107. 5 Proven Strategies to Crush Debt and Build Wealth in 2025

Feeling overwhelmed by debt? You're not alone—but you don't have to stay stuck. In this episode, I share my personal debt-free journey, including how my husband and I paid off nearly $400,000, and the life-changing freedom that came with it.

You'll learn:
1️⃣ Why debt freedom should be your top priority in 2025.
2️⃣ Five actionable steps to crush your debt, including how to prioritize, budget, and stay motivated.
3️⃣ How debt weighs on your body, mind, and future—and the incredible relief that comes from paying it off.

It's time to break free from the financial chains and start building wealth for the life you want. Take the first step today!

💡 Need help getting started? Visit AccelerateYourLegacy.com to grab the Better Budget Bootcamp or book a Budget Deep Dive.
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🎧 Tune in to future episodes and transform your 2025 into a year of financial freedom!

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Transcript

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Laura 0:02

hello and welcome to money and career mastery from overwhelmed to ownership. I'm Laura Sexton, your abundance and legacy coach here to help you navigate the world of money, debt payoff, and career growth with confidence and clarity. In this podcast, we'll tackle the financial and career challenges, holding you back, optimize your income and build the freedom that comes with true ownership. If you're ready to break free from overwhelm, create a budget that aligns with your values and design a legacy that empowers future generations. You're in the right place. Hey accelerators, today we're going to be talking about one of my absolute favorite topics, how to crush debt so that you can build wealth this year. I've been posting a couple of reels and other regular posts and stories on Instagram lately. And I was shocked to find out that there are people that did not know my debt free story. One person in particular commented on a post of mine was like, I had no idea you paid off that much money and she was a client of mine. Somebody that I've talked to repeatedly. And I was like, if you don't know, there's so many people that don't know about my debt free journey. And so I'm going to talk with you a little bit about that today, but also I want to give you actionable steps that you can take in order to make sure that you follow along on a very similar journey. I think debt freedom should be a priority for you in 2025. And here is why whenever you're having to pay payments, You are literally paying for your past. You are having to put money towards a previous decision, a past mistake. Maybe. And sometimes we don't even know what we're paying for. There can be charges on credit cards that you don't even realize you're paying for a steak dinner you had three years ago, it can be totally crazy. But here's the other thing. Recently this week, I went through an old bill box of mine. I used to be a severe pack rat and I held on to everything. And I still have some pack rat tendencies and some hoarder tendencies that my husband liked for me to stop. But I hold on to a lot of things. There's a lot of paper clutter that I organize. So I feel like I'm doing a good job, but it's something that I'm definitely needing to work on. And what I realized was that I had. Old bank statements and credit card statements and loan statements that I had paid over the course of a year. This was September, 2013, no, September, 2020, September, 2012 through October, 2013, so 13 months of statements, essentially, and they were private loan statements because I had gotten my SAG. Card and in order to join SAG, there was a very large purchase price to join that union. And so I got a loan to join the union and I had student loans and I had a car payment. And I had a multiple credit cards. I probably should have counted how many different credit cards I had at that time because I do not remember how many I had at the highest point, but this was probably right around that time, right around that highest point. And I weighed these bills. I actually put them on a scale on a, on a food scale. So it would be a small enough amount. And I weighed them to see how much they weighed. It was 2. 9 pounds, 2. 9 pounds of payments. Just over the course of a year multiply that out by the decade that I was making payments and that's 30 pounds of pressure. The truth of the matter is your body is going to keep the score. Your body is going to remember that you owe somebody else. Your body is going to remember that you were in debt. And even though our society tries to make it feel normal, there's absolutely nothing normal about three pounds of pressure sitting on your chest. If you want to try this sometime, take a three pound weight, lay down on the ground and put the three pound weight right on your chest. Try to breathe deeply. It's not easy. After a while, your body will get used to it and eventually you'll be able to feel like this is just normal breathing. And then you take the weight off and you breathe in deeply. And your lungs fill with air. It's the first real breath you've taken. It feels different. It feels liberating. It feels like you can breathe again. There's a literal weight on your body when you are making payments. And there's a psychological weight as well. When you have to constantly be thinking about, well, I have to make sure I have this payment in. And so I can't go out and eat, or if I go out and eat, I have to put on this credit card. I have to move this around. Like, no. There is a psychological weight to having to play the credit card game and which one gives me points today and how do I, no, no, just don't, if I can implore anything on you, it's that