September 22, 2025 • 19 mins
Feeling overwhelmed by debt? In this solo episode, Misty Lynch breaks down actionable steps you can take to regain control of your finances and move towards financial stability.
Websites:
- Understanding the psychological and practical impact of debt
- How to get clear on your financial situation without shame or judgment
- Navigating student loans, including options for public service loan forgiveness
- Building a realistic budget and prioritizing debt repayment strategies
- Staying focused on your own goals and avoiding lifestyle comparison traps
Websites:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Demis Defying Money podcast, where each week
you will hear unforgettable conversations with expert guests about success, money, business,
and small steps you can take to elevate your life
and wealth. Now here's your host, Misty Lynch.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey there everybody, it's miss Dy Lynch and today we're
going to do a solo episode of Demis Defying Money.
I wanted to talk more about the NBC segment that
I did about overwhelming amounts of debt. If you missed it,
I was working with a nurse out in New York
who's a single mother who had changed careers from being
(00:39):
a baker to wanting to go to nursing schools so
she could have a job that paid well and had
more flexible hours. All of the things that were we
are told to do, you know, very responsible things. I
don't think anybody wants a nurse who's not trained or qualified.
But it did turn into quite a bit of student
loan debt for her, where she felt like all the
(01:00):
money that was coming in was going out. She's relying
on credit cards. It was tough to be independent and
not have to rely on family members. And this is
something that a lot of people are facing at different
points in their life. It's not necessarily just people first
starting out. Anybody who like hers, changing careers, people who
experience job loss and then have to take a different
(01:22):
job for a different pay. It's something that can happen
at any time. So I wanted to talk today about
being overwhelmed by debt and some of the things that
you can do if it is starting to feel difficult
to manage.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
This episode of Demystifying Money with Misty Lynch is proudly
sponsored by Soundview Financial Advisors. Visit www dot Soundview Financial
Advisors dot com to learn more.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I've personally used debt in a lot of different ways.
I'm somebody who put my CFP training on a credit card,
which really was the best option I had in order
to access the education that I wanted. And a lot
of us, you know, when it comes to doing something,
we do need to look, especially if we want to
change where we are and where we want to get to.
(02:11):
Sometimes that does require an investment. And so I do
think that there's plenty of people who have debt, and
I know a lot of times people talk about good
debt or bad debt, and I think it is just
important to look at it without judgment and not be
so hard on ourselves. If maybe the debt that we
have isn't something that we would redo, or if it's
(02:32):
something that you know, maybe it was an impulsive credit
card bridges, it's it's just important to look at it
for what it is. So maybe you've got student loans
or credit card debt and it eats up most of
your paycheck, or you're trying to raise a child and
keep your head above water. So if this sounds like
you or somebody you love, hopefully this episode will be
helpful for you. So debt doesn't just live on a spreadsheet.
(02:55):
It lives in our minds, our body, and our relationship.
It's in the pit of your stomach when the bills
hit your inbox. It's the guilt of wanting a break
but knowing that you should work, that you should continuously
try to get that extra money just to pay off debt.
And it's also the shame that kind of keeps that
little voice inside our head that says we've done something wrong.
(03:16):
But the truth is, most of the people who I
meet with that are overwhelmed by debt, they're not irresponsible.
Mostly they're exhausted. They might have been making payments, they're trying.
You know, I don't know you know people who you know,
Even with certain things like student loan debt, I haven't
really talked to anybody who doesn't want to pay back
what they borrowed. It's just the fact that the servicers
(03:38):
and the payments and they're lower, and then the interest
keeps piling up and accumulating, and then they end up
owing double what they owe. It's just really difficult to
get ahead when it comes to debt, and especially it's
not easy for you to win if you've got high
interest rates or confusing loan types that you're dealing with
along with the rising cost of living. So the first
(03:59):
thing I want to do is take the shame and
throw it out. You're not broken, you're not bad with money.
You're just in a situation that's more common than you think.
That does require some more careful planning. So going back
to the woman that I worked with in New York, she,
like I said, as a single mom working as a
nurse in New York City, she makes sixty three dollars
(04:20):
an hour. So on paper, that sounds really good, but
the full picture includes thirty two hundred in rent after
school care for a six year old, one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars in student loan debt, half of it
was private, half was federal, and seventeen thousand in credit
card debt. And I know these numbers. They they're big,
and I think, really, you know, you look at what
(04:43):
she wanted to do. She was just she was stuck.
