Arden Missal didn’t want to shrink her lifestyle — so she paid off $150K in debt, fast / 74

There’s a version of debt payoff advice that sounds responsible on paper — make the minimum payments, invest the difference, stay the course.

But what if following that plan still leaves you feeling stuck?

In this episode with physician assistant and financial educator Arden Missal, we unpack what happens when you question the “default” path — and what it can look like to choose something else. We talk about the emotional side of money, why avoidance is so common, and how your beliefs can shape your financial reality.

Arden paid off $150,000 of debt in just 16 months. Interestingly, she doesn’t consider herself frugal — and that’s exactly why she was so determined to eliminate her debt so fast. Arden’s approach wasn’t just about working more or spending less; it started with a complete shift in how she thought about debt, time, and what she actually wanted her life to feel like. 

This conversation is part strategy, part mindset reset, and it might even change how you think about what’s possible for you.

✨ Episode Highlights ✨

• [00:00] Why the “make minimum payments” advice didn’t sit right with Arden — and what it revealed
• [06:30] What paying off $150K in 16 months looked like behind the scenes
• [12:00] How becoming debt-free reshaped her relationship with money
• [16:00] The “boiling frog” effect and how debt becomes your normal
• [22:00] What money avoidance really is — and how it shows up
• [27:00] How shame and limiting beliefs keep people stuck
• [34:00] Arden’s favorite exercise for uncovering your money story
• [41:00] Why your thoughts drive your financial outcomes
• [47:00] Rethinking budgeting as a tool for direction, not restriction
• [53:00] What to do if financial freedom feels out of reach

✨ Resources ✨

Connect with Arden:

• Grab Arden’s free debt tracker: https://shesfinanciallyfree.com/starter-kit 

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hello@thefinancegirlies.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey girlies, today we're talking with Arden Missal, a physician assistant turned certified financial education instructor who paid off $150,000 of debt in only 16 months. That's correct. She paid off over $150,000 in debt in just a little over a year. She now runs She's Financially Free.com, where she teaches women how to simplify money, get out of debt, and design a life fueled by freedom instead of stress.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

And even though Arden's accomplishment of paying off $150,000 of debt in 16 months is objectively very impressive, what we loved most about this conversation was one, Arden's emphasis on starting with your mindset and not the numbers. And two, she reframes deprivation in a really interesting way that kind of challenges how you think about living your life now versus planning for the future. Welcome to the Finance Girlies, a podcast for millennial and Gen Z women who are curious about money but have never quite felt at home in traditional finance spaces.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

We are Emily Batdorf and Cassie Horton, podcast host, longtime friends, and finance writers for brands like AOL and Yahoo Finance.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

But rather than giving you prescriptive advice, we talk about money the way friends actually do. Back stories, questions, and a lot of figuring it out in real time. And as a reminder, this episode is brought to you by us. We have no sponsors, so if you want to support the Finance Girlies and earn our undying love and eternal appreciation, you can become an insider for just five dollars a month or basically one dollar twenty-five cents a week. You'll help us keep the podcast ad-free. And you'll get one insiders only episode every month. We'll put a link to become an insider in the show notes. Arden, thank you so much for joining us on the Finance Girlies podcast. My pleasure. Yeah, we're so happy to have you here. So to kick us off, your financial situation took a 180 when you decided you were gonna pay off your debt. At what point did you realize that was something you wanted to do and something needed to change in your financial life?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Well, I graduated from graduate school, and that was where all of my debt came from was for graduate school loans. I had my parents had helped me pay for undergraduate, so I'm very lucky there. And so I graduated and I kind of thought this is the perfect time for me to think about how I want the next few years of my life to go. For the first time ever, I didn't really have this block of time. You know, it's undergraduate and then waiting to apply to grad school and then graduate school. And I was like, okay, what do I want the next, you know, five, 10 years of my life to look like and how am I going to manage my finances? I was also gonna have a substantial income, a six-figure income for the first time ever. Up until then, I had been doing like babysitting and other, you know, near minimum wage jobs. So it felt like with my new income, I needed to be more responsible with what I was gonna be bringing in. And so what all my friends were doing and what all of the expert advice that I looked into told me to do was to make the minimum payments because I had a low interest rate and just do the 10-year repayment plan. And when I sat down and ran the numbers, I realized that I was gonna have a negative net worth for five years if I did that plan. And in the meantime, I would be, you know, feeling like a hot shot, you know, making a hundred something thousand dollars a year and going on vacations and getting a nicer apartment, maybe a nicer car, all of these things. And I was gonna be worth nothing and have like literally no money to my name. And that when I sat with that, that was like the turning point for me. I was like, this is just so ridiculous. I'm not gonna stay in debt and have all of the stress of these huge monthly payments, almost a mortgage-sized monthly payments for 10 years. And so that really was the turning point for me as I just thought, this is so ridiculous. I cannot believe that this is like the best advice that we have out there for people that have this amount of debt.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