you do not need the complication in your life that the credit card game adds or that debt adds, the risk factor, the stress factor, you don't need that in your life. That deep breathing, that deep breath, that is what I want for you. So what I wanted for me, and that is why my husband and I, on the day that we realized he had come to me and said, Hey, we need to talk about filing bankruptcy. And I didn't understand that because we made over six figures and I couldn't possibly imagine what we would need to pay. File bankruptcy for how, how could that be possible? We make over six figures and we've been doing okay. There's been no, you know, we haven't been late on anything. What, what do you mean you have to file bankruptcy? That was the day that I realized that we are paying over 1, 500 a month in payments, minimum payments. That's not true. That was the day that I realized that I was paying 1, 500 a month in minimum payments. And I did not know how much he was paying in minimum payments. But I was paying 1, 500 a month in minimum payments and I realized that I couldn't keep that up. I was paying half of my average wages in debt payments and no, I wasn't making very much money at the time. I was working as a waitress and an actress, so I wasn't making a whole lot of money and it was all going to somebody else. It was all going to interest because I was only making minimum payments. That was the day that we decided to change our lives because we looked up and realized that the mountain standing in front of us was 372, 347 in debt. And it hurts to think about. I can remember this day viscerally. I remember where I was sitting, how I was feeling, what the room smelled like. It's one of the scariest days of my life. To realize what kind of dragon was coming right at me. But I am a proud Texas woman. And if I give my word and say, I'm going to pay my debts back, then I am going to pay my debts back. But you best believe I never put another cent on a credit card ever again, because there was no way that I was going to fight some dragon and then birth another one. No, we're not hatching eggs. We are destroying eggs too. Big changes had to be made because I decided I was no longer going to live my life that way. And I want this for you as well. If you guys want more details on my debt free journey, I am happy to give a step by step detailed itemized list of everything that I was facing and how horrible that day was. But I want this podcast to be more about you and your abilities. And your ultimate greater outcome. So I'm going to give you five actionable steps that you can take to start crushing the dragon of debt this year. Most people that I work with can pay all of their debts off anywhere between 18 and 24 months. And I want to go ahead and push you my friends. This is 2025. This year is going to be a good year. And yes, I say all that knowing that I'm currently sitting in between about six different fires. I keep getting alarms on my phone for the Palisade and we have New ones popping up, the Sunset Fire, the Hearst Fire, the Lydia Fire, the Archer Fire, the Kenneth Fire, they are everywhere around me right now. But 2025 is going to be a good year for all of you that are listening to this podcast right now. Does not matter what is happening in the world. It does not matter what has happened in your past. You get to decide what your life is going to look like and whether or not you are going to take actionable steps to create the life that you love. No matter the circumstances, you can find contentment, you can find joy, and you can direct your steps. So here's actionable step number one. It is one of the easiest steps. However, this does mean that you're going to have to face down the dragon that is in front of you. So step one is list all of your debts and prioritize them. There are multiple ways that you can prioritize your debt, your list of debts. There is the debt snowball, the debt avalanche, there is prioritization. In all honesty, the most effective way of paying off your debts is the way that you are going to stick with. So if one of these resonates with you more than the other, great. But I will tell you that myself and most of my clients use the debt snowball method without exception. So what is the debt snowball method? It is listing your debts from smallest balance to largest balance. And you pay minimums on everything except for that smallest balance. It's the one at the top of the mountain. So then when that is paid off, the minimum payment that you were paying towards the smallest one goes to the second smallest one. Why is it that the debt snowball method works better than almost any other method? Well, let's look at the debt avalanche method. The debt avalanche says that you should pay off the debt that has the highest interest rate. Well, most of the time, the ones that have the highest interest rates are going to be some of these larger ticket items. Credit cards, especially store cards are going to have the highest interest rates. And if you've run those up and you're looking at a 20, 000 bill, it's going to be hard to see any progress there. And if there's no progress, what's the point? Or at least that's how our brains feel. So the debt snowball method pays off one, two, three in a row because they're small and it's easy to get one, two, three done. Because you're paying, I had one client that had a 36 credit card that they were making 5 minimum payments on every month. My friends, 36 just paid off, let it go. And then you get to rip that up, cut up that credit card, never use it again because it's not actually helping you. We can get into what happens when we cut up our credit cards and stop using them at another time, but today all we are talking about is how to pay the debt off. So list all