She was working over time, no time to breathe, no
idea how to get out of it. And she is
not alone. And that's what I think is important. We
don't all talk about this. She was super brave to
go on television and talk about this on a national broadcast.
I mean, that's somebody who is like, yeah, this is me.
(05:07):
I want I want to do better, I want help,
and I'm willing to like do whatever I have to
to figure it out. And she's doing essential work she
that you know, nurses, teachers, social workers, a lot of
these careers require a high level of education, expensive educations,
and they find themselves in a similar trap. So the
(05:29):
first thing we talked about together was simple but pretty
powerful and important. We got really clear on the numbers,
not with any shame or judgment really just the facts.
I needed to know exactly how much is coming in
each month, needed to know what her fixed expenses that
(05:49):
don't fluctuate are that includes her housing, the minimums on
her debt, her childcare. And then we looked at some
of the variable expenses that shift, like grosser ease and
personal care, gas, things like that that go up and
down every once in a while, just to kind of
get a better sense of how much it costs to
(06:09):
be her. And then we built a basic budget. And
this is a word that I've had people tell me
not to even use the word budget. It's not necessarily
about restriction or cutting, but it's really important if you
want to get out of debt or you want to
stop relying on credit cards, to know how much money
is there, how much is left. And then also if
(06:33):
you really can't afford your lifestyle where you live all
of these things, then sometimes we do have to either
make more money or make some other adjustments to figure
out how to close that gap. We can't fix the
things that we can't face. If you're feeling overwhelmed, this
is the first step for you too. You can't wait
(06:55):
till the perfect moment you can't wait. You have to
just start looking at what's those real numbers and then
figure out, okay, that's where you are at, and then
you can think about where you want to go. But
if we can't measure it and we don't know it,
then it's going to be really hard to make any
measurable change. And the next thing that we did, which
(07:16):
was shocking to Jade, was look at her debt and
what it consisted of. So only half of her student
loans were eligible for forgiveness. But she was a public servant,
so we talked about public service loan forgiveness, which is
something that is available for some federal loans after ten
years of payments under an income driven plan. It's only
(07:39):
you know, you have to go online. You can find
out if your employer is eligible for this. It is
still as of you know, of September twenty twenty five,
still still exists and it's still available for public service professionals,
and it was something that could be really impactful for her.
(08:00):
Her private loans are different. There's no forgiveness options when
you have private student loans or private credit card debt,
but there are potentially refinancing options and things that we
could look at. So knowing what kind of debt changes everything.
If you're somebody who's a nurse, a teacher, a government employee,
you might want to check for some programs that could
(08:21):
eliminate all of your federal student loan debt after a
certain number of years in qualifying payments. So we made
sure that we enrolled her in an income driven payment plan,
submitted her certification from her employer for public student loans,
and now she's on track to get those loans forgiven,
which will be a huge, a huge relief, and she's
(08:43):
still making you know, consistent payments. But it's really it's
really helpful, especially those people doing those those jobs, and
we need so desperately for people to go into those
fields and do Next, we looked at her credit card debt,
which at seventeen thousand dollars can balloon very fast. We
needed to identify the highest interest rate on the cards,
(09:07):
and so we started looking at her statements and showing
her exactly where that interest rate was. It's not always
easy to find, so we were you know, if you
look at the paper statement or you look online at
your statement, you should be able to find the APR
or the annual percentage rate, and so some of them
were north of twenty percent, which makes paying the minimum
(09:29):
barely make a dent in just the interest alone on
those payments. So we looked at ranking kind of which
debt we wanted to tackle first, so anything extra that
we could put towards that one card to start, you know,
And I think some people have heard of this as
like a debt avalanche. Avalanche you're looking at the highest
interest rate and you're putting extra money towards that debt.
(09:52):
Snowball is a different method, where you're looking at the
lowest balance. In her situation, I really felt like going
after the largest interest rate with it important regardless of
the balance, uh, because she didn't need motivation, She didn't
need a quick win to feel better. She was very
motivated anyway, and this was going to save the most
money over time. So we looked at, you know, putting
(10:14):
extra money towards that, and we considered certain things like
non credit and nonprofit credit counseling, balance transfer options. These
exist for some people, but with her, it was really
just making a plan with what we had. And the
key isn't like thinking you have to pay off overnight.