And also to your point, something that you don't think about is that if this is your situation right out of college and you're building your lifestyle based around the fact that you're only making a minimum payment, like the lifestyle creep can so easily happen and create this environment where you would really need to like adjust your lifestyle drastically or in increase your income drastically if you ever did decide to no longer make those minimum payments and to pay more than that amount. So it's very admirable. I think, first of all, that you were crunching those numbers as a fresh out of grad school person and being like, if I allow myself to go down this path, I'm gonna be taking vacations, I'm gonna be doing all of this stuff, and I'm still not gonna have like the financial security to show for it. So first of all, kudos to you. That feels like incredible like self-awareness and situational awareness.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Well, that's an amazing point that you make. And I think, you know, I was in my mid-late 20s when I graduated, but so still pretty young. And if you think about, you know, the point that you made, if you graduate from college and you're 21, 22 and you have a huge payment, I mean, that is your imprint for the rest of your life is that you have debt. And as long as you're making the minimum payments or you're on track or whatever that is, you're doing well financially, and what how detrimental that kind of approach to your finances can be, especially when you account for like the stacking of that over decades and decades.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Mm-hmm. For sure. My second question, would you mind disclosing what you got your grad school degree in and what you do for work?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Of course. I'm a PA, a physician assistant. I work in psychiatry. So I went to uh GW George Washington University in Washington, D.C. And so that was what my graduate school degree was at physician assistant school.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Okay, very cool. Yeah, I have a much smaller but similar story where I went to a public state school in Georgia, Georgia Southern, and I ended up graduating with $18,000 in student loan debt between undergrad and grad school. I was very fortunate to have a lot of grants and scholarships that covered most of undergrad, but um I did have to pay for grad school. And before I even graduated grad school, I was like, I'm going to live on as little of my like full-time salary as I can and get these things paid off as quickly as possible because I don't want my net worth to be negative forever. Like I I long for the day when I'm worth nothing. That was my first milestone, you know, and then building and then building it up from there. So I was very much kind of in that same mindset in college and coming out of college too. Yeah, absolutely. Being worthless. Exactly. What a great feeling. Um so moving on to our next question, you paid off $150,000 in debt in 16 months. I paid off $18,000 in 10 months. So my mind is just like, how? Uh so can you walk us through what that actually looked like day to day?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah. So uh at the beginning, I decided to go on this journey and I was gonna pay it off as fast as possible. And I ran like the theoretical numbers and an Excel sheet about what I could pay off if I was working, you know, 60 hours a week or if I cut my expenses to nothing. And as I did that, the time until I was able to be debt-free would go down with every expense that I would cut or every few extra hours per week that I would work. And that was a really transformational moment for me because the shorter the timeline is, the more you can cut and the more you can work. And then it's like the snowball effect. And you're like, okay, well, if this is only two years, then I can work two jobs for two years. And so that's really the mindset shift for me that allowed me to be so motivated to do this is because I had done the projections and I knew exactly the path that I was on, which, you know, I feel like so many people are like, I'll pay an extra $100 to my debt this month because I have it, and maybe next month not so much because I have a vacation, or they don't have a concrete plan. They don't have a concrete vision for why they're making the sacrifices. And so you're not going to be motivated to make those kind of sacrifices. And so I started at my 40-hour week job and immediately took as much overtime as I could. And the thing about being a PA is that there is a lot of credentialing that is required before you start work, like up to four months from when you get hired to when you can actually start working, because of just of the nature of a healthcare job, you have to go through extensive background checks and licensing and all sorts of stuff. Tuberculosis testing is so many things. So I kind of had a delay there. So in the meantime, I was working any job that I could. I hung up flyers in my apartment for house cleaning, dog sitting. I was babysitting. I worked as a nanny over the summer after I graduated school. I was like the only one of all my friends, my peers that I graduated with that I knew that had a summer job. Everybody else was like, this is our last hurrah before we have to work for the rest of our lives. But I didn't want to go further into debt. Uh, so that's what it looked like while I was waiting to get credentialed and to get jobs as a PA, you know, making $20 an hour or $25 an hour babysitting on the weekends instead of hanging out with my friends or my boyfriend or whatever. But I knew that every dollar counted. And eventually I was working uh four different physician assistant jobs in four different clinical settings. So it was very intense. Would wake up in the morning and I would have, I would drive to my outpatient office and I would get there at 5:45 in the morning, and then I would take virtual appointments for uh a job that I worked at with Academy Clinic, and I would do that for three hours, and then from 9 to 2 p.m., I would take appointments at my outpatient office, and then I would drive uh to the hospital for my 3 to 11 p.m. shift. And so that was like a typical day for me. I would say like maybe six days a week, it looked like that for an old. Oh my god. So I only had to work like that for maybe nine to 12 months. It was like under a year, so it was not that long at all. Uh it just went by so fast, just because so my whole debt payoff journey was like 16 months, but I was only working like that for maybe a year. Just because I was bringing so much money in when you were working like that. And honestly, the days that I had off, I wish I was working. It was like I was just so eager to get to the end point. And I was just so motivated and so, you know, I had such a compelling vision of what it was going to be like and feel like when I paid off my debt that I didn't want extra time in debt, you know, to sleep in on the weekends or whatever when I knew that that was like delaying my timeline an extra day.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

So obviously that was like a really intense period of your life and you were like, you know, sacrificing all of these things, time with your friends, your boyfriend to work and to pay off that debt. So when you finally like paid it off, how did your relationship with money change and I guess your time? Did it take a while for your mind to kind of catch up to the fact that like you weren't in debt anymore and like you didn't have to grind so hard? Like, what was that transition like?

