The debt gap nobody talks about

The word was there, but nobody had ever taught it to me.

Growing up, I had learned the word for a loan. A loan made sense: you borrowed money for a specific purpose, paid it back, and moved on with your life. Debt felt different, it was ongoing. Persistent. Something that lingered in the background long after the original purchase had been forgotten.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the issue wasn’t language at all—it was culture.

You learn the words your culture thinks you’ll need. While debt certainly exists around the world, the role it plays in people’s lives varies dramatically. Some cultures are built around borrowing and leveraging debt; others place greater emphasis on saving first and borrowing only when absolutely necessary.

That distinction matters more than most people realize because when newcomers arrive in Canada, they are not simply learning a new financial system, they are often learning an entirely new relationship with money.

The vacation we never took

Long before we moved to Canada, my wife and I were planning a vacation together. She suggested putting the trip on a credit card, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would borrow money for a vacation. More importantly, I didn’t even have a credit card.

Neither of us was wrong, we were simply operating from different financial cultures. From my perspective, if we didn’t have the cash available, perhaps we should book a different trip. For her, a credit card was a practical financial tool and the vacation wasn’t unaffordable, it was just being paid for differently.

We still took a holiday, just not the one we originally imagined because we limited ourselves to what we could afford with the money we had available at the time.

Looking back, that conversation had very little to do with vacations—it was really about debt, and, more specifically, our vastly different comfort levels with it.

My first credit card mistake

Eventually, I did get a credit card, and like many people who receive their first credit card without fully understanding it, I made a mistake: I treated it like free money. Predictably, that did not end well. 

The experience was uncomfortable, but it was also educational. The lesson wasn’t that debt is bad, but that debt is a tool. A hammer can build a house or break a window, and the outcome depends less on the tool and more on how it is used. 

Debt works the same way: a mortgage can help build long-term wealth, a student loan can create opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach, and a credit card can help establish a credit history and provide flexibility when used responsibly.

But none of those benefits are obvious when you are first introduced to borrowing. If you arrive carrying cultural beliefs that view debt with skepticism, caution, or even shame, you are probably not going to ask for the instruction manual.

Canada assumes you already understand debt

One of the most surprising things about Canada is how much of everyday financial life is built around debt. Not necessarily bad debt, just debt.

Mortgages, credit cards, student loans, lines of credit, home equity lines of credit, credit scores—the entire system assumes a certain level of fluency with borrowing. It assumes you understand how debt works, how it affects your credit profile, and how it can be used strategically. It assumes you arrived with that knowledge already installed.

But many newcomers don’t. And it’s not because they are financially irresponsible, but because they are navigating a system built around financial norms that may not exist in the places they came from.