It's a plan that gives you traction. It still takes
time and hard work, but progress in this case is very,
(10:36):
very powerful. And then we wanted to, you know, start
to align her life with her priorities. And this was
some work that I can't do for people, but for her,
it was important to see is paying the thirty two
hundred in rent helping her or hurting her long term goals?
(10:57):
Should she consider going back in living with her parents'
short term to save money and breathe since she has
that option. Not everybody has the same options, but this
was one that she had personally with a close relationship
with her family, who would not have a problem with this,
so it was an option for her. And also we
(11:19):
looked at moving to different cities. So she was somebody
who mentioned like Virginia or Texas as places she could
have seen herself being, even though she has never lived
further from home than she is now. And those are
hard questions, but we kind of, you know, we looked
at that. We looked at the math. You know, her
income would be lower in those different states. She is
(11:41):
very hirable with her job, but she would have to
pick up some other expenses. Maybe the rent would be different,
but she wouldn't have family close by. Maybe childcare would
be less expensive, but she might have to rely on
it more because she wouldn't have her own organic network
of people. So, but it's important to think really without
limits about what could you do if you had to
(12:05):
find this money, how would you find it? And just
to get creative and kind of instead of having that
part of your brain that doubts and creates all of
these obstacles, to really think about what would you do
if you had to find five hundred dollars two hundred
dollars and see what comes up? And these were hard questions.
But when you're drowning in debt, it's easy to feel
like every day is just about surviving. But you have
(12:26):
to pause, you have to zoom out, and you have
to really consciously start to build the life that actually
works for you. It's not very motivating to just have
the goal of not being in debt anymore. There needs
to be a bigger picture goal that will keep you
motivated towards that. Maybe that's financial stability. Maybe that's sending
(12:48):
your daughter anywhere she wants to go for college. Maybe
it's maybe it's home, Maybe it's living where you want
to live. Maybe it's being able to travel with friends,
whatever that is for you, it's really important to take
some time to think about that and how becoming, you know,
how getting out from under you know, the debt burden
can help you get there and what that might feel like.
(13:11):
And not every solution is perfect. There's pros and cons
for a lot of things, but smaller shifts kind of
looking at the budget, taking a minute to see if
you're doing the things that you want to do or
if you don't enjoy them. And that's where things like
lifestyle creep can come in, especially for people who might
be financing most of their expenses on like a credit card.
(13:32):
Right now, maybe it feels like everybody's going out to
dinner three times a week. Maybe it feels like everybody's
going to this concert, even if the tickets are one
thousand dollars. It might feel like everybody is traveling, but
what is important to you and everybody might be in
a different situation. And also, you know you're looking at
(13:54):
the highlight reel of somebody else's life when you go
on social media. You're not necessarily seeing how much their
deal with if they're crying when the credit card bill comes.
We don't see those things. Those are not there. So
it's so important to figure out what matters to you
and to be very mindful of what doesn't matter to
you as well. So here are some final thoughts that
(14:17):
I want you to consider when you're feeling overwhelmed by debt.
The first thing would be to clarify everything that's going on.
First track your income and expenses. Start small, but you
can start. In this case, she had a job where
she could pick up overtime hours that are very lucrative.
So for her, maybe picking up additional income is more
(14:43):
beneficial than trying to cut expenses that can't be cut
much more without a big lifestyle change. Maybe you don't
have access to that, but there's things that you could
think about once you actually know the math and then
know the types of debt that you're in. You know,
if you have, you know depending on your bills, if
(15:04):
you have, you know, maybe you've been put in a
penalty rate for one late payment on your credit card.
You know, if you kind of know what the debt
is and what those interest rates are, you can reach
out to these lenders. And this is something I did
personally when I had a late credit card payment when
I was on maternity leave. I wasn't even thinking about
(15:25):
bills or what to pay, and all of a sudden,
my low credit card that I'd had for years was
thrown into like a twenty nine percent interest rate. So
I called, and I could have been like, oh my god,
I'm so embarrassed, I'm not going to reach out to them,
but instead, like the worst thing they could tell me
was like no, and then I would have started to
(15:47):
look around for other options or figured something out. But
when I called and explained the situation that I'd been
a client for like twelve years or something at that point,
they just changed it back. So if you know the numbers,
because if I wasn't paying attention, I might not have
noticed that for a while. So it's really important to
kind of take a look at that and then see
(16:07):
maybe there's better options for you. So knowing those those
things are really important. And then also once you do
know what you've got, attacking high interest debt, in my
personal opinion, is the way to go. Every dollar counts,
and so if you can start to eliminate the highest
debt and then kind of move that extra payment once
(16:31):
that card has gone down to the next one. I
do think that will be the fastest way to do it.
