Why Celebrating Small Money Wins Is the Secret to Debt Payoff Momentum | 100

0:00 Hey there, I'm Jules the budget nerd and welcome to the Debt Rebel show. This is the place where working families like yours learn how to stop living paycheck to paycheck. Crush debt. For good and build a life where money actually works for your family. In about. 15 minutes, I'll share. Practical Family. Budgeting tips, tough love strategies and actionable. Steps to move toward debt free. Living without the fluff, the shame or the confusion. And I know a thing or two. About. This my family and I have eliminated over $107,000 in consumer debt and that was after I got my degree in economics.

0:35 So stay tuned. This is going to be a great. Episode So grab that coffee your planner. Whatever you need to make this a great experience. Maybe a snack if you're like me. And let's make your money work for your. Family and my husband have basically live paycheck to paycheck since we got married and I just never thought it would be real for me. I'm kind of speechless and I also feel like a little bit of like gut pain from putting that much money down. But I know I have plenty in my emergency savings to get us by.

1:07 But if you were to ask me like 2 years ago to put that much money down, I would have been like, you're crazy. I would have never done it. And that was my biggest obstacle I had to overcome was trusting the process and putting everything towards one thing at a time instead of trying to do everything at once. I would not let that go. And once I finally let that go, I made so much more progress than I've ever made before. So I just submitted my 15,000 and whatever the heck else and I'm ready for it to show up on that website because I am just so proud of it.

1:43 I'm super proud of it. So that puts my snowball amount for my student loan to just over $2000 a month on my student loan, which means in 10 months I'll pay off that other 20,000 if I don't have any discretionary other random bits of money that I can put towards it. But just my snowball alone. I can get rid of my student loan in 10 months which is insane. And it's January so that means basically by the end of the year I will not have a student loan. I'm just blown away. I don't really know what I'll say.

2:11 Thank you Jules for believing in me and always having my back and encouraging me even when I overspend on gifts and coffee. OK, debt rebels, we can do this $1,000,000 2020. Six my stars isn't that amazing. So I am just so excited to be able to share that huge wane with you because today's episode is all about celebrations. So this is a pretty big milestone for the debt rebel show because this episode, Oh my gosh, I am just so excited for all the things that have happened throughout this show and the things that are coming because I plan on keep doing this because you keep listening.

2:50 And so I just want to say a very special thank you from my heart to you because I said I would record this. I would, you know, create this podcast for one family. And I know that hundreds more have listened to the show. And so I want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing your wins and your stories with me. It is very encouraging. It is also, I'm just so grateful that we get to talk about the thing that our culture says don't talk about. We talk about money here and budgeting and especially when it comes to raising families and parenting and all of the things that go into that.

3:29 And so thank you so much, Allison, for sharing your huge win with us, but also for you've been a, you've been a part of this since the very beginning. And so thank you for being a part of the Debt Rebel community and also for sharing the the financial wins because so if you are brand new to the show, this year on the show we have set a goal to pay off $1,000,000 in debt. And so that number keeps growing because y'all are just doing amazing things. So if you haven't entered in the amount of debt that you have paid off so far this year, then head to debtrebelpodcast.com and you can see where we are.

4:11 I do have to update that manually, so it's not an immediate update, but I do update it often and so that we can celebrate those wins together. And so I want to talk about why it's so important to celebrate the wins, especially in the journey of paying off debt. And the biggest one is it's the thing that's going to help create the momentum for you that you need to just keep going, right? So it's debt repayment is a your debt, you know, debt payoff, debt elimination, however you want to call it is it's a marathon game.

4:43 It is definitely not a Sprint. And so having these moments where, you know, if you've ever seen anyone run a marathon, they have those water stations here and here and there. And they are also, you know, getting, they have those, oh gosh, what are they called? Like those little, you know, food pouches and the to continue to sustain their energy so that they can continue on running 26.2 miles, which was always a life goal of mine. But that one, the one we're going to we're going to put on the back burner, But that's what debt elimination and just getting to that debt free point is.

5:16 And so surrounding yourself with people that are going to cheer you on. That's why when people run marathons, they are there's people that have support them along the way. There's the people that have said, Hey, don't forget to get that Six Mile run in today or, you know, asking how your, how your training is going. And that's exactly what we do inside the alliance coaching membership is just cheer each other on and know that we're all going the same place together. We're on different stages of the, of the path.