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah, that's an amazing question. And I think why I'm so passionate about this subject is that even just this short 16-month period really changed my relationship with finances forever. I mean, I would be stunned if I ever had the mindset that I had before when I went into this amount of debt, you know, compared to now how I view money. I never want to go back into debt again. And that's something that I'm really passionate about. And a lot of people don't even get to experience that. They've never really been an adult and not had debt. I mean, if you think about how many people are getting undergraduate loans the day they turn 18. And so they, I think some people don't realize what the option is or what life could feel like or be like if you didn't have debt. And so that's something that I'm so grateful for is that just having that experience just changes so much. And I didn't even want, honestly, to like use my credit card again because just the psychologically, it bothered me that I like owed someone money after you sacrificed so much. I mean, you the pain of it is really what is to your advantage from that point on. Because anytime you're thinking about going into debt again, let's say someone that's been in and out of credit card debt for 10 years, 20 years, or something like that, you remember those early mornings and feeling tired and those late nights, or when I would have to stay late at the hospital and I wouldn't get home until midnight, and then I had to be up at 5 a.m. the next day. You never want to go back into that experience. And so it really has changed my relationship with money. But, you know, the irony is I am not someone that's very passionate about working weekends or working holidays or frugality. I'm really not. I uh think that some people really enjoy that. And I think that's great for them. You know, my husband is one of those people he loves like buy one, get one free deals. And, you know, he downloads every app for like every coffee shop we've ever visited and like he just loves it, getting free points. And I'm not really like that. And I think that's why I did this. And I think so many people think I must just love like budgeting and shrinking your lifestyle down so much and working all the time. No, if you don't want to live that way, you should do this for a short amount of time and be out of debt the rest of your life. If you are passionate about frugality and pinching pennies, you know, the best way to curate that kind of lifestyle for yourself is to have tons of debt. And so I think that for me, I I am not miserly at all with my finances. And I don't have to be because I don't have these massive minimum payments every single month.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Okay. This is making so much more sense to me. And as you're talking, I think I'm getting a bigger picture as to why, or a clearer picture, I should say, as to why you felt so passionate and dedicated to like grinding so hard for such a short amount of time. And I love this perspective. The fact that you were like, I want to live a joyful and full life and be able to spend money on things that I want. And so I'm dedicated to obliterating this debt so that I can have this life where I don't have to pinch pennies or anything like that. That I feel like is quite uncommon. Emily and I kind of have the opposite stories where we uh started out, like like in my experience, I'll let Emily speak to hers, but I was cutting every single expense as I was paying off my debt and stuff. And then I noticed that even once I no longer had debt, I still really, really struggled with allowing myself to spend money because I felt like every optional or frivolous thing that I bought, I was like somehow stealing money from future me. And I was like totally on board the minimalist train and all of that stuff. And I really had to do a lot of mindset work to be like, no, you can spend money on things that bring you joy, and you don't need to neglect yourself of everything right now in pursuit of like future you having a really big nest egg. Like you can work toward both. And it I personally felt like it took a lot of work on my part to get to that stage, and I think it's kind of similar for Emily. But it seems like Arden that maybe you had a different mindset about it entirely.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, I think that I almost compare it to like the boiling frog metaphor, where if you, you know, if you throw a frog in boiling water, they'll jump right out. But if you slowly turn up the heat, they won't notice. And that is what I would say these like huge student loans for most of us, or you know, on honestly, any type of type of debt that you have. I mean, a lot of car loans now are like five to seven years. It's so crazy. It's almost like that where it's like, you know, you're the heat is slowly being turned up and it's all you've ever known. And all of your friends and family are in the pot of boiling water with you, and it's totally normal, and you don't even feel like the heat that you're in until you can maybe, like you said, get a massive perspective shift. And the reasoning is that there are billions of dollars being poured into marketing these debt products as exactly that. Did you know that your life could be a little bit better because you can have the car now instead of in three years? And it's like you're in this room that's like slowly, slowly shrinking around you to the point that it's almost imperceptible. And so for me, what really I think jolted me out of that mindset was running the math and realizing that I could be debt-free in such a short amount of time and just realizing that's the life that I want. And so many people don't even feel like they have the option, or they feel like it would be financially irresponsible to do that, which I get. And that doesn't make sense. You lost out on money, you should have done this or that. And a lot of people are in one of those two limiting beliefs camps where they they think that it's not in their financial best interest to get out of debt, or they think that they can't. You know, I I'm already so behind on this and that. I need a car to get to work. I, you know, was supposed to get promoted and I don't. My mother is sick, my child is sick. I can't deal with all of these things. There's no way that that's possible for me. And I remember I sat down with one of my friends who had graduated PA school with me, and I did this very simple Excel sheet for him. And I was like, look, you just need to do three or four extra shifts a month and you can be out of debt in three or four years. And he was like mind blown. He was like, I would have thought that that would take me decades or seven years of working extra like that. And so so many people don't even run the numbers and realize how close they actually are to being able to get out of debt. And I knew the thing is that with debt, you're gonna pay that amount anyways. And I actually paid a lot less than, say, a classmate because I saved on interest. It's not a matter of if you're gonna pay that money, it's a matter of when. And so I can do all of those shifts in in two years, or I can do them spread over, you know, 10 years. And so that's how I really looked at it. And you actually save money. I was able to take advantage of bonuses or overtime. You're so much more focused. I will, I, it wasn't even hard for me to cut some expenses because I knew that that was an extra hour I was gonna spend at work when you're in that mindset. And so, in so many ways, you actually save so much energy and time by doing it in a more like extreme way, if you can. This was before I had a daughter. Obviously, you know, I have a child now, and I would not be able to work like that now. She needs me too much at this age. So I was very fortunate then. But if you're listening to this and you don't have a child, I had a boyfriend at the time, but he's now my husband. But I didn't I wasn't married yet. I didn't have a kid. If if you're listening to this now, there's never gonna be a better time. You know, you're never gonna have more time to yourself, more freedom to be able to do what you want to do, and you can get this all over with now. And you would much rather be doing that if you're planning to have a family. You know, I I didn't want to miss out on my life later. I was counting on my life to get better, you know, richer later. And so to me, it it felt like a no-brainer really to sacrifice that way. And it was, I mean, 16 months, it's like nothing.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