of your debts and prioritize them. When is there an exception? There are occasional exceptions and here's what I mean. If you have an IRS bill that you have been struggling to pay, that's going to go at the top of the debt snowball. We want to make sure to get the IRS off your back because they can and they will garnish your wages. And then we have a bigger issue at hand. Credit card companies have a very difficult time getting you into a courtroom to actually get a judgment, to actually garnish wages. Some states, in fact, don't allow garnishment at all. We don't want you to get there. I don't want you to get to a place where you have. credit card statements in court. No, we're going to pay minimums. We're going to stay on top of what we have going on, but we're going to put and prioritize all of our extra income towards our smallest debt so that we can get some traction going and we can pay some things off. Actionable step number two is establish why you want to pay the debt off. If you scroll all the way back into this podcast history to episode six, I talk about how to dig deep and find a reason why that is going to keep you on track to reach your money goals. I go below the surface to the emotions behind the goal setting, and I show you how to channel those feelings into determination. One of the things we talk about is how to ask why seven times. It is very, very important that you get to the reason why, why do I want to own a house. If I go through the why, and if you listen to this podcast, you'll understand. I go through the why I want to own a house because I want to have some space and separation and some peace. And I want to be a good mom. And there's something about owning a house that has some room for my kids to run around outside and some separation between. My children who are currently all sleeping in one bedroom, and we only have a one common living space. And we're, we're just on top of each other right now in this apartment and I'm ready for a change. And so I want to own a house. I don't want it to own me. So we're trying to make very, very smart decisions on how to own a house. And I want peace and I want calm. And I feel like Having extra space in a house would allow that for me. It also is long term wealth building because real estate tends to go up, if I own the house outright and it's 100 percent mine, no one can come and take it from me. And that is extra piece, reducing risk in my life. That is something else that I want. When you're trying to find a reason, I say, ask why seven times because it really helps you get to the root of things. But the reason for your financial goal, the reason for you getting out of debt, it has to be your reason. It can't be. I want to get out of debt because my wife keeps hounding me. It can't be. I want to get out of debt because my mom says that's a good idea. That's not going to work. You're not going to ever stick with it. Hey guys, it's totally okay if your reason is fun. If you're having a good time, if you want to get out of debt so that you can go on vacation every year and not have to worry about it, that's great. Your long term goals and your emotional drivers are what is going to keep you moving forward on this debt freedom journey. So dig into why you want to pay the debt off, figure out what that long term goal is and figure out why You want that goal. And once you have found that, you will be well on your way to wealth building because you will have gotten control of your biggest spender and that's you. So actionable step number three, set up a starter emergency fund. I tend to follow along with what Dave Ramsey says, and I say, set up a 1, 000 starter emergency fund. Some people want to put another achievable amount on it. And you know what? It's personal finance. You get to make your own personal decision. That's okay. But I really think that 1, 000 is where you want to aim. 1, 000 is something that you can achieve in a 30 day period. It is a success. Chance for you to be very successful on a financial goal in a very short period of time. That's one of the reasons why I love this thousand dollar emergency fund. It's just the beginning. A thousand dollars is not going to make you feel safe. But let me tell you, when you owe 372, 347 in debt, you know what else doesn't make you feel safe? A 3, 000 emergency fund. I know, I tried it. I had 3, 200 in the bank, and there's part of me, in my mind, that said, Oh, I have 3, 200, I have money in savings, that's, that, in case something happens, I'll be okay. When you're staring down a dragon, having a water pistol next to you does not help. You do not need extra money in this account to keep you safe because you're not safe and your body knows that. So stop holding on to this hope that money is going to save you. Money is not your savior. We don't pay debt off so we can build wealth so that we can be safe. Money is a tool. It is not your savior. So don't lie to yourself and think that, oh, well, if I have 5, 000 in the bank, then I'll be safe. Then I'll be okay. If you have creditors coming after you, banging down your door, looking for money, it doesn't matter how much money you have in that emergency fund. Get the creditors off your back as quickly as possible. And that means a thousand dollars in a savings account for a starter emergency fund, which covers most emergencies. If you blow a tire and you're really in the middle of paying debt off and you don't have the money to pay 640 to get four new tires. Great. Get one, replace that tire, that blue. Most emergencies can be covered by 1, 000 and I promise you when you get to a point where your debt is paid off and you have a fully funded emergency, a 640 bill for new tires does not feel like an emergency. It feels like an inconvenience. I was