Michelle Singletary Launches ‘Dollars & Sense’ Podcast, Says Debt Limits Possibilities

Singletary told CNBC Make It that personal finance advice has changed over decades from “just men talking down to people.” She said she celebrates progress made by women, people of color and younger people in the field, but added that audiences should not follow all the money advice they see and hear online.

“There’s so much online, which is good and bad. There’s a lot of information, but there’s a lot of bad information, and so this [show] allows a different voice,” she told CNBC Make It.

According to CNBC Make It, Singletary has drawn on her own life, including raising her children, helping care for her disabled brother and planning her estate, to help readers navigate financial decisions. She said she aims to bring the same relatability to the podcast, which features everyday people and financial experts as guests.

Asked for the one piece of financial advice everyone needs to hear, Singletary pointed to debt. “If there’s one thing that I want to get across to people it’s that debt limits your possibilities,” she told CNBC Make It. She said that in the U.S. economy, a large share of people’s paychecks goes to servicing debt, and that the more debt people carry when times are hard, the harder it is to get out of those hard times.

Singletary said she understands people may need to borrow to buy a house or a car, but she argued that other forms of borrowing eat up paychecks and prevent people from moving forward. When asked whether there is such a thing as “good debt,” she said, “If debt was a person, I would slap it.” She calls debt “the devil” and said people should not treat it as a friend.

She described debt as “a necessary evil in some places” and said that approaching it as something to be shunned when possible can lead people to take on less. She said borrowers should ask whether they can service the debt and still do other important things, such as saving for retirement, saving for children’s college or having extra money to help family members who lose a job through no fault of their own. “Debt is just debt,” she said, adding that people should stop applying good-versus-bad labels to it.

Singletary told CNBC Make It that the advice she has received the most backlash about is telling people to stay home with their parents. She said young adults, parents and even people without children ask why she keeps telling people to live at home, arguing that they cannot be responsible if they do not pay their own bills. She said they can be responsible at home if they are held accountable.

If people graduate from college with a lot of student loan debt and are able to live with their parents, Singletary said living at home for a couple of years is the smartest financial move. She said those with debt should live at home until they get rid of it, then save and move out. She added that her own young adult children came home, lived there and saved, and that she and her husband sent them to college without debt.

Reflecting on money in 2026, Singletary told CNBC Make It she did not expect the economy to be one in which so many people cannot afford to buy a home, or one where gas costs $4 to $5 a gallon depending on where people live. She said the affordability issue is real, “not a hoax” and “not funny,” and that she did not expect so few people to hold the bulk of the wealth while so many are at the bottom.