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Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com personal finance. Just go to Indeed.com personal finance right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com personal finance terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need on this episode of the personal Finance podcast How to get out of Debt the Fast way with the 7o method. What's up everybody everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of MasterMoney co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast we're going to talk about how to get out of debt the Fast Way with the seven Method. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to MasterMoney co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify. Apple Podcasts YouTube or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you're getting value out of this show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast player. Cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews. And if you're on YouTube, give us the old thumbs up on YouTube as well. And so today what we're going to be diving into is how to get out of debt with the 70 system. So debt is one of the most important things that you need to conquer when it comes to starting your path to financial independence. Why? Because debt will absolutely rob you of your financial freedom. Every month you carry a debt balance. Every month that you swipe the credit card again and increase the amount that you have in debt is where you are falling, falling further and further behind from what your true financial goals are. Debt doesn't just rob you of your money. Debt robs you of your time and your freedom. Debt robs you of more time with your family. Debt robs you have more time to be able to go out and vacation. It robs you from the ability to be able to just have peace of mind and reduce your stress and anxiety. Debt is the worst possible thing that you can come across when it comes to your finances, specifically when it comes to high interest debt. Now we're going to explain what high interest debt is in this episode. Longtime listeners are going to know what that is. But when it comes to high interest debt, you need to get rid of it. What we call it is a pants on fire emergency. And if you don't stop, drop and roll, you are going to burn your financial house to the ground. This is the most important thing that you need to focus on early on in your financial journey. If you have high interest debt. And this is where you need to draw a line in the sand and you need to say to yourself, I am going to conquer this debt today. I am going to change family's financial future. Maybe you came from a family where debt was just part of how you grew up. Your family went and financed cars, you went and financed houses, you had these high interest rates. You didn't pay some of it back and you had this low credit score and your interest rates just kept rising and rising and rising. Or maybe your family just kept swiping the credit card every time they needed something, like it's a free money machine. But all of a sudden you've realized, oh, maybe this is not the way I should manage my money. Maybe this is not the way I should move forward with my finances. Maybe I should recons how I am handling these dollars for my family's financial future. If that is you, you have come to the right place, my friend, because we are going to show you with the 7o method exactly how to get out of debt. Now why is it called the Seven Method? Because this has seven steps to get you to a $0 balance when it comes to your debt. And that is what I want for each and every single one of you. If you are struggling and you are sitting right now at work, or you're driving and commuting on the way to take your kids to school, or you're working in the yard, or you're working out, or whatever you are doing right now and saying to yourself, I am sick and tired of the chains of debt holding me down. I am sick and tired of feeling this weight on my shoulder that never goes away. It always seems like I will never get this credit card balance to go away. If that is you, we are going to teach you how to get out of debt today. So that is what we're going to be doing today on this episode. I'm going to give you very actionable things that you should be doing when we go through this. This is going to be one of those things that if you are taking notes, we will try to create here a breakdown of exactly what we're talk talk about with the 7 method, maybe a PDF guide and we'll send it out to you all. So if you're interested in that, please shoot us an email and we will send it over. But here in this episode, we're going to dive into these seven steps so that we can get you out of this high interest debt. Now, before we jump into it, one thing I want to note is what is high interest debt? So high interest debt, our definition here at Master Money in the Personal Finance podcast is high interest debt is any debt above a 6% interest rate. If it has above a 6% interest rate, that means you have high interest debt. Okay? And so I want you to focus on all the debt above a 6% interest rate that is not your mortgage. The beautiful thing about your mortgage is obviously it's a longer term debt that you're going to be paying down and you can always eventually refinance that mortgage if rates ever drop. And so this is going to be one of those things that we want to focus on everything outside of our mortgage currently when we are paying down this debt. Okay? And so that is going to be one big, big focus. But we got to understand what high interest debt is. It's anything above a 6% interest rate. Now, the reason why we focus on that is because typically below a 6% interest rate, if you are someone who invests your dol, if you invest in something like the S P500, or if you invest in something like index funds and ETFs, for example, on average, if you're investing it properly, you can get a 7 to 10% rate of return. So your dollars are better served. If you have like a 3% mortgage, your dollars are better served. Obviously investing those dollars instead of paying down that mortgage super fast. That is the math behind this equation and why we think about it this way is 6% and above is always going to be those dollars are better served paying down that debt because compound interest is working against you. Now, if you have debt above an 8% interest rate or above an 8% interest rate, you need to attack it with a vengeance. And we're going to talk about that here in a second. But high interest debt is the wealth killer that we are going to focus on today. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right, step one, and this might sound obvious to you, but we're going to show you why this has happened so incredibly frequently, is stop borrowing immediately. The number one way to get out of a hole is to stop digging yourself deeper in that hole. And what a lot of people will do is when they get into debt, their psychology is like, oh, I'm just hopeless. I'm just going to continue to dig deeper and deeper and deeper into this. That is the absolute wrong thing to do. You must cut off the bleeding. You must cut it off immediately in order to be able to conquer this debt. Every single additional swipe with the credit card adds weight to your debt. It adds time, it adds more hours that you have to go out and work to pay off this debt. At some point in time, you are going to have to pay off this debt debt. And so you need to cut it off immediately. And if you are still borrowing, this is like running a marathon instead just adding more and more weight to your backpack as you get further along down the journey, it is going to eventually knock you down and you're not going to be able to get up. And that is the most important thing that you need to understand now. You need to say this to yourself. This is about shifting your identity. Because a lot of times people get into debt because of psychology reasons. Oh, they feel like they deserve this thing or they just don't understand how to spend their dollars in a Number of different ways. And so the deeper you start to dig your hole, more and more you are getting yourself into trouble. And so you have to be the type of person that says to yourself, I am done with this for good. I am not doing this anymore. I am not going to continue on this debt journey. I am absolutely done with debt. See, because I want you to say this right now. Debt is no longer an option. This is not an option for you anymore. It's not an option for you to go further into credit card debt or to get more personal loans or get these payday loans. None of these are worth it in the long run, trust me. You need to make sure that you have a plan in place to get this paid down. So what should you do right now to stop the bleeding? One, get rid of your credit cards. You could freeze them. You could literally put them in the freezer with some water if you want to, and freeze them in the freezer. I would just cut them up. If you are in credit card debt, you are done with credit cards. There are no more credit cards in your life currently. Until this debt is paid off and even in the future, you need to get rid of those credit cards immediately. So credit card debt is the number one, stop using Buy Now, Pay later is number two, Buy Now, Pay later is the gateway drug to getting into debt. I absolutely cannot stand Buy Now, Pay later specifically for people who are not financially responsible enough to handle Buy Now, Pay Later. So for most people, that is not an option for you now. The numbers are very telling. People who are utilizing Buy Now, Pay later, the number is rising month over month, year over year. On our other show, the business show, where we talk about market news, in that show, we see these numbers popping up all the time. Buy Now, Pay later continues to rise. Stop using it now. That is the next thing I want you to do. Three is turn off overdraft protection to your credit card. So some people have overdraft protection connected to their credit card, which is one of those schemes that I think I cannot believe banks are even allowed to do this. But when you overdraft on your checking account, what some banks will do is they will then draw on your credit card, putting you deeper into credit card debt with that 25% interest rate or whatever your credit card interest rate is. Credit card debt is the enemy to building wealth. You will never get rich if you go deeper into credit card debt. Next is I want you to delete stored info from all the shopping apps that you frequently use. So we are not going to keep, continue to keep shopping on Amazon for all these different things with our stored info with a really easy buy now button. Instead, we want to delete all that information. So it just makes us take a couple extra steps and actually think through our purchases and then pause any new loans. No car upgrades, no new personal loans, no new financing. We are not doing any of this until we get ourselves out of this big fat, juicy high interest debt. Okay? And so this is something where we definitely need to make sure that we are thinking through this. Now we cut up our credit cards. Well, how do I spend my dollars? We're going to be using ourselves the good old fashioned debit card for now. And the debit card is going to help us get through this process until we become financially responsible enough to see if we can pick back up a credit card again. But this is going to be one of those things. This sounds like tough love for me. And typically I don't get this tough on some people, but you need to understand how important and how emergent this is. And I'm doing this because I love all of you guys. I want you guys to thrive financially. That's why this podcast exists. We want you to do well financially. And the only way you are going to do well is if you take some of these actions. Next, I want you to write down your why. Why are you getting out of debt? Is it so you can actually pursue financial freedom? So you can get started investing? So you can build up that emergency fund? So you can spend more time going on vacation? So you can spend more time with your spouse in the future? So you can actually retire one day? What is the reason or reasons why you are getting out of debt? Write them down. I want you to put them on your mirror in your bathroom. Okay? This is going to be your motivation every single day. I want you to think through, how am I going to achieve those? If you're a Christian, if you're someone out there who prays, I want you to pray through this. God, give me the strength to be able to achieve this goal. Because this is going to absolutely change your mindset by having your why right there every time you're thinking to yourself, maybe I'll just make it one more 500 purchase. It's not going to hurt in the long run, is it? It's going to hurt in the long run. Instead, I want you to attack this debt with a vengeance. And so in step one, we need to change our mindset and stop digging deeper. This is all psychology. This is your mindset. Are you going to do it? Or are you going to be the person who falls back into debt and you are in this cycle for the rest of your life? You're going to be in that paycheck to paycheck cycle for the rest of your life if you do not make this change today. Today is the day we are getting out. That is step one. Step two is we are going to get a little tactical now. So we're going to list every single debt that you owe. Every debt that you owe. We're going to put it on this list. Now, why does this step matter? Well, most people guess their total debt and they actually have no idea how much they have in debt. And typically what I found is that when people are in debt and they list out their debts, first I ask them to, hey, tell me how much debt you got. And they'll say, oh, I've got $15,000 worth of debt. Debt. Then we put it all on paper and all of a sudden they realize, oh, shoot, I have $24,000 worth of debt. If I don't pay this off faster, it can grow to $40,000 worth of debt pretty quickly. Second reason why we do this is seeing it all in one place changes it from overwhelming to conquerable. You can actually go out and conquer this and make this happen. Take action to make this happen. Okay, that is going to be the second thing. Three, clarity creates confidence, meaning