Things You May Feel When Paying Off Debt

Great article Michelle. I think some of those pitfalls or negative feelings when paying off debt can be avoided or reduced by structuring how you pay off debts to work how your brain is wired. We all love to achieve goals and milestones, that’s how online games work by feeding gratification through gamification – which is born out of psychology. There’s a bit of info about that in my recent goal setting article on my blog. If you figure to pay off your debts in a way that’s achievable and you see results fast (for example paying off smaller debts first) you start to feel like you’re getting somewhere and it bolsters your efforts.

When I paid off a hefty credit card last year in just 6 weeks I felt pretty damn amazing about it. I only expected to pay it off within 9-10 weeks originally but achieved it more quickly because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel which made me work harder and live even more frugally. The card debt was a drop in the ocean compared to bigger picture but achieving that one goal was awesome.

It’s so, so important to structure little rewards for yourself as well, once you hit milestones, to avoid feeling tired or bored and to avoid the feeling of making too many sacrifices.

When you have a long debt payoff timeline in front of you, it is really easy to get bored or tired. It becomes that much more important to find a way to keep your motivation up, such as an accountability partners or visual cues to remind you of your goal. It can be a long journey. You need something to help keep you going.

It’s certainly true that having debt clouds clarity of thought. Like you mentioned in the beginning of your blog started back in 2011, blogging can be a great way to generate supplemental income towards paying off student debt and more. Blogging can do more than pay off debt. When anyone takes blogging seriously and build their blogging business from scratch with unique content, it builds the online reputation to the point where as they can generate a full time income alongside a day job or having no day job. Additionally, a stable blog generating hordes of traffic and generating stable income put anyone in the positive position to pay their home mortgage, utilities, purchase a brand-new BMW-Mercedes-land rover-Ferrari-Lamborghini-Rolls-Royce-Maserati and more. People who owe any kind of debt feel a heavy cloud over their mind because it’s a financial requirement yet to be met.

For anyone reading this blog comment, always know listening to Michelle and taking heed to her advice will help you achieve goals beyond paying off debt. She knows what she’s blogging about. 🙂

Very true, paying off debt is a lot like losing weight, if it was easy everyone would do it. It takes time and dedication. Great post!

I think it would be great to read about the feelings around paying off debt too. Like you feel awesome, but you also have be careful not to jump back into debt as celebration.

Great article! People seem to hate making sacrifices and want to live in the moment, rather than plan for the future.

I always look at the emotions throughout debt payoff as a bell curve. In the beginning, you set your plan and your excited to chop down debt. In the middle, you begin to get bored and are tempted to deviate from your plan. Then toward the end once you see light at the end of the tunnel you become ecstatic and almost obsessed with reaching that $0 balance.

When you’ve been living above your means for a long time it makes it very difficult to pay that debt down because then you have to over adjust the lifestyle you should have been living all along. And that makes you feel even worse because ask your friends are still going out, buying toys, and having fun. We’ve been there and done that so many times before, but thankfully we were finally able to become debt free after attending a Financial Peace University video series at our church by Dave Ramsey. It is the best decision we ever made!!

We we’re already paying over $1,000 a month to our credit cards so once we stop spending and focused our payments that helped a ton. We lowered our high 401k contributions to give us more money to pay down the debt. Once our credit cards and cars were paid we focused all of that money on our mortgage and were able to pay off our home in 16 years versus 30. That day in 2014 was the best day of our marriage knowing that as we get older we don’t ever have to worry about where we will live and how we will afford it.

You can do it!

So far my debt repayment process has been interesting. Some people understand what I’m doing while others think that it’s ridiculous. I’ve had a couple people tell me that I will always have debt. The biggest thing that I’ve had to do is sacrifice some things. My friends invite me out to do things that cost more money that I’m willing to spend. I’ve missed out on trips and other events. I tell myself multiple times each week that this is only temporary.

I think the hardest part of paying off the debt was that feeling of being deprived. Nothing could derail my plans faster than having a little fit and then going on a vengeful spending spree…against myself. I always rebalanced and got back on track but it wasn’t always easy! Thanks for the great advice!

If you ask me, paying off debt is not what I put on first place. Only what matters, is to find way to live with it. Maybe I am speaking this way because I have few small debts and have no trouble to finance them.
Trouble would be if I had big dept which is result of my irrational behavior. In that case first of all they must work on themselves.

It absolutely is better to stay away – sometimes, sadly, there is no choice.