guide members through a compassionate, low-effort journey to better understand and manage their debt. By learning each user’s financial situation, we deliver tailored recommendations such as opportunities to speak with a financial counselor if needed, and building a personalized debt plan.
From insight to action
These early interventions helped establish a foundation for how SaverLife can continue evolving both our product and the personalized solutions we offer members as they navigate debt. While we have long understood many of the challenges our members face, this work helped us better understand the deeper emotional, behavioral, and structural barriers that often lie beneath the surface.
SaverLife will continue leveraging technology to design solutions that reflect how people actually make decisions under pressure, while balancing stress, uncertainty, and competing priorities – building systems, tools, and experiences that feel trustworthy, actionable, and realistic within the context of their everyday lives.
This is an ongoing body of work, and the insights shared here are only the beginning. We invite readers to explore the additional findings (below) and content connected to this project and to continue checking back as we share new learnings, member insights, and outcomes over time. We look forward to sharing more about their impact in the near future.
*SaverLife fielded a survey to 1,463 SaverLife member panelists between March and September 2025 to to understand members’ experiences managing debt and how this relates to their financial circumstances.