that you're not avoiding anymore. You're taking control. What a lot of people like to do is they like to shove their debt in a corner and pretend like it's not there. Why? And I get it, because it brings up those feelings of stress. It brings up those feelings of anxiety. It really makes you have to worry day in and day out. But let me tell you something. When it comes to your finances, some of those feelings will be helpful when it comes to attacking this debt and getting it paid down. Because once you start to see progress, all of a sudden that stress and anxiety, the pressure, it starts to relieve a little bit. It starts to go down a little bit. And then all of a sudden what's happening here is now you see some of this progress and you're like, man, I can do this. I can do this over the course of the next 18 months or 24 months or 36 months, however long you think it's going to take you, you have the power to do this. And it starts by putting it all on paper. So how do we list this out and how do we put it on paper? Well, there's going to be a tactical way that I want you to specifically do this because you need to know what you're up against and you need to have a plan to beat this. And so what we're going to do is we're going to list out our debts and we're going to put four different columns. Okay? Column one is going to be the name of your debt. So this could be your Chase credit card, this could be your student loan, this could be your auto loan. It doesn't matter what it is. I want you to list all of those debts in the name of debt. Second is I want you to put the current balance that you have on that debt. Maybe your credit card has $5,000, maybe your auto loan has 15,000, maybe your student loan has $30,000. Doesn't matter what it is. Then I want you to put a third column. What is the minimum payment for that debt? And this is a very important number that we need to know because this is going to help us tactically attack this debt. And then number four is the interest rate. Now, the interest rate obviously is going to be one of the most important factors on what we need to know when it comes to attacking this debt as well. Okay, now what should you include? I want you to include your credit cards. I want you to include if you have personal loans, if you have student loans, if you have car loans, if you have medical debt, if you owe family members or friends. Because guess what, we're not going to be the type, type of people that borrows money when we promise to pay it back and not pay it back. That's not the way we're going to operate this thing. Okay? If you owe money to family and friends, also put that on this list. Okay? Now there's a couple of tools that you can use to do this. I just use Google Sheets. If you want to use a simple Google Sheets thing, you can list out these four different columns and then just put it in Google Sheets. If you have five different places that you have debt, if you have seven, if you have 10, I don't care how many pieces of debt you have, list each and every single individual credit card. List how, what the balance is, list the minimum payment and list the interest rate. Those are the four things I want you to list. Very, very simple. To create this sheet, you can also use tools like Monarch Money. You can use tools like YNAB to also put this together. But really I like to use Google Sheets because I want you to be able to look at it just up Front and really get yourself going. Now, what I would do is I would rank these debts once it's on this spreadsheet, I would try to put them in order. In order. One is by balance, how much balance do you have left on that debt that you need to pay back? And then number two is interest rate. We're going to put it in order of interest rate because we're going to talk through how we want to attack this debt going forward when we want to do this. So that's the first plan is we are going to lay this out on that spreadsheet and then we are going to next figure out ways to cut back expenses so we can have extra dollars to attack this debt. And then we're going to talk about our attack method after that. All right, so step three is we are going to cut back some expenses aggressively. Now, I am not a huge proponent of cutting back expenses for most people, but folks who are in high interest debt, I am a huge proponent of cutting back expenses because every single dollar when we are in this game matters. And so when we get some of these dollars back, we can take some of our extra dollars and put them towards our debt. So if you want to get out of debt fast, you have to free up cash. We call this finding money, meaning you have to find money within your current situation in order to pay off some of this debt. Now, here's why this really matters. Because every dollar you cut is a dollar that could go towards your debt, towards your financial freedom, towards your future by making sure you cut back some of those things. Now listen to me. You do not need to budget perfectly to be able to do this. Most people think, oh, I messed up my budget after month one or I messed up my spending plan after month two. I just, I'm not cut out for this. You will never have a perfect month when it comes to your spending plan. And what you need to note to is it's okay to make mistakes. We are going to make mistakes. I have never had a perfect spending month in my entire life. And so this is going to be the same thing for you and everybody else I talk to. Every single person you have ever heard in this podcast will admit the same thing to you. They have never had a perfect month spending in their entire life. If they did, they are a robot. And so for them, it's going to be a big, big deal for you to forgive yourself when it comes to your spending plan. Small cuts won't move the needle. You need big, bold moves is the next thing I Want you to note, meaning we're going to focus on the big cuts first. Then we can look at some of the smaller stuff. Just cutting back, you know, $5 here, $7 here. Making your own laundry detergent, that's not the stuff I want you to do. That does not make an impact. I want you to focus on the big ticket stuff. Okay? That's what we're going to look at. So this is going to be a temporary sacrifice for permanent freedom is the way I want you to think about this. Again, cutting back is a temporary sacrifice for permanent freedom. This is going to give you freedom of the chains of debt. So where should we start slashing? Let's get some easy wins first. I'm a huge believer in getting easy wins when it comes to our finances because that starts to give us momentum. It starts to push us forward and allow us to say, hey, I can do this. So one is canceling unused subscriptions is the easiest place to find money. So let's say, for example, you start to cut back on some of this money. Where we're going to use the CIA method. What does that mean? It means cut, identify, automate. Okay, CIA, this is the way we cut back money here at Master Money in the personal finance podcast. So first we're going to get an easy win with cutting unused subscriptions. Let's say you cut back on all your unused subscriptions and you're like, oh, shoot, I actually just