Create a plan to pay off debt.

“I wasn’t stupid. I knew that every day I had the credit card debt the high interest was killing me. So that had to be the first to go. I had 6 months to figure out what my plan would be for the student loans since there was a 6 month grace period before you had to start paying them. And that’s what I did. From May to July of 2016, every paycheck I received I made a credit card payment. The first week of July of 2016 I made one giant payment of $2,150 to kill that credit card debt.”

“Most people fail to pay off debt because they don’t seem to gain any traction. When you make minimum payments, most of your payment goes towards interest. Very little of it actually goes towards your principal. If I was going to stick to my plan, I needed quick wins to keep me motivated. I focused on paying off the smallest loan first, which was $1,500. I paid minimum payments on everything except the $1,500; I threw as much money towards that loan as possible. [...] Three months later, it was paid off [...] The insta-gratification gave me a high. It gave me confidence that I could actually pull this off.”