more inconvenienced by the amount of time that my car was in the shop getting those new tires on than I was writing the check for 640. That's where we're getting to. So let's go back. What are our actionable steps thus far? Step one, list all debts and prioritize them. I suggest using the debt snowball. Step two, establish why you want to pay the debt off. Again, connecting to your long term goals and your emotional drivers are going to help you stay motivated and actually get the work done. Step three, set up a starter emergency fund. 1, 000 is fine. Step four, create a budget that reflects your priorities and eliminates unnecessary spending. I love budgets. Some people don't like the word, they call it the B word. They're like, Oh, I don't want to talk about the B word. Gross. Nobody wants a budget. Budgets are for people that are broke. My friend, if you have debt, you're broke. You owe somebody else money. That's a negative net worth. That's no good for you. So go ahead and make a budget. And when we are no longer in debt and we no longer owe money to other people, we can call it a spending plan and we can prioritize our spending on fun things. But for right now, we are trying to crush debt. So build a budget that reflects your priorities and then eliminate any unnecessary spending. If you've never made a budget before, I highly recommend grabbing my Better Budget Bootcamp. It is a five day mini course, 15 minutes a day for five days. It will only cost you 27. At the end of it, you will have a budget based on your priorities and your values and the things that are necessary to your family. We are going to eliminate anything that is unnecessary so that you can actually make traction on paying these debts off. You are going to have to make a decision on where your money goes. If you want to have Netflix, and Hulu, and Disney, and Peacock, and CBS, and, and, and, and, that's where your money's going to go. It's not going to go to the debt payoff. This is why we want to drill down on what your why is, because I have a couple clients that I have been working with lately, and they finally decided they're going to get rid of their nanny. And for them, that's a really big deal. They have 4 children and some of them are in need of a little extra attention and having an extra set of hands has been invaluable. They have decided that it is a bigger priority for them to stay in their house and keep their kids in the schools that they are in than it is to have this extra person in the home. Now it's hard to make these decisions. It's going to be difficult for them to change the way that they have been living, but because they're making this change, they're going to have an extra $22,000 at the end of next year. At the end of 2025, they'll be able to put an extra $22,000 towards their debt payoff. They're going to get to keep their house. They just have to make some changes, and it's hard. I'm not even going to pretend like it's not hard. It's incredibly difficult. My husband and I went from him having a 10 minute bike ride to work to a one hour commute each way to work. That sucks. It sucks for our family. I hate that he's gone as much as he is. I wish that he didn't have to leave the house before the sun comes up. But we made a decision that our family and our future was more important than the comforts of right now. Create a budget that reflects your priorities, what you want most, and eliminate unnecessary spending, which is the stuff that you want right now. Actionable step number five, celebrate small wins along the way. This will help you stay motivated. Small win celebrations do not have to be expensive. They do not have to be crazy. We're not taking ourselves out. Hey, I paid off that little bitty credit card that was 36. So I'm going to take myself out to dinner and it's going to cost me 140. Friends, that doesn't make any sense, but there are plenty of ways for you to celebrate and stay motivated that aren't going to break the bank. Taking yourself to the beach, taking yourself on a hike, maybe you can call in and tell me some great ways that you have thought to have a small win celebration. The small wins paying off the debt, small wins staying within budget for the first time, small wins staying within budget the second time. I want you to celebrate every little change that you are making because I want you to stay motivated. I want you to cross the finish line. Some tips for staying motivated because I think it's very important is to actually visualize the finish line. Sometimes that is creating a debt free chart or tracker, something that you can color in when you've made it a little bit further. I know a lot of people have these. You can download them for free off of the internet. I think having A chain that you put up in your house. I know a lot of people that do this where every time you pay 50 you get to break the crepe paper chain. That's fun because then you're getting to destroy stuff and I like to break stuff. Getting an actual picture on what the finish line looks like is incredibly valuable. And I've talked about this before recently, but there's something about visualizing what things look like, visualizing, looking ahead, seeing what the end result is going to be. Because your brain, when you, when you visualize it deeply, your brain does not know the difference between reality and the dream that you were creating for yourself. And so your brain starts to live in this. Pseudoreality of, oh, we've already reached that goal. That's already happened. Visualize what it looks like to hit that finish line. And your body is going to begin to align with being a person that crosses that finish line. Maybe you need to find some accountability. You need a partner to walk alongside you. Maybe you need a coach