cut back 50 bucks a month just by canceling these unused subscriptions. So you cut them. You are going to identify where it goes towards your debt payment, which we'll talk about how to order that in a second. And then you're going to automate those dollars towards that debt payment. Meaning that that if you save $50 on subscriptions, you need to instead take $50 more dollars and add it to the debt payment that you are prioritizing currently. Why? Because if you have $50, it just gets commingled in your checking account. You are going to spend it. My friends, how many times have you cut back money or you saved with a coupon or you save money somewhere else and then all of a sudden you're like, well, what? I saved that for the money just went somewhere else. It just floated somewhere else that I did not care about. That is why we use the CIA method. You cut, but identify and then automate it towards your financial goal. That is gonna be the most important thing that you can do. So one is go into your subscriptions, start cutting back, start cutting back the ones that you are not using. I'm not saying you have to get rid of Netflix if you watch Netflix every day. That's not what I'm saying whatsoever. I'm saying you most likely have unused subscriptions that you are not currently using and you need to make sure that you cut those out. Two, pause out dining or limit it to one times a week. Okay? This is going to be one of those things where dining out is a luxury and making food at home, this is just personal finance. One on one. Making food at home is cheaper. Now, you may try to argue with me about that in a number of different ways, but it is. The math does not lie. So pause dining out or limit to one times per week as a treat. Every single week. Okay? I'm not trying to cut this back long term. This is why I don't like cutting back. Because I want you to have freedom with your money. But the only way to have freedom with your money is to get rid of some of this high interest debt, especially if you have credit card debt. Number three is you can switch to a cheaper phone plan. Mint Mobile is a great option. We have them linked up down below in the show notes. But if you switch to a cheaper phone plan, you can save yourself hundreds of dollars per month. Number four is stop all impulse purchases. Any impulse purchase that is not a need or a necessity is something that you definitely want to stop going forward. Now, if you're in a lot of debt and you realize, oh man, I am in a ton of debt right now, I have no idea how I'm going to get out of this situation, let's talk about the big, big wins that you can do. Okay? These big wins will be temporary and then you can go back to your original lifestyle. One is to move to a cheaper apartment if possible. Meaning that if you are in a really nice apartment and you just realized, shoot, I got myself into a little pickle here and I spent way too much money on housing. And part of the reason why I'm in debt is because I am house poor and I'm spending 50% of my income on my apartment and rent or I'm spending 50% of my income on my mortgage. Well, if you're doing that, most likely you're in debt because of your housing. And so switching over to a cheaper apartment can save you thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every single year. That is a huge impact win. Making laundry detergent is not a huge impact win. Saving thousands of dollars on housing is a huge impact. When two is if you are in over your head on car payments mainly. I cannot believe how much people spend on car payments currently. And if you're in over your head on car payments, then you need to sell your car and get a cheaper car. People who are serious about getting out of debt will do this. People who are not serious about getting out of debt and they just like to think about it in fantasy land will not do it. And that is okay if that's you. But you got to see where your priorities are and your actions are going to dictate what your actual priorities are. And so if you're not willing to do that, if you're in $50,000 worth of high interest debt, you need to do that. Okay, this is where I'm talking about. If you're in $5,000 of high interest debt, this is probably less likely that you need to do that as long as you think you can pay it off within 12 to 18 months. This is a very high priority for a lot of people because most people are drowning in car payments and credit card debt. So typically you have just over leveraged yourself, which is why you're in this situation. Okay, now I feel for you. I understand what this situation can feel like. It's stressful, but you have to make some big moves in order to make a big impact on your debt. Three, this is a lot harder for someone with a family or if you have, you know, people in your life. But if you are someone who is single or you're just dating, get a roommate. Reduce your housing costs that way. If you get a roommate and they, they pay you 700 to $1,000 to $2,000 per month, depending on where you live, you could take all of those dollars and put them towards your debt. So let's just say, for example, you get a roommate and they pay you $1,000 per month to live with you. Your rent's $2,000 a month and now you get a roommate and now your rent's $1,000 per month and you take that extra $1,000 and you put it towards your debt, that's an extra $12,000 per year that you can pay down your debt. You have no idea how impactful that can be long term towards your debt if you actually make that move. We have to make sacrifices sometimes so that we can reduce our overall liabilities and mistakes that we have made in the past. And that's okay. Delay major purchases if you can. So any major purchase that you want to make, I would delay it as long as possible. It's really Important to make sure that you do that and then pause vacation plans for the time being until we start to get out of debt. It is really important. We got to claw our way out of that. So the big three rule is one thing I want most of you to note is when you're cutting back expenses, you want to focus on the big three, which is housing, food and transportation. Those are the three areas that I want you to attack first. So I'm talking through some of the quick wins, but housing, food and transportation are the big areas that most people can make the biggest impact on. If you can cut back in those three areas, that will truly, truly make a big difference for what you are doing now. Now, what to do now is I would review your spending over the course of the last 30 to 60 days. What areas are you making mistakes, identify those mistakes, highlight it in your bank statement, whatever you want to do. What I like to do is I like to go good old fashioned print off the bank statement, or you can use a tool like Monarch Money where you can see it all automatically. I automate pretty much everything with my finances, but when I'm doing this with other people, what I like to do is sometimes I'll take the sheets on an iPad or I'll print them off and I will go look through all their expenses and I will tell them, highlight the ones that are the big mistakes for you. What do you think is an actual mistake? And they'll start, boom, highlighting each one and then you're going to identify those and then you're going to say to yourself, well, I'm not going to continue to make this mistake or I'm going to cut back on this so that I can move forward and be able to pay off this debt. And then in the future, if it really does bring me value, I can spend more dollars on the things that bring me value. But you got to think about what your values are. And right now, your major value, your major priority is to get out of debt. All right, let's jump into step four. Next, real estate. It's been a cornerstone of wealth building for generations, but it's also often a major headache for investors. 