Caleb Hammer slammed this young California woman in 2023 for having $10K worth of credit card debt ​​— but she’s managed to pay off all her cards in just 9 months

That’s why it’s somewhat rare to see a 24-year-old pay off all her credit card debts in only nine months — especially since her debt was a hefty $10,572.

Lamiya — who resides in San Francisco and works as a night auditor for a major hotel chain making $32 an hour — set out to settle her accounts after YouTuber Caleb Hammer initially slammed her for “destroying her financial future” in a 2023 episode of his money management podcast, Financial Audit.

However, it turned out financial abuse had taken place, placing Lamiya in the difficult position of climbing out a debt hole she didn’t even create. When she returned to Hammer’s show in 2024 to offer a life update, she’d managed to turn her life around.

Here’s how she beat the odds and salvaged her financial future in less than a year.

Financial abuse

Lamiya already had a sizable debt burden by the time she’d turned 18. That’s when she found out her father had accrued debt, in her name, after taking her to get dental work done as a teen — without ever paying the medical bill. All of this was done without Lamiya’s knowledge or consent.

To help get it under control, she’d initially appeared on an episode of Hammer’s show back in September 2023.

“Did you just exit the womb and start swiping cards?” Hammer asked her sarcastically at the time. However, Lamiya explained that it was her father that did the swiping on her behalf.

Unfortunately, child identity fraud in America is a relatively common issue. One in 50 kids have had their identity stolen, according to a 2021 report by Javelin Strategy & Research.

It estimates the total financial impact of these child identity fraud cases at nearly $1 billion annually. The issue is prevalent enough that Credit One Bank has a guide to help people resolve credit issues created by their parents.

Like Lamiya, nearly three-quarters (73%) of child identity loss victims knew the perpetrators of the theft. These breaches of trust can have lasting impacts on any child’s financial future.

Lamiya revealed that she’d paid off collections; however, her father frequently stole money from her by rummaging through her purse for her credit cards in the middle of the night. Hammer pointed out that this was a case of “abuse — financial and emotional.”

She fell further into debt after her father — as a condition of her living in the family home — made her pay for everything from her siblings’ video game consoles and her father’s cigarettes to larger items such as the family car.

Resolving these cases is time consuming and expensive. However, Lamiya was determined to salvage her financial future.

Turning things around

By the time she’d appeared on Financial Audit the second time around, Lamiya had already negotiated the medical bill her father had put in her name. She’d successfully cut the bill from $2,400 down to $1,200 and paid it off over several months.

Meanwhile, she also managed to avoid student loans by funding her studies through part-time work and by attending community college. Additionally, Lamiya told Hammer she received a grant from college to help with her studies.