I think back to like um to your point of like, you know, doing, you know, you're gonna do this work, you're gonna pay this money at some point. So like why not just do it now? I think back to myself at like 22, 23, 24, and like how much energy I had. I mean, I'm 31 now, so I'm not like so much older, but um I had a job that required very long hours, like physically demanding, socially, emotionally demanding. I worked teaching science to students like outdoors in the field. And you know, sometimes there were overnights, things like that. We'd be hiking in the woods, long days, and I just had the energy for it. Whereas now I think about doing that and I'm like, there's no way. So, like, good for you for like striking while the iron's hot while you had the motivation, while you had the energy, while you had the time. Like, that's a really interesting point that I think doesn't maybe get talked about very often.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah. The best time was yesterday, the second best is today, I think. And that's true of everybody. And I think, like I said, the compelling vision piece, even if you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, that's not a reason to be discouraged or unmotivated at all. I think that once you know debt freedom is possible for you, it's very easy to feel super motivated. And that's how I felt. I'm not a I'm not a psycho, you know, I'm not like a lunatic. I wasn't like on the limitless pill where I was not feeling what everybody else would feel, feeling tired. But to be honest, I think burnout comes from working when you don't want to, when it's not of your own volition over years and years and years. It's like this pointless, I have to work this weekend just because. And if I didn't have to, I wouldn't be there. You know, for me, I was thrilled literally to be at every hour of every single job. I was so excited to work extra shifts. And so that's what I think is like the irony is that burnout doesn't really come from working towards this amazing concrete goal where I was getting pure benefit from every hour that I spent at my job, which is so different than someone that might have a 10, 20 year repayment plan or is just in credit card debt to get through the months, they're they're not gonna feel that way. They're gonna feel like, oh, well, my ideal world, I'm not working these extra shifts, I'm not pinching pennies like this. And that's my ideal world too. And that's why I was able to work so much is because I I didn't feel burnt out. I didn't feel resentful at all. I was so excited to be there and I knew it was so temporary.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

I also think to your point, like having the math laid out in front of you and having that financial knowledge, just like the thing that you did for your friend, what a gift to be like, no, if you just do three or four extra shifts a month, this is how you're gonna be. How quickly you can get through that. I feel like a lot of people don't take the time to do that math, or maybe they don't know how to, or maybe they're afraid to, or whatever. And I do think having that information in front of you can fuel you in ways that you wouldn't even expect whenever you have such a clear finish line inside. Absolutely. You talk a lot about money avoidance, and we are curious to know, first of all, what is money avoidance in your own experience for those who might be new to the term? And then how would you recommend someone move from that like avoidance stage to where they're taking action?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

I think money avoidance is there are many things that I think can contribute to someone engaging in that behavior. There are a few common ones. I would say money avoidance is kind of in the name, it is avoiding your financial state. So that can look like a lot of different things. Are you avoiding your bills? Are you unaware of what when you're going to be debt-free? Are you unaware of your net worth? Are you avoiding answers to those questions? And I bet almost everybody that's listening, I mean, maybe with your niche, not so much, but for most individuals, the answer is yes. Most people don't know how much debt they're in. Most people, if they're married, they don't even know what their combined household income is. You know, so many people are not aware of their finances. And so personal finances can be very triggering for some people. It's a reflection of ourselves. I mean, when we're looking at our credit card statements or whatever we spent last year or, you know, last month, we're looking at our values, our choices, our weaknesses. I mean, it's it's difficult. And it's uh makes perfect sense to me why most people don't want to engage in that and why it's easier to just sweep it under the rug. And my experience, you know, I have a background in psychiatry. That's the specialty that I'm in. Avoidance is our response to anxiety, right? When we feel anxious about something, avoidance is the treatment for that. And our brains are only ever trying to treat the most immediate problem, which is I'm feeling anxious right now. And so it's almost like whack-a-mole in a way where we're just avoiding this pain and avoiding that pain. And I'm gonna maybe not look at my bills or not look at my credit card statement. I'm not gonna talk to my spouse about this problem. I'm not gonna call my creditors, I'm gonna overspend, I'm gonna go shopping online. That's a form of avoidance as well. And so we really need to get into a state where we can do similar to what I did, put your entire financial picture on a single page and get all the numbers. And then your brain can register the real problem, which is that you're in debt or you're, you know, this is your net worth trajectory on this minimum payment plan, et cetera. And then your brain can go to work solving that problem instead of solving the little anxieties that come up throughout the day. And I think when it comes to your finances, there is no static movement. Every hour of every day, every month, every week, your finances are getting better or they're getting worse. And that is simply a fact when it comes to debt that's compounding every single day, month, year. And it's the same with investments that compound every day, month, year, whatever it is. So there is no I'm staying in the same spot financially. You're either moving ahead or you're moving behind, you're moving towards the best version of your life, the dreams that you want to fulfill, or you're actively moving away from them. And so that's why financial avoidance and money avoidance can be so detrimental, is I think some people think, well, maybe I'm not getting ahead right now, but I'm not moving backwards. But if you're not moving ahead, you are moving backwards, whether you're aware of it or not.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

This reminds me of a book that Cassidy and I have both read and mentioned often called The Slight Edge. And it's kind of the theme of the book is how making just small changes in your life compound over time. And I think about this when there's like some very small behavior that I know I should do, but I don't want to do. And it's like, if I do it, I'm continuing like the upward momentum. And if I don't, I know that's the start of the downward momentum. And so yeah, I think you're so right that that applies to your finances as well. Not just with compound interest, but with almost like the energy, the motivation as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

I don't know if you guys have heard of this like metaphor, but it's like um if you launch a rocket ship or a boat or whatever it is, and it they're one degree off in several days or weeks or whatever, they'll be miles and miles apart difference. And that's so true of our finances, is just like even a $50 change per month can be uh just have crazy, crazy results and crazy differences. And if you we're gonna get there eventually, you know, barring acts of God, you're gonna be 50 years old, you're gonna be 70 years old. And what do you want that to look like? Because that's really what's at stake. And I think Cassidy, you said, you know, it's can be easy to maybe feel the weight of that too much where we're not able to enjoy the money that we have right now because it feels so high stakes. But I think for many, many people, they don't realize that um they're they could be losing out on such such a quality of life that they deserve by not addressing your finances now.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

It's a good way to think about it. How would you say that shame plays a role in keeping people in debt? And what are some ways people can kind of break free of it?