3:00am Maintenance calls, tenant disputes, property taxes. Enter the fundrise flagship real estate fund, a 1.1 billion dollar real estate portfolio built for you. We're Talking more than 4,000 single family homes and thriving Sunbelt communities, 3.3 million square feet of in demand industrial facilities, and all professionally managed by an experienced team. With the flagship fund, you're tapping into real estate's most attractive qualities, Long term appreciation potential, a hedge against inflation diversification beyond the stock market. Check, check and check. 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Learn to budget responsibly right from the start. She spends a little less and puts more into savings. Keeps the blood pressure low and credit score raising. She's cutting debt right out of her life. She tracks her cash flow on a spreadsheet at night. Boring money moves make kind of lame songs but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet. BNC bank brilliantly boring since 1865. Step four is you're going to choose your payoff method. Now. For the longest time, we have talked about one specific payoff method that I really, really like and the payoff Method that I like originally is to pay off high interest debt, the highest interest rate first, all the way down to the lowest interest rate. I have since read a ton of data and a ton of studies on this because a lot of data has come out over the course of the last five years as to what happens based on different debt payoff plans. We're going to talk about both debt payoff plans here in a second, but there are two different debt payoff plans that are out there. One saves you more money, but one actually helps you finish the race. And the savings difference really is not that big of an impact. And so I'm going to show you the difference here in a second. So the first one is called the Debt Avalanche. Long, long, long time listeners know our first debt episode that we ever did, we called this the debt wrecking ball. Because you're going to be like Miley Cyrus and you're coming in like a wrecking ball on that debt. And what this is is this is the math method, meaning this is the mathematically fastest way to pay down debt debt. The problem is money is more of a psychology game and not a math game, even though most people think it's a math game. So let's talk about this for a second. The way that the debt avalanche works is you pay off the highest interest rate debt first, regardless of what the balance is. So you could have four different areas of debt. You could have $50,000 in a high interest auto loan, you could have $2,000 in a credit card loan, you could have $2 thousand dollars in a personal loan, and you can have $500 on a credit card. But if that auto loan is the highest debt, the way the avalanche method works is that you are paying off that auto loan first, you are attacking that auto loan. Now, mathematically, this could save you the most money and it could save you the most interest. And it does get you out of debt fastest on paper. This is the reason why I always liked it was because mathematically it made the most sense. The problem is that for most people, if you do this, the progress can feel slow and discouraging, meaning that you will not stick with it because it feels like you are paying off this big mountain of debt. The biggest line item, if it's the highest interest, you've been paying that off for months, months and months and months. And as you know, you get into month four, you get into month five, you get into month six, you get into month nine. All of a sudden this feels like a slog, like you have been Sacrificing for a long time. And so you feel like you're making no progress because you're still attacking the same debt while you still have the lower balance debts also in place. And so many people will lose steam early on. And a ton of studies have shown this. Well, here's the second method that you can look at, and this was popularized by Dave Ramsey, and it's called the debt snowball method. Now, I think this is more so the motivation method. I mean, this is the method that allows people to stay motivated throughout their debt journey. The way that this works is you pay off the smallest balance first, regardless of what your interest rate is. And what happens is you get a quick win. One debt is gone, and then your confidence goes up. So let's say, for example, that you have a 300 store credit card and it's only 12%, but you also have a bigger credit card debt that's 24%. Okay? If you pay off that 300 credit card first, then you have the confidence. One is down. I only have one more left to go. And then you roll over all of those other payments that you were paying towards a $300 credit card into the bigger balance credit card. And this is going to give you the motivation to, hey, move on to the next one, to move on to the next one, and you're actually making progress, meaning you're knocking them off the list. And so what happens here is this A creates early quick wins, which I am a firm believer in when it comes to personal finance. But it also helps people stay consistent and finish the plan because they're actually seeing progress. We, as humans, we need to see progress when it comes to our finances or anything in life. When you go to the gym and you feel like you look exactly the same for the last decade, it's not really motivating to continue to go to the gym. And so you want to make sure that you feel like you're making progress when it comes to this. Now, there may be a bit more of interest overall, but honestly, it's not a ton. And we'll show an example of how much it actually is. Now, there was a study done at Northwestern, okay, And they looked at people using the debt snowball versus the debt avalanche, okay? And they studied a group of people that were doing this. People using the debt snowball method were more likely to eliminate all of their debts compared to those trying to pay off the highest interest rate first. Even though the avalanche is technically better, people often quit when they don't feel progress. And the snowball method kept them going. In fact, here's a quote from the co author of the study. A small win early in the process make people feel they are making progress and that makes all of the difference. That's by Dr. David Gal, who is the co author of that study. And so this is something where we are seeing a direct impact with a number of different studies that the debt snowball is actually the way to go because