No matter what. Now, if it feels very motivating for
you to pay off that last five hundred dollars of
your student loan or of your car or whatever it
is that maybe has the lower interest rate, you can
go ahead. You can do it. It's fine, you know,
(16:51):
it's great. It feels so good to have those bills
paid off. But if you have a lot and you're
just trying to look at, how do I do this,
you know, in the most efficient way possible, I say
go for the highest jet first, and then create goals
that serve you. Don't look at your neighbors, don't just
look at Instagram. Be really really aware of the fact that, like,
(17:13):
this is something really new for us. You know, we
used to you know, used to be keeping up with
the Joneses and like driving by your neighborhood and who
has the better car in lawn, which was like stuff
that you could see with your two eyes, you know,
in your daily life. And now we're just inundated with
like everybody's life. We can see so many things, so
it's really difficult to kind of like not compare yourself
(17:37):
to everybody to this airbrushed, filtered version of life that
we're seeing. So try to be really clear on like
you and what matters to you, and and just kind
of stay in that lane, and like try to try
to stay focused because it can be so it can
be so easy to feel like, well, who cares everyone
(17:57):
else is in it, but you don't. Everybody else doesn't
have the same financial situations. So it's really important to
kind of do what you can and make sure that
you're trying to achieve your personal goals because nobody else
is going to really care too much about you, know
what happens. You know, if they're not you know, living
with you or home with you, and debt can feel
(18:21):
like it's dealing your future, But the truth is you
can take a step back. Can you get the right
tools and the right of them out of support. I've
seen people get out from under hundreds of thousands of
dollars in debt. It takes hard work, it is not easy,
but it is possible, and if you don't know where
to start, it could be a good time to look
at some of those financial tools that are available to
(18:42):
your workplace or even reaching out to you know, a
financial counselor or an educator to help, or a financial
planner if you have access to one or the ability to.
And just remember you when you talk to people about
your finances, that they should be there to help you
and not to judge. So I want to thank everyone
(19:03):
for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free
to like, share, and subscribe, and we'll talk again next week.
Thank you for joining us on another insightful episode of
Demonstifying Money. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate,
and leave a review. Stay tuned for more engaging conversations
on our next episode, and remember knowledge is the key
to financial empowerment.
Welcome to the Demis Defying Money podcast, where each week
you will hear unforgettable conversations with expert guests about success, money, business,
and small steps you can take to elevate your life
and wealth. Now here's your host, Misty Lynch.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey there everybody, it's miss Dy Lynch and today we're
going to do a solo episode of Demis Defying Money.
I wanted to talk more about the NBC segment that
I did about overwhelming amounts of debt. If you missed it,
I was working with a nurse out in New York
who's a single mother who had changed careers from being
(00:39):
a baker to wanting to go to nursing schools so
she could have a job that paid well and had
more flexible hours. All of the things that were we
are told to do, you know, very responsible things. I
don't think anybody wants a nurse who's not trained or qualified.
But it did turn into quite a bit of student
loan debt for her, where she felt like all the
(01:00):
money that was coming in was going out. She's relying
on credit cards. It was tough to be independent and
not have to rely on family members. And this is
something that a lot of people are facing at different
points in their life. It's not necessarily just people first
starting out. Anybody who like hers, changing careers, people who
experience job loss and then have to take a different
(01:22):
job for a different pay. It's something that can happen
at any time. So I wanted to talk today about
being overwhelmed by debt and some of the things that
you can do if it is starting to feel difficult
to manage.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
This episode of Demystifying Money with Misty Lynch is proudly
sponsored by Soundview Financial Advisors. Visit www dot Soundview Financial
Advisors dot com to learn more.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I've personally used debt in a lot of different ways.
I'm somebody who put my CFP training on a credit card,
which really was the best option I had in order
to access the education that I wanted. And a lot
of us, you know, when it comes to doing something,
we do need to look, especially if we want to
change where we are and where we want to get to.