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yeah, I think that that's like a sub of subset of what we were talking about before with money avoidance. There is so much shame that comes up with it. And it's such a sensitive topic that we don't really that's why podcasts like you guys's are so important is because so many people don't talk about their finances. And a big reason for that is shame. You know, we log on to Instagram and everybody that we know has a new car, they're going on this vacation, la la la. And so much of that, there's not a little disclaimer like there is with advertisements where it says financed by debt. You know, we don't know what people are paying for with debt, and we can't quite make sense of why they're they seem to be outwardly outpacing us or where we are, and it puts this pressure on ourselves that we should be living that lifestyle too. Something must be wrong with me. But so many people, I mean, every car I see on the street, I'm like, I wonder if that is just a $500 or a $700 a month car payment. And so shame keeps us in that avoidance state, and then it keeps us from moving forward and tackling our finances. And I think that for shame to really have the detriment that it does, you need another piece, which is that you need a limiting belief in yourself. You need to feel shame about your finances, and then you need to believe that there is nothing you can do about it for whatever reason. This is just your plight in life, or you were never taught finances from your parents, or you grew up poor, or maybe you grew up ultra rich and then you never learned that way and you only know how to be ultra rich. I mean, you can literally invent an excuse or a limiting belief or whatever your background is, but you've got to have that piece to not move forward. But you can feel shame and still make progress in your finances. And I think that ultimately what's gonna help you not feel ashamed of your finances is doing something day in and day out that you're proud of. And so ultimately it's not shame, I think, that is the enemy. Shame is a signal when we're feeling embarrassed, when we're feeling anxious. That is our body, that is the the universe, what have you, that is telling us like a little alarm clock. Something needs to be addressed. We're off course in some way. And so we can try and fail, most likely to quell that feeling. But just like an alarm clock, it's gonna keep going off. It's gonna get louder as time goes on. And so, really, what we want to do is address that limiting belief portion and help people understand that they're absolutely more than capable of paying off their debt, regardless of what your circumstances might be. I don't care how many times you failed in the past. I don't care, you know, that everybody around you is telling you, you know, this is the way to go, that you should just make your minimum payments and this and that. That is really the piece that's the problem because you can just take your shame with you along for the ride and you can still make financial progress and it will resolve itself as time goes on, as the cause of that alarm system is addressed. The alarm will stop blaring.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Yeah, this reminds me, one of my favorite sayings is our triggers are our teachers. And this was me for for years in my early adult life. Like I wasn't curious enough about myself to notice when I was feeling shame or anxiety or despair or jealousy or whatever, and then to be like, okay, I am experiencing this emotion or this feeling. Like, what is this trying to teach me and what can I learn from it? And I think to your point, if if your body is all is sending this alarm signal of, I feel ashamed about this, and that's kind of me now, it's my sign to be like, okay, why am I feeling ashamed? What am I feeling ashamed of? How can I work through whatever I'm feeling ashamed of to alleviate that? Another good example of this is anytime you think to yourself, well, that must be nice, you know. Like if you are someone who has debt and you see someone who's paid off their debt and you're telling yourself, well, it must be nice to be able to do that, you know, that is a trigger of some sort, teaching you that maybe you want that thing, but like you don't feel like you can have that thing for whatever reason. Right. That to me is also a sign to be curious about like, could I actually have this thing if I really wanted it? Is there a limiting belief that's making me think that I can't? And just like getting curious about yourself like that is such a valuable skill to continue to develop.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Absolutely. I think that that's such an amazing way to look at it because it is ultimately true why a hundred people can see the same thing. Maybe a hundred people will listen to this conversation and come away with be triggered in a hundred different ways. And it's not the thing that's the trigger. It's how you're interpreting it that's the trigger. You are literally triggering yourself. And exactly, they're not meant to be done away with, they're meant to be listened to in kind of leaning into that discomfort instead of doing what I talked about, which is that our first reaction is, how can I avoid this? How can I get away from this? I'm gonna, I'm gonna make, you know, tie into my limiting beliefs. I'm gonna say that it's privilege. Privilege gave them their success. And, you know, is another word for luck. And if privilege is what's to blame for their success, then bad luck is what I don't need to feel upset about where I am financially because it's just luck. That's not possible for me, and it's not my fault, but it's just luck. And I think that can be very toxic too, because you know, it's not really about blame. I think every single one of us is doing the absolute best that we can at any given moment with the knowledge that we have. That is always true, and we're always evolving and always growing. And I think, like you said, being curious about that instead of saying, well, maybe I'm at fault, maybe I'm to blame. I I definitely had that when I I didn't calculate how much debt I had until I graduated and I was like devastated. I had $20,000 more in debt than I thought, and I wasn't paying any attention when I was in school. And it felt like monopoly money to me. And there was like a one to two week period where I was just like crying and I felt like despondent. I was like, what am I gonna do? What if I wake up tomorrow and I break my leg and I can't go to work? Like, how, how am I gonna climb out of this? It was just a really hard space to be in mentally. And I'm fortunate that I was able to get myself out of it, you know, after a few weeks. And the best cure for that is action. That the best cure for that is action. And that's what really helped me because once you're on the track, you just need to board the train. You need to dust yourself off and get on the train. And then once you're on track, I wasn't anxious at all. I didn't have any of that. I didn't have any of that shame. Even when I was still over $100,000 in debt and working like a dog, I felt great because I knew that I was on track to where I wanted to be. And it's it's that first step that really is the hardest. And you think that until your financial picture changes, you're gonna feel this way every day. And so I might as well numb myself and get my lattes out. And I I don't want to take away what joy I had. I need it to treat how I'm feeling every day. And it's just not true. You know, your mindset changes first and then your bank account follows. It really is that way.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