it keeps them motivated. And motivation is key when it comes to paying off debt. So here's what I want you to do. If you are incredibly motivated and mathematically inclined, you can look at doing the debt avalanche. But for most of you, I would recommend the debt snowball, meaning listing all of your debts from the lowest balance to the highest balance and attacking that lowest balance first and making minimum payments on the rest. And once that lowest balance is paid off, you take all the dollars that you were allocating towards that lowest balance balance and it goes to the next lowest balance. Boom. Now we're attacking that one, we're getting that paid off. Those two are paid off. Boom. Now we're taking both those payments and we're putting it towards the next one. And we are going down the line staying motivated and being able to pay off that debt. Now here is an example, okay. Because I want to show you how big of an impact this actually has. Let's say, for example, that you have credit card a with an 18% interest rate and the balance is $1,000. Credit Card B has a $3,000 balance with a 22% interest rate. And then you have a loan at a 6% interest rate that is at $10,000. Well, if you have $500 per month to pay towards that debt, if you did the debt avalanche, we ran the numbers. The total time to Debt free is 30 months and total interest paid is $2030. If you did the snowball, the total time to debt free is 32 months. So only two months longer and the total interest paid is $2,300. So that means it took two months longer and it costs you $270 more in interest for $13,000 worth of debt. That's not nothing, but it's not enough to override the psychology and the progress that you're making within the debt snowball, which is why if more people are more likely to finish paying off their debt with the debt snowball, I'm going to highly recommend that most of you kind of attack with that method as well. Now, again, if you're mathematically Inclined. Maybe you're an accountant or you're somebody out there who, like, really just loves to crunch the numbers. And you want to maximize efficiency and you want to make sure that you can get all this paid off, then fine, you go ahead and do it with the debt avalanche. This is why I give you the option. But I think the debt snowball for most of you. List them from lowest balance to highest balance when it's on your spreadsheet there. And I want you to pay off lowest balance first, then the next one, then the next one, and just attack each and every single one of these and making sure that you are rolling the previous balance over to the next one. That is why it becomes a snowball, because it grows and grows and grows until you can pay it all off. That is the key when it comes to this. Getting out of debt is a behavior problem, not a math problem. And motivation always, always, always is going to beat the spreadsheets. And that's what I want you to remember when you choose a payoff method. Now, let's get to step five. All right, so step five is I want you to make extra payments every single month. See, minimum payments are what keep you into debt for years and years and years. Extra payments are the secret weapon to pay down debt fast. Now, minimum payments are designed to keep you paying interest, not help you win. And even with just a hundred dollars each month. Month. You can knock off your timeline by years with just an extra $100 every single month. Every extra dollar goes straight to principal. And that means you are making progress on your debt. So here's how you do this, is once you're looking at all your debts and you are starting to make those minimum payments, you want to take your extra dollars and attack that lowest balance first. Lowest balance. So that you can start to get that thing paid off. So let's say, for example, you have 500 bucks a month. All your minimum payments equal 300, where you're going to take that extra 200 every single month, and you are going to attack that lowest balance until that thing is paid off. Because making these extra payments is how you actually are going to make progress when it comes to these debts. Put every extra dollar that you can find. Let's say you sell a bunch of things on Facebook Marketplace. And this, I highly recommend you do this when it comes to kind of paying off this debt. But let's just say you sell a bunch of things on Facebook Marketplace, throw that extra cash towards the balance that you're currently attacking, and so everything Else, you could think of this as a military mission, okay? Every other debt that you have, you're just trying to hold the line. You're just trying to make sure that that debt does not get any worse. And then you are attacking one specific debt with every extra dollar that you have until you win that battle. Then you move on to the next one. Then you move on to the next one. And I want you to think about this as you are taking control of your money overall. That is going to be the huge key when it comes to paying some of this stuff off. Now, let's give a real example. Let's say you have $5,000 on a credit card at a 20% interest rate. Honestly, a 20 interest rate rate is pretty low when it comes to a credit card debt. That's how bad it is when you have credit card debt and the minimum payment on that card is $150 per month. Well, if you only make minimum payments, you'd be out of debt in five years. So it would take you five years at $150 per month for a $5,000 credit card at 20%, and you'd pay over $3,000 in interest. So you'd almost double the amount that you borrowed on that credit card just in interest over the course of that five years. So the items that you bought, let's say, for example, you bought a fridge and some other appliances, well, those appliances are going to cost double what you actually pay for them over the course of your life. Now, if you added an extra hundred dollars every single month, this is the power of extra payments. You're done in just over two years. You would literally save three years and you would only pay $1,500 in interest instead of 3,000. You cut your interest in half just by 100 extra dollars. And if you added an extra $250 extra every single month, you would save $2,200 in interest and you would pay it off in 18 months instead of five years. This is the power of extra payments, even on small scale, and how it can actually impact your money significantly. So where do you find that extra money to find those extra payments? A, you're going to find cash from step three, just how we talked about. You're going to try to find new income, which we're going to talk about here in a second. And we're going to look at tax refunds, we're going to look at bonuses. Let's look at side gigs, cash gifts, garage sales. All of this counts. We're going to Try to sell things, get rid of stuff in your house that you're not using. Remove those things that you really don't use at all. Try to sell some of your clothing items on ebay. I've seen people making really good money on ebay doing stuff like that. There's so many different things that you can do to take this extra cash and throw it at this debt. The faster you get this paid down, the sooner you can go back to