(02:11):
Sometimes that does require an investment. And so I do
think that there's plenty of people who have debt, and
I know a lot of times people talk about good
debt or bad debt, and I think it is just
important to look at it without judgment and not be
so hard on ourselves. If maybe the debt that we
have isn't something that we would redo, or if it's
(02:32):
something that you know, maybe it was an impulsive credit
card bridges, it's it's just important to look at it
for what it is. So maybe you've got student loans
or credit card debt and it eats up most of
your paycheck, or you're trying to raise a child and
keep your head above water. So if this sounds like
you or somebody you love, hopefully this episode will be
helpful for you. So debt doesn't just live on a spreadsheet.
(02:55):
It lives in our minds, our body, and our relationship.
It's in the pit of your stomach when the bills
hit your inbox. It's the guilt of wanting a break
but knowing that you should work, that you should continuously
try to get that extra money just to pay off debt.
And it's also the shame that kind of keeps that
little voice inside our head that says we've done something wrong.
(03:16):
But the truth is, most of the people who I
meet with that are overwhelmed by debt, they're not irresponsible.
Mostly they're exhausted. They might have been making payments, they're trying.
You know, I don't know you know people who you know,
Even with certain things like student loan debt, I haven't
really talked to anybody who doesn't want to pay back
what they borrowed. It's just the fact that the servicers
(03:38):
and the payments and they're lower, and then the interest
keeps piling up and accumulating, and then they end up
owing double what they owe. It's just really difficult to
get ahead when it comes to debt, and especially it's
not easy for you to win if you've got high
interest rates or confusing loan types that you're dealing with
along with the rising cost of living. So the first
(03:59):
thing I want to do is take the shame and
throw it out. You're not broken, you're not bad with money.
You're just in a situation that's more common than you think.
That does require some more careful planning. So going back
to the woman that I worked with in New York, she,
like I said, as a single mom working as a
nurse in New York City, she makes sixty three dollars
(04:20):
an hour. So on paper, that sounds really good, but
the full picture includes thirty two hundred in rent after
school care for a six year old, one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars in student loan debt, half of it
was private, half was federal, and seventeen thousand in credit
card debt. And I know these numbers. They they're big,
and I think, really, you know, you look at what
(04:43):
she wanted to do. She was just she was stuck.
She was working over time, no time to breathe, no
idea how to get out of it. And she is
not alone. And that's what I think is important. We
don't all talk about this. She was super brave to
go on television and talk about this on a national broadcast.
I mean, that's somebody who is like, yeah, this is me.
(05:07):
I want I want to do better, I want help,
and I'm willing to like do whatever I have to
to figure it out. And she's doing essential work she
that you know, nurses, teachers, social workers, a lot of
these careers require a high level of education, expensive educations,
and they find themselves in a similar trap. So the
(05:29):
first thing we talked about together was simple but pretty
powerful and important. We got really clear on the numbers,
not with any shame or judgment really just the facts.
I needed to know exactly how much is coming in
each month, needed to know what her fixed expenses that
(05:49):
don't fluctuate are that includes her housing, the minimums on
her debt, her childcare. And then we looked at some
of the variable expenses that shift, like grosser ease and
personal care, gas, things like that that go up and
down every once in a while, just to kind of
get a better sense of how much it costs to
(06:09):
be her. And then we built a basic budget. And
this is a word that I've had people tell me
not to even use the word budget. It's not necessarily
about restriction or cutting, but it's really important if you
want to get out of debt or you want to
stop relying on credit cards, to know how much money
is there, how much is left. And then also if
(06:33):
you really can't afford your lifestyle where you live all
of these things, then sometimes we do have to either
make more money or make some other adjustments to figure
out how to close that gap. We can't fix the
things that we can't face. If you're feeling overwhelmed, this
is the first step for you too. You can't wait
(06:55):
till the perfect moment you can't wait. You have to
just start looking at what's those real numbers and then
figure out, okay, that's where you are at, and then
you can think about where you want to go. But
if we can't measure it and we don't know it,
then it's going to be really hard to make any
measurable change. And the next thing that we did, which
(07:16):
was shocking to Jade, was look at her debt and
what it consisted of. So only half of her student
loans were eligible for forgiveness. But she was a public servant,
so we talked about public service loan forgiveness, which is
something that is available for some federal loans after ten
years of payments under an income driven plan. It's only
(07:39):
you know, you have to go online. You can find
out if your employer is eligible for this. It is
still as of you know, of September twenty twenty five,
still still exists and it's still available for public service professionals,
and it was something that could be really impactful for her.
(08:00):
Her private loans are different. There's no forgiveness options when
you have private student loans or private credit card debt,
but there are potentially refinancing options and things that we
could look at. So knowing what kind of debt changes everything.