In that same vein, vein, if someone is feeling completely overwhelmed by their finances and they feel stuck, and maybe they're stuck because they feel like their income is too small and they're not able to pay off their debt or they have too much debt or whatever, what would you recommend to be their first step so they can quote unquote hop on the train and get to move and down the track?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

I think that the very first step is I'll bring it up again is addressing those limiting beliefs. You know, do you think debt debt freedom is possible for you? Uh, why or why not? And first, I actually the easiest exercise to kind of figure out where your limiting beliefs are is to write down your money story, basically. And and, you know, pretend I'm interviewing you and I'm asking you, why are you why do your finances look like this? You say that you don't like them, that you don't want them to look this way, that you'd rather that they look this or you have this amount of savings or you're out of debt or what what have you. What's your explanation? Why do they not look that way? And see what people come up with. And you will see every response that you get is a limiting belief often. You know, my parents never taught me about money. I I'm just bad with money. I'm bad at math, I'm not smart, you know, had a terrible GPA in college. I mean, just any anything. You know, my sister is the one that's good with money. I have a twin sister, she's prettier than me, and she's the one that's good with money. I mean, you'll just get so many explanations. And they're all limiting beliefs. And so if you're listening to this right now and you feel like this could be something that helps you, pause the podcast and write down what it explain to me. I I want an explanation. Why do your finances look this way? And you'll see so many things. I'm not paying off my debt because it's low interest. You know, I'm not paying off my debt, but I'm I'm focused on optimization in other ways and I I have a high yield savings account or whatever it is. There's such a range. But that's what you'll find. And that's rewriting that story is the very first step. You've got to look at that and say, when did I decide to believe these things? What is the date that I decided to believe these things? When did I define who I was and what I'm capable of? And more importantly, when did I sit down and define what I was not capable of and what I can't accomplish and what I don't deserve and what's not on the table for me in this life? And you'll see so many people are when? I don't know. This is just, it's been unconscious. And that's the point. It is unconscious. And so until you examine it, those unconscious beliefs are going to continue to make all your decisions for you, basically in the backseat. And so it's so important to do so what so many people don't do, which is to get curious, like you said, and lift the veil of those uncomfortable emotions and just decide to learn about themselves a little bit more. To realize that you don't need to feel intensely guilty or at fault, so to speak, or accept blame, so to speak, before moving forward. You know, it can be not your fault necessarily, but it's always your responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

I love your suggestion of writing out your money story. And truthfully I don't know that it is something that I have ever done. I have written out my limiting beliefs and what I think that they are and all of that a billion times, and I've learned a lot about myself through that process, but I don't know that I've ever truly sat down and been like, this is my financial situation currently in this moment, and this is why I think that it's like this. And I am personally curious to try this because Emily and I are both full-time freelance writers, and this is the work that we have been doing. I've been doing it full-time since 2019. Emily's been doing it full-time since 2021. And we like have been doing it long enough to know that like there are slow seasons and there are super busy seasons. And I have learned over time to like trust that when I am in a slow season, that the work will always come back and it will always pick back up. And just to like ride it out and trust the process because the evidence is there that like my business will do well again. But I have been in this season for almost the past year where I think because of a bunch of different things, like it's not this is the longest, like quote unquote, little slump that I've been in. And I just had the thought to myself earlier this week, I'm like, at what point do you keep riding this wave? Or do you get to the point where you're like, okay, maybe I actually need to take action and try to like increase my income again instead of passively being like, things will get better, it's fine, it's just a season. Um, and so I I'm curious to know about myself if I have any limiting beliefs wrapped up in like my ability to find more work or to hop back to where I want to be financially, at least income-wise, versus just continuing to passively be like, I'm just gonna let this thing be what it is.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah. I think two things there. When you're looking for limiting beliefs, it can kind of create a lot of pressure for us to like sort through everything we think about ourselves. Well, that's not limiting, I'm not gonna write it down. But when you just write down your money story, it's kind of no pressure. And you can just fill out, you know, one, two, three paragraphs or however long you want to write for. And then you can go through and maybe highlight the limiting beliefs that you find in there. And it's so much easier when you can kind of just brain dump and then look at it. I mean, listening to you, the idea that there are slow seasons. I mean, that could be a limiting belief in in and of itself. And you're telling yourself every day when you wake up, I'm in a slow season, and the world is mirroring that back to you. When, in fact, I would bet you that there are some freelance writers that have rejected that idea and say there's no such thing as a slow season, and I'm not gonna accept that. And how do they behave differently? Are they waiting for the season to pass when they wake up in the morning? Are they not reaching out to people because it's a slow season? And so it all starts with our beliefs there. And so I think that you can really do this with anything. And just like you said, you know, what is what is my reason for why am I not working as much as I want to right now? What are the explanations for that? And some of them might be absolutely valid, but you'll you will find some limiting beliefs in in that explanation too. I'm like, this is good. I'm over here silently snapping, like, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Yeah. It's like even just asking yourself the question like, what if this wasn't true? Or like, what if this wasn't my reality? I think is so powerful. Like, what if I like you said, I didn't accept this being a slow season? Or like, what if I wasn't in debt? Or like, what if, you know, this far-fetched financial dream could happen for me. It just like gets your mind into like the possibility mode, and then you start to see opportunities. Absolutely. And and like you say, like actually start to take action. So that is super powerful.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Absolutely. But if the emotions aren't there, you won't take action. And if the thoughts aren't there, the emotions won't be there. And so it really all does start with our thoughts. And I think, you know, like manifestation and all that stuff gets such a bad rap. Oh, I'm gonna like think my way into wealth. That's the only way. I mean, that is the only way. There's gonna be action that follows that, obviously. You don't just sit there while, you know, money falls in your lap. But every single person that is successful believed that they deserved success and that it was possible for them first. That is a universal truth. You will not find anybody that's a multimillionaire or a billionaire or has a multi-million dollar, say, podcast that did not think that that was what they deserved and what was the right course of the world, you know? And so I think that, you know, having that belief, you'll you'll push it into being and you will make different decisions day in and day out when you feel like that's your goal. But most of us feel like that's not possible for us. For whatever reason, we feel like it's off the table or it's not on our menu at the restaurant of life, so to speak, for whatever reason. It could be, you know, what we learned in school or what our parents taught us or what we see with our friends, or maybe we tried in the past and failed. We all have references and frames of reference and reference points that back up our beliefs. And that's why they can feel so legitimate for us. And so challenging that a bit and saying, okay, well, if you had to convince yourself that this wasn't the case, where could you find evidence for that? And just kind of, yeah, being hypothetical like that. If if I told you that it wasn't true and you just have to pretend that it is, could you convince yourself of that? And I bet that you could, you know, anything that, you know, maybe that you are capable of more stuff in your life and accomplishing more. And why have you set your standards the way that you have? And maybe it's worth letting go of and it's worth taking a second look and maybe redefining those things.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