living your life again and enjoying life the way that you want to live it. Now, I'm not saying you have to live like a hermit while you're paying off debt, although for some people, if you were in high interest debt, I would recommend it. But I'm not saying that you have to do that. But what I am saying is every extra dollar that you can find will help you get this pay down faster. Even if it's $25, I don't care if it's $50 a month. It will make a big, big difference. All right, step six is to increase your income and find hidden money. So this is a big one, especially for people who are in some significant debt. Is we need to increase our income and find a way to pay down and destroy this debt as fast as we possibly can. There's a limit to how much you can cut. And for a lot of you, you may be cutting back and saying to yourself, well, shoot, I cannot cut back anymore. What do I do now? Well, that's where income comes in because there is no ceiling on how much money that you can earn. And every dollar you make beyond your baseline expenses is a debt killer, meaning that you can start to destroy debt. You can attack debt with any dollar you make above your baseline expenses, above your necessities, above the things that you absolutely need to make sure you're spending dollars on. And most people, this is the realization I want a lot of you to have is most people have hidden money just sitting around. They just haven't looked for it yet. And so you need to make sure that you understand how to go out and find money. So here's how to increase your income. Quick win number one. You know your boy loves quick wins. So here's a quick win number one, Sell something this week. I want you to sell something of value this week that you do not use anymore. Old electronics, gear, clothes, furniture, anything you do not use. I still sell things. I am not shy about selling. I will sell something on Marketplace for $5. I don't care. You know why? Otherwise I'm going To throw it away. Why not just put it as a porch pickup or wherever you want to meet or however you want to do it, Whatever you're comfortable with. But I will sell things for small amounts of money still right now. And maybe that goes back to my frugal days, but I will still sell things for low amount. For example, I just realized, hey, there's three golf clubs in my golf bag that I don't use anymore. I put them up for sale yesterday. You need to continuously do this cycle of selling things you do not use. Why? Because it's just accumulating dust. The older it gets, the less value it actually has. And if you're really not using something, just sell it. There is no reason to keep it around. If it's not convenient for you to do like a porch pickup and you're just, you're worried about strangers like coming to your front door or whatever else, then you know, you can meet somebody somewhere and you find things of value. But that's one thing I would definitely do. Utilize Facebook Marketplace, Put it on offerup, put it on ebay. Ebay, actually you can get more dollars and more value for some of this stuff. And you'd be shocked how fast some of this stuff adds up. Secondly is to pick up a side hustle. I'm not a huge proponent of like driving for doordash or Instacart OR Rover or TaskRabbit for long term. But when you're in debt and you need to, you know, come up with some cash quickly, it is a great option for you to make some extra money. Especially if you rather it's either you sitting around watching Netflix or you can go out and earn some more money to get your debt paid off. Three is to freelance. You can use online platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. I'm always using Fiverr and Upwork to try to find people to help us with specific things from creating slides to helping us with projects. There's so many different ways that you can use that, that if you have some skills, you can do some really cool things there. You can babysit, you can tutor, you can mow lawns, you can start a side hustle. We talk about a lot of side hustles that can turn into full time businesses. You could do something like that that helps you through that progress. Even with just five to 10 extra hours a week, you can bring in an extra $500 per month. And that's your goal because that $500 per month is going to help you pay down that debt. Three is the place that you spend most of your time. You need to ask for a raise there. So ask for a raise at your day job. See if you can get some overtime going. See what you can do to earn more money where you currently work. And those extra dollars, I want you to put them towards debt payments. You can also start a service based hustle. Because a service based hustle means that you do not have to invest much money to start it. And you can do cleaning or car detailing or power washing or dog walking or tutoring. So look for low cost and high margin on some of this stuff. Now here's other ways to find hidden money is a. I want you to call and negotiate some of your bills. So your cell phone bill, your cable bill, your Internet bill, all of those need to be negotiated. I tell this story a lot, but a couple of months ago I negotiated my cable bill from $240 down to $110. They just raised it on me. It was, you know, one of those things. My cable Internet just got way too high. I saw the bill, I've never made a phone call faster, started negotiating with them and they brought it all the way down to $110. You need to negotiate all three of those bills. Cell phone, cable, Internet. Also stop automatic payments for things you no longer use. That subscription that you are no longer using, that gym membership that you are no longer using. Make sure you stop those automatic payments. Check for refunds, rebates, or unclaimed money online. There are a bunch of ways to do that. But look for ways to find more money and then reclaim your tax refund so you can adjust your W4 to get more cash flow if you are over your withholding. If you get a big refund every single year, adjust your W4 and you can get more cash flow month in and month out. Now what to do? Now I want you to pick one way to increase your income this week. Just one. And I want you to do it now. Secondly, I want you to list three things to sell within the next seven days that's going to go towards your debt. And I want you to take any extra money you find and put it straight towards debt. We can go back to step five to do that. All right, next we're going to jump to step seven. Now step seven is to stay laser focused until you're done. Now this is where most people fall off because they get bored. Life gets busy and they just don't feel like doing it anymore. They want to go back and live their life Again, they want to do everything they want without having any restriction whatsoever. My friends, you got yourself into this because you didn't have restriction. And you will never get yourself financial freedom if you do not stay motivated going forward. So here is why this step matters. Because debt freedom isn't about intensity for a week. It's about consistency for a season. This is a season of life that will go away. But you have to stay consistent during this season in order to see progress