to help hold you accountable to the things that you say you want most. You can find community. There are debt free communities on Facebook. I know that I am working very hard to create a Facebook group right now called the Legacy Builders Network, where we can all get together on Facebook and have conversations about our small wins. I want you to stay motivated and I want to be able to have that as a place for you. And so that is being built out. It's not thriving yet, but it will be soon. This is the very beginning of 2025. So if you're listening to this in the future, go look it up because it will be thriving at some point. While you're staying motivated, continue to reward your milestones without derailing the process. I know when my husband and I were paying off nearly 400, 000 in debt, we intentionally paused our baby steps and would take small staycations. While we were paying all of our debt off, we had a second child. And sometimes you just need to get out of the house and you need to do something. So we drove up the road about 30 minutes and stayed in a nice little Airbnb. We just relaxed for a weekend. We didn't spend a whole lot of money. It was not, I believe our whole trip cost us 350. It was not crazy. Sometimes you have to stop and reward yourself for the good job that you were doing because my husband was working tons of overtime. I had just quit my job because we had the second child and I couldn't put them in daycare. So we found ways to reward ourselves without derailing our progress. And when it's time to be motivated to keep going, you need a cheerleader in your corner, because you're going to get to that finish line eventually. The question is, how fast are you going to get there? The faster you get there, the easier it is to stay in the debt free life. The faster you get anywhere, that's why I want you to have a thousand dollar emergency fund. I want you to get there quickly. When it comes to paying off debt, I don't want it to take years. I had one client that came to me and she goes, well, it's going to take me about nine years. I was like, yeah, if you pay minimums on everything, it'll take forever. I don't want it to take forever. I want it to take 12 months. I sat down, I crunched numbers with her and I told her, I said, it's going to take you 24 months to get this paid off. She's like, no, it's nine years. I said, no, it's 24 months. Ended up taking her 25 because she also bought a car in that time. I am more than happy to cheer you on along the way. I am more than happy to give you hope and I am more than happy to help you find ways to get this done quickly. So you don't have to languish in it. I'm going to encourage you to look up my Facebook group, the Legacy Builders Network on, on Facebook. Look it up. I want to share in your progress. I want to encourage you along the way. I want to cheer you on and I want other people to see you win so they know that they can win too. That's why we get cheerleaders around us because I know you can do it because I did it. And I know you can do it because I help other people do it every single day. If you've never made a budget before, get on my website, accelerateyourlegacy. com slash resources and click on the better budget bootcamp. It will cost you 27 in 15 minutes a day for five days. And you will get to a place where you have a budget that works for you. If you need help figuring out your debt payoff plan, it's my favorite thing to do with people. Let's have a budget deep dive where I sit down and I help you go through and optimize your income, optimize your debt payoff, optimize your savings. Let's optimize everything. The goal of me telling you about my debt payoff journey is so that you know that you can do it too. I would love for you to come on my podcast and say, you know, I heard Laura talk about this at the beginning of 2025 and I've now paid off all of my debt. 10, 000 gone, 20, 000 gone. 91, 000 gone in 25 months. As a single woman working on her own, she paid off 91, 000. Don't tell me you can't do this. I know you can. I know you can, and I know what freedom feels like my friends. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to take a three pound weight, lay down on the floor, put that on your chest and try to feel what breathing feels like. Give yourself 10 minutes of getting used to a three pound weight on your chest, and then take it off and feel what breathing freely feels like. I promise you that's what it feels like to lay your debt down and never pick it up again. I know that some of this today got a little preachy. It got a little heavy, but I am so motivated to help people pay off debt because I know what it's doing to your brain. I know what it's doing to your heart. I know the pressure that is on your shoulders. I know what it feels like when that pressure has lifted. And then you are a hundred percent in control of your money and where it goes and all of the interest from now until forever. Once that debt payoff, that last final payment has been made, 100 percent of your interest goes back into your pocket accelerators. Today's the day for you to make a change in your life and then go out and make a difference. thank you for spending time with us today on Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership. Remember, your legacy isn't just about financial freedom. It's about living with purpose, taking action, and building a foundation that lasts for generations. Don't just listen, implement what you've learned and share it with someone who could use a financial or career breakthrough. If you found value in today's episode, help us grow by rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you master your money and career. Until then take ownership of your future and build your legacy with intention.