So I'm curious, maybe you can speak to how you operate now that you're out of debt. But obviously, the concept of budgeting gets tossed around all the time in personal finance. And some people are huge fans, and some people hate budgets, and then there's people all over the middle, myself. Included. So what does it it look like to build a spending plan that feels supportive rather than punishing? And the reason I want to talk about like you post debt is because obviously your debt payoff journey was so compact that I know, you know, that's probably not how you're living life today. So what does budgeting look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 44:21

I love that question because I think there are so many different approaches, and I'm actually really opinionated about it. I feel like so much budgeting advice, I just I hate so much, and I'm like, how could this ever work for anybody? But that's just me. So first I would start when you're approaching budgeting. If you think about it, there is more than one type of deprivation. So when you approach your budget and you're thinking, well, I can't spend money on this, and I can't spend money on this because I need to invest, or I'm trying to build up my emergency fund, or in my case, I'm trying to pay off a massive amount of debt, reframing that in your mind, there is more than one type of deprivation. And in fact, to not stick to that budget, to not stick to that plan, you would be depriving yourself of debt freedom, of financial peace, of retiring with dignity, of being able to help your kids through college, whatever your financial goals are. And so really switching that up, I mean, you know, that's what's so interesting about this is people say, well, I don't want to take away my little joys every single day. And I'm like, that's your joy for life is your lattes and your occasional takeout. That's not good enough for me, for you. I'm gonna, you know, my standards for you are higher than that. And you're really actually, the irony is you're depriving yourself of so much more in life by not wanting to deprive yourself and stick to a budget. Another, I think, limiting belief people have about budgets is that they're for people with low incomes or people that are really pinching pennies. That is not true. And I think if you want to be a millionaire, if you want to be a multimillionaire, if you want to be a billionaire, you need to start acting like one now and they know where every single dollar is going. They pay financial advisors literally hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars every single year so they know where every dollar is going. You know, to think that they don't have a budget is simply not true. Their discretionary category might have a lot more flexibility than yours, but they are not spending willy-nilly. They know how much debt they're in, they know how much they're paying towards debt, they know their net worth. And so if you want to be like that, you need to start living like that now. And so, really banishing that limiting belief from your mind as well that you need to make so much money that you don't have to budget. That number does not exist. I mean, I could spend $300,000 on restoration hardware, I think, in 60 minutes if I if I was able to. So that lifestyle inflation knows no bounds. It really doesn't. You can buy a 70 million private jet. So, unless you're making a billion dollars a day, I don't think you're gonna outrun bad spending habits. So thinking about that as well. But the way that I budget, I actually went through a bunch of different cycles using a bunch of different budgeting techniques when I was getting out of debt, trying to find something that worked for me. And I really felt at a certain point like I wasn't built for budgeting because I just had such a hard time with it. And I realized that a lot of the budgeting systems just didn't do what they needed to do. And I say that a budget is like a GPS. You need to know where you're starting, or a GPS won't work. And then you need to have an end goal as well, or your GPS won't work. So many people treat budgets like this retrospective exercise. They get to the end of the month and it's like, let's peek and see what I spent. I don't know. And I don't know why I end up where I don't want to be. Whereas if you're using it like a GPS, which is how it should be used, you are looking at your GPS before you make any decisions, before you make any purchases. And so I ended up building out this whole binder system that I actually sell now, my total money reset planner, which um you can get it professionally bound or you can just use it as a binder system. But you're logging your expenses every single day and it takes 90 seconds. And then you look at it every single day before you make any purchases, you're referring to your budget. And that I really think is the best way to budget. I know that there are some people that say you'll pay all your bills and you transfer money out of your account, and then you look at your account, and if you have $1,000 in there, then sure you can spend that money at Target or this and that. But the reason that that strategy does not work is because it is not reflective of your priorities. Because if you want, would have rather spent that money on say a vacation that you have coming up or a nice dinner, or you need a new wardrobe or whatever it is, you're never going to get to those financial goals if you're just spending every time you see money left in your account. And I think it also bypasses a really important piece, which is that we need to look at our spending plan before we spend rather than saying, oh, if I have money in my account, that means that I can spend money, which is just, it's honestly not true. And the irony is that you're actually gonna spend much less time focused on budgeting and it's gonna be much less restrictive if you're doing something where you're logging those transactions every day. You know, if you wait until the end of the month, it's gonna be a lot of work. But every day it's one or two minutes, it's a tiny habit. I just do it right before I go to bed. And now with um, you know, I use my printable planner just because I'm not a huge fan of apps, especially for people that are overwhelmed with money. But uh, if you use an app, you can use an app and that takes two seconds and there's really no excuse. And so that's the way that I like to budget, and that's how I budget with my husband is we have our shared planner and we just log everything every single day and it it takes five minutes. And it's it's easier because you can remember if that was discretionary or what category that was in, that Amazon purchase, that Target purchase, or whatever. If you're doing it the day of, if you're not, it's so much work to have to go back through and look at your receipts or your uh expense history, your transaction history, your order history, whatever it is. And so many people aren't gonna do that. People are busy. And I, you know, you have a lot of life to live, and I want you to spend time doing that and not be focused on pinching pennies and and tiny budgeting, you know, issues and stuff like that. And so that system I think is really the best.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