5:45 And, but we're, we're doing it together. And I think that's what makes it so special. It's not what my husband and I had on our journey. We were kind of just doing it ourselves and we are encouraging each other. It's it wasn't, it wasn't the same to have someone that wasn't within our household to cheer us on and say, hey, how's that going? And so and to when we kind of felt like we were getting stuck to just pick us up and say, hey, let's put 1 foot in front of the other. And so I know Allison has been able to do that and has done some incredible things for her family through this through this process.

6:21 So paying off your car is such a huge win because when you're driving around with your family, you knowing that your car is paid off is a very different feeling than when you're driving around a car that you have to make a payment on every single month. It's just a different, it's a different feeling. It's a different level of ownership, but also it's a different level of pride knowing that it's something that you set a goal for your family and you accomplished it. And so having having a community of other people cheering you on is just amazing.

6:51 So thank you again, Allison, for sharing your story with us. And I would love to celebrate you as we kind of go into this next chapter of the podcast. This is episode 100. So we've covered so many things you've heard from, you've heard from my husband, you've heard from some other people that are listeners of the show. You've also obviously unpacked a lot of my story. And so I have a lot more to say. So thank you for sticking around. And if you know someone else that was like, hey, this is this is a topic that comes up a lot for them.

7:27 Or maybe you're just brand new to the show. It's one of the things that I say is a key indicator and something that I realized for us that a change needed to happen was putting groceries on a credit card. So when we're putting life's necessities on credit cards, that's usually a a pretty big red flag that something that something's off. And so I would love to unpack that more with you. So I'll put a link in the description. I'll put a link in the show notes for you. If that's something that you're like, tell me more about that because OK, so why is it important to celebrate your wins along this journey?

8:06 So the small, it's the small things, it's celebrating the I went to the store, stuck to my list things. It is the I stayed within my plan for my food budget this month. Or you know what, my family and I, we decided we were going to have, you know, pizza night once a week and we'd we did that. Or maybe it is something a little bit different. Maybe you said, hey, you know what I finally added into my budget that I added a line item in there to start saving for my next vacation. Or maybe it is I finally got myself logged into my retirement account, you know, online access or something like that.

8:49 Like all of those things, they seem they, they don't necessarily seem like the most life changing things, but they are absolutely the little wins that compound overtime that are going to get you closer to your goal. So if we go back to that marathon analogy, it is one step closer to the finish line. And so today is just about those celebrations and making sure that you're creating that time and that space for yourself to celebrate the wins along the way. And as you, you know, pay off a day or if you pay towards a debt, we want to celebrate that with you.

9:23 So the debt rebel podcast com at the very top there you can put in, Hey, I paid off this amount this week and we want to celebrate those things with you. And if you're feeling brave and you want to share a voice note with me and the listeners of this show, if you Scroll down a little bit on the website, you'll be able to do that. And I would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear the things about this show that you love. If you have an episode idea, I am here for it because I have I have a lot of things that I would love to share, but I also want to share the things that are going to be of value to you and your family.

10:00 Please drop those on thatwebsite.rebelpodcast.com and we can celebrate together. So again, episode 100, I am so grateful for every single person that has listened to this show that is shared an episode that has left a review that has said, hey, Oh my gosh. Like the things that the wins that you've created for your family, those are those are your wins. Those are the things that you have done for your family. You've taken information, maybe you've learned from the show or other places, but you've done that for your family.

10:35 And so, so today is a celebration for you and this show in this community to say we're doing it. We are changing the narratives within our homes. We are changing the way that we talk about our money, the way that we see our money, and bringing back the joy that we should have when it comes to spending our money because we're aligning it with what matters most to ourselves and our families and our futures. And so today is just one big celebration for you. Thank you so much for allowing me to occupy some of your mental energies and your earbuds over the last 100 episodes.

11:12 As of this recording, the debt rebel community is at $16,722 paid off. So congratulations, you are amazing. And this is a race to the finish line of $1,000,000 for this show in 2026. I know you can do it. And if you haven't had a chance to submit your debt payoff amounts, you can go to debtrebelpodcast.com and it's right across the top there. You won't be able to miss it. And there is a free guide there that you can grab to accelerate that even faster if that's something you want some additional support in.

11:46 So I am so grateful for every single person that has contributed to this community and just, and I'm celebrating with you. I'm so grateful for every single person that's been a part of this journey this last 100 episodes. Whether you've listened to 1 episode, and this is whether you've listened this, whether this is your first episode or if you've listened to every single episode since the very beginning, I am grateful for you and I'm celebrating with you today. All right, we will see you in the next episode.