If you're somebody who's a nurse, a teacher, a government employee,
you might want to check for some programs that could
(08:21):
eliminate all of your federal student loan debt after a
certain number of years in qualifying payments. So we made
sure that we enrolled her in an income driven payment plan,
submitted her certification from her employer for public student loans,
and now she's on track to get those loans forgiven,
which will be a huge, a huge relief, and she's
(08:43):
still making you know, consistent payments. But it's really it's
really helpful, especially those people doing those those jobs, and
we need so desperately for people to go into those
fields and do Next, we looked at her credit card debt,
which at seventeen thousand dollars can balloon very fast. We
needed to identify the highest interest rate on the cards,
(09:07):
and so we started looking at her statements and showing
her exactly where that interest rate was. It's not always
easy to find, so we were you know, if you
look at the paper statement or you look online at
your statement, you should be able to find the APR
or the annual percentage rate, and so some of them
were north of twenty percent, which makes paying the minimum
(09:29):
barely make a dent in just the interest alone on
those payments. So we looked at ranking kind of which
debt we wanted to tackle first, so anything extra that
we could put towards that one card to start, you know,
And I think some people have heard of this as
like a debt avalanche. Avalanche you're looking at the highest
interest rate and you're putting extra money towards that debt.
(09:52):
Snowball is a different method, where you're looking at the
lowest balance. In her situation, I really felt like going
after the largest interest rate with it important regardless of
the balance, uh, because she didn't need motivation, She didn't
need a quick win to feel better. She was very
motivated anyway, and this was going to save the most
money over time. So we looked at, you know, putting
(10:14):
extra money towards that, and we considered certain things like
non credit and nonprofit credit counseling, balance transfer options. These
exist for some people, but with her, it was really
just making a plan with what we had. And the
key isn't like thinking you have to pay off overnight.
It's a plan that gives you traction. It still takes
time and hard work, but progress in this case is very,
(10:36):
very powerful. And then we wanted to, you know, start
to align her life with her priorities. And this was
some work that I can't do for people, but for her,
it was important to see is paying the thirty two
hundred in rent helping her or hurting her long term goals?
(10:57):
Should she consider going back in living with her parents'
short term to save money and breathe since she has
that option. Not everybody has the same options, but this
was one that she had personally with a close relationship
with her family, who would not have a problem with this,
so it was an option for her. And also we
(11:19):
looked at moving to different cities. So she was somebody
who mentioned like Virginia or Texas as places she could
have seen herself being, even though she has never lived
further from home than she is now. And those are
hard questions, but we kind of, you know, we looked
at that. We looked at the math. You know, her
income would be lower in those different states. She is
(11:41):
very hirable with her job, but she would have to
pick up some other expenses. Maybe the rent would be different,
but she wouldn't have family close by. Maybe childcare would
be less expensive, but she might have to rely on
it more because she wouldn't have her own organic network
of people. So, but it's important to think really without
limits about what could you do if you had to
(12:05):
find this money, how would you find it? And just
to get creative and kind of instead of having that
part of your brain that doubts and creates all of
these obstacles, to really think about what would you do
if you had to find five hundred dollars two hundred
dollars and see what comes up? And these were hard questions.
But when you're drowning in debt, it's easy to feel
like every day is just about surviving. But you have
(12:26):
to pause, you have to zoom out, and you have
to really consciously start to build the life that actually
works for you. It's not very motivating to just have
the goal of not being in debt anymore. There needs
to be a bigger picture goal that will keep you
motivated towards that. Maybe that's financial stability. Maybe that's sending
(12:48):
your daughter anywhere she wants to go for college. Maybe
it's maybe it's home, Maybe it's living where you want
to live. Maybe it's being able to travel with friends,
whatever that is for you, it's really important to take
some time to think about that and how becoming, you know,
how getting out from under you know, the debt burden
can help you get there and what that might feel like.
(13:11):
And not every solution is perfect. There's pros and cons
for a lot of things, but smaller shifts kind of
looking at the budget, taking a minute to see if
you're doing the things that you want to do or
if you don't enjoy them. And that's where things like
lifestyle creep can come in, especially for people who might
be financing most of their expenses on like a credit card.