work. There will be moments where it's tempting to slow down. There's going to be moments where you want to spend a little more more or take your foot off the gas. I encourage you to not do that. I encourage you. Hey, listen to this segment of this episode over and over again if you need to. I encourage you to not do that. Why? Because on the other side of this journey is financial freedom. And on the other side of this journey is a financial foundation where you can get started completely debt free. Where you don't have a negative net worth anymore. And you can start to make progress forward for your future of your family, for the future of your spouse, for the future of of your children, for the future of your parents. And you can change your financial life forever. If you continue on this. Just remind yourself freedom is the goal. It's not about the money. If you're mistaking this thinking, I'm talking about money here, this is not about the money. This is about your life and being able to have freedom from your life, from the chains of debt. These banks are not your friend and we need to make sure that we get out of debt so that we can conquer this. I cannot stress this enough, so I want you to shift your mindset. I will not stop until I hit $0 in debt. Until I hit that $0 balance of high interest debt, I will not stop. Because my future is worth it. Your future is worth it. And you are capable of doing this. The finish line is closer than it feels. It's time to lock in. So here's how to stay focused. I'm going to give you some tips on how to stay focused through this. This is why it's step seven. Because most people don't talk about this portion of it. I think it's one of the most important things you have to stay motivated. One is you need to track your progress weekly, every single week. Boom. I paid down this debt. Boom. I made this minimum payment. And honestly, if you continue to look at this over and over again, even if you get 50 extra dollars, you find 50 bucks put it towards debt that week. This is going to keep you motivated going forward. For most of you, I would update my debt totals every week, if not every month. But honestly, every week just keeps you motivated. You can use a visual tracker, you can use a thermometer or a checklist or a spreadsheet, but do something to make sure that you are watching this progress. Go up off to celebrate milestones, paid off your first debt. Do something free and meaningful. Go for a hike, do a beach day, do a movie night at home. But come up with a way to celebrate so that you can have some of these small wins to give you some of that big momentum. Small wins equal big momentum going forward, which is why we do this. Three is to find a support system. So this is the reason why we are creating the personal finance community that we are working on right now, is for example, if somebody is in debt, we want to help you find a support system, finding people who are trying to achieve the same goal, who are looking towards that common goal, and they are doing it together. So tell a family member or a friend that you are working on this goal. Join a financial community like what we're building and listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, and fill your brain with motivation. So for me first, specifically, when I was very early on in my financial independence journey, podcasts and YouTube channels are what got me through and kept me motivated. I would listen to them every single day. There was a bunch of shows that I would listen to to out there, like Dough Roller, like Radical Personal Finance. There's a ton of shows out there that I would listen to. Stacking Benjamins. A lot of them are my friends now. But early on, I would listen to these shows every single day. To stay motivated, I need daily motivation. That's just the way I am. And for a lot of you, I think you're the same way. You need to stay consistent, listen to YouTube videos, listen to podcasts like this one and start to motivate yourself day in and day out. Four is avoid lifestyle creeps. So lifestyle is going to creep in. Don't upgrade your car, don't upgrade your wardrobe just because you made a little bit of progress. You want to stay lean and focused until this debt is gone. Okay. Five is always write down that why and keep writing down that why. Always looking at that why. So when you're tracking your progress weekly, I would also make sure you're looking at that why. But again, I would keep it on my mirror. Your big why of why you want to get out of debt. Here's a great example. If you don't know what it is. I'm getting out of debt so I can change my family's legacy forever. We are no more going to be tied to the chains of debt. Instead, I'm going to change their legacy forever. So here's what I want you to do now. One is I want you to set your debt free date. Even if it's just a rough estimate kind of your plan that you put into place. I want you to build a ritual. So a weekly check in, a debt tracker update or a goal reminder that is going to give you a weekly ritual where you're thinking about this and promise yourself and maybe your family as well that you will will not stop until this debt is gone. I want you to say that every single week. It sounds weird. You whisper to yourself right now, I will not stop until this debt is gone. Because getting started is hard. Staying focused is harder. That is the hardest thing of all. This is why most people aren't disciplined, why most people can't lose the weight in the gym. This is why most people can't get debt free because they can't find discipline. You are going to change that today every single time you don't feel disciplined. Come back to this section of the episode. Listen to this portion again. You will become financially free. And the way to do this is by going to $0 in debt. That's the 70 system. And now it's all yours. So listen, each and every single one of you, I want you to take these steps to get out of debt. If you are in high interest debt, this is going to be one of the most powerful things that you do in your life. And when you finish this journey, you are going to be so proud of yourself that you did this. And if you are someone out there who is interested in getting community of people together who are fighting to pay off debt, let me know and I'll try to put that together early on here as we start to put together this community. Because this community is going to be something we're going to keep ourselves motivated. We're going to work through all of our big, big ticket items. We're going to build wealth together. This is going to be the community. I think that we're going to have the wealthiest individuals of any community out there. So I am so incredibly excited for each and every single one of you to join that as we are working through this and building out this community again. Listen, thank you so much for being here on this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. Our entire goal is to bring you as much value as possible, and I hope we did that today. Share this episode with a family member, co worker, or friend if you think this would help them as well, and we will see you on the next episode.