(13:32):
Right now, maybe it feels like everybody's going out to
dinner three times a week. Maybe it feels like everybody's
going to this concert, even if the tickets are one
thousand dollars. It might feel like everybody is traveling, but
what is important to you and everybody might be in
a different situation. And also, you know you're looking at
(13:54):
the highlight reel of somebody else's life when you go
on social media. You're not necessarily seeing how much their
deal with if they're crying when the credit card bill comes.
We don't see those things. Those are not there. So
it's so important to figure out what matters to you
and to be very mindful of what doesn't matter to
you as well. So here are some final thoughts that
(14:17):
I want you to consider when you're feeling overwhelmed by debt.
The first thing would be to clarify everything that's going on.
First track your income and expenses. Start small, but you
can start. In this case, she had a job where
she could pick up overtime hours that are very lucrative.
So for her, maybe picking up additional income is more
(14:43):
beneficial than trying to cut expenses that can't be cut
much more without a big lifestyle change. Maybe you don't
have access to that, but there's things that you could
think about once you actually know the math and then
know the types of debt that you're in. You know,
if you have, you know depending on your bills, if
(15:04):
you have, you know, maybe you've been put in a
penalty rate for one late payment on your credit card.
You know, if you kind of know what the debt
is and what those interest rates are, you can reach
out to these lenders. And this is something I did
personally when I had a late credit card payment when
I was on maternity leave. I wasn't even thinking about
(15:25):
bills or what to pay, and all of a sudden,
my low credit card that I'd had for years was
thrown into like a twenty nine percent interest rate. So
I called, and I could have been like, oh my god,
I'm so embarrassed, I'm not going to reach out to them,
but instead, like the worst thing they could tell me
was like no, and then I would have started to
(15:47):
look around for other options or figured something out. But
when I called and explained the situation that I'd been
a client for like twelve years or something at that point,
they just changed it back. So if you know the numbers,
because if I wasn't paying attention, I might not have
noticed that for a while. So it's really important to
kind of take a look at that and then see
(16:07):
maybe there's better options for you. So knowing those those
things are really important. And then also once you do
know what you've got, attacking high interest debt, in my
personal opinion, is the way to go. Every dollar counts,
and so if you can start to eliminate the highest
debt and then kind of move that extra payment once
(16:31):
that card has gone down to the next one. I
do think that will be the fastest way to do it.
No matter what. Now, if it feels very motivating for
you to pay off that last five hundred dollars of
your student loan or of your car or whatever it
is that maybe has the lower interest rate, you can
go ahead. You can do it. It's fine, you know,
(16:51):
it's great. It feels so good to have those bills
paid off. But if you have a lot and you're
just trying to look at, how do I do this,
you know, in the most efficient way possible, I say
go for the highest jet first, and then create goals
that serve you. Don't look at your neighbors, don't just
look at Instagram. Be really really aware of the fact that, like,
(17:13):
this is something really new for us. You know, we
used to you know, used to be keeping up with
the Joneses and like driving by your neighborhood and who
has the better car in lawn, which was like stuff
that you could see with your two eyes, you know,
in your daily life. And now we're just inundated with
like everybody's life. We can see so many things, so
it's really difficult to kind of like not compare yourself
(17:37):
to everybody to this airbrushed, filtered version of life that
we're seeing. So try to be really clear on like
you and what matters to you, and and just kind
of stay in that lane, and like try to try
to stay focused because it can be so it can
be so easy to feel like, well, who cares everyone
(17:57):
else is in it, but you don't. Everybody else doesn't
have the same financial situations. So it's really important to
kind of do what you can and make sure that
you're trying to achieve your personal goals because nobody else
is going to really care too much about you, know
what happens. You know, if they're not you know, living
with you or home with you, and debt can feel
(18:21):
like it's dealing your future, But the truth is you
can take a step back. Can you get the right
tools and the right of them out of support. I've
seen people get out from under hundreds of thousands of
dollars in debt. It takes hard work, it is not easy,
but it is possible, and if you don't know where
to start, it could be a good time to look
at some of those financial tools that are available to
(18:42):
your workplace or even reaching out to you know, a
financial counselor or an educator to help, or a financial
planner if you have access to one or the ability to.
And just remember you when you talk to people about
your finances, that they should be there to help you
and not to judge. So I want to thank everyone
(19:03):
for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free
to like, share, and subscribe, and we'll talk again next week.
Thank you for joining us on another insightful episode of
Demonstifying Money. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate,
and leave a review. Stay tuned for more engaging conversations
on our next episode, and remember knowledge is the key
to financial empowerment.
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