So how do you like track things over time? Obviously, you're you're inputting your daily transactions, but are you keeping like a running total of like this is how much I've spent in this category this month? Are you kind of telling that every day too?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Yes. So the way that I set it up is I have like a daily checklist and then a quick weekly one and then a monthly one. So most of the work is being done uh daily, which is just a couple minutes logging or transactions. And then every week you transfer your total spent in each category over to the monthly plan. And then you rewrite what you have left for the month every week, basically. So you can see, okay, I have $100 left in my eating out category. And that I think works best for people because you might want to go out to eat a fancy dinner, you know, maybe week three of the month and not week one. And so dividing it up by four doesn't really work for these more bulk purchases. And then every month you just quickly log the totals so that you can see your kind of annual trend. You can look at your calendar and see if you have any big expenses coming up. Maybe your vacation is that month, or maybe it's your spouse's birthday or something like that. And you can adjust those budgeting categories. And then there's sheets for all of that. And then I have savings trackers as well, where those are just updated monthly as well. So it's honestly it's very quick, uh, just because I don't like spending a ton of time on that stuff. So I think, you know, just having a quick, simple system. And, you know, I'll say it again, apps I think are great. I'm not a huge technology girl, but I know that a lot of people really like them. You know, my husband is one of those people. We're different that way. But I think that so many people first go to apps to budget, you know, whether it's Wineab or Every Dollar, Monarch, whatever it is. And then they have a million different categories and they have no idea how they should be spending. And so that's a another approach that I have. I my budgeting system is called the the true north budgeting system. And I have north, south, east, and west categories. And the idea is that just like a GPS, your budget should be guiding you towards like your true north or your your ultimate goals for life, like your your highest level of living. And that's what should be reflected is really a values-based budgeting. You should be able to look at your budget and assess very quickly what your priorities are, whether it's, you know, giving or, you know, traveling, that kind of thing, gifts, you know, saving, that kind of thing. You should be able to look at that very quickly and sometimes tracking each utility one by one, what you spent on water last week versus this week. And, you know, those kind of things don't really fulfill that goal. And I think that that is what budgets should be doing for people.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

As we wrap up, one of the last questions we have for you is what would you say to someone listening who maybe believes that financial freedom isn't possible for them?

SPEAKER_00 53:21

I would say that ask yourself why. And again, you know, I'll I'll suggest it again if you feel that way, write down your money story. There's no pressure. You don't need to be thinking about diagnosing the problem as you're doing that. Just write down your money story, explain it to me. Pretend that we're sitting one-on-one and you say, I don't, I don't think what you accomplished is possible for me. I'm, you know, it's great that you got debt free. Congrats, but that's not really in the cards for me. Write down your money story. Set the timer for five minutes and just keep writing for that full five minutes. And there's no pressure, stream of consciousness, don't worry about grammar or anything like that. And write it down. You know, what what do you believe about money? What are you thinking about money? Why are your finances the way that they are? And you'll see when you read that back over, the explanations will really become clear to you. You'll see so much about maybe your upbringing, your beliefs about yourself and your personal capabilities, you know, maybe some things that you learned in childhood, uh, the modeling that you saw your parents exhibit around finances, you know, whatever it is. And so that I think would be the first step is to figuring out why. Because, like I said, there are so many reasons. I mean, literally millions of reasons that people have for why they feel financial freedom is impossible for them. And it really lies in those limiting beliefs. And then I would say, regardless of circumstance, you know, my income was high. That's something that I get often is okay, you paid off $150,000 of debt, but you, you know, the starting salary for a PA is $110,000. And so that's what I was being paid, you know, um, $50 plus doll an hour. But I was single, so I was in a high tax bracket. I lived in one of the highest tax uh uh states at the District of Columbia in uh the United States. And I had more than two years of my full take-home pay and debt. And so, you know, my income might have been high, but the amount of debt that I had was really high too. So if you're making, you know, let's say $50,000 a year and you take home 40, that's the equivalent of having $80,000 in debt. And so statistically, it's very unlikely that you had proportionately more debt than myself, even if you see a high income. And so if I can do it, you really can do it. I promise that it's possible for every single person. And so many of us don't think that because we wouldn't go into debt if we thought that, right? Like we at some point, if we're in debt, and I have this belief too, we felt that we had to go into debt to have the life that we wanted, you know, needed that car or we needed to put that emergency on credit cards or whatever it is, you had that belief. And so every single person with debt is gonna have limiting beliefs about debt. Otherwise, they would be debt-free like myself, because I was able to address those, and that's really what changed. So that's really what I would recommend. And then um, I have a free debt tracker app. If you want to download that as well, you can get a picture of where your debt is, and that's at she's financially free.com slash starter kit. And so if you want to download that, you can enter in all your debts. You can simulate adding extra money to your debt using that mobile app. And so that's what I used um when I was paying off my debt just so I could have it accessible on my phone. And so that's what I would recommend as well is to take that step and really get started.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

Yeah, it makes sense now knowing that you your specialty is in psychiatry, because I feel like everything you've said today has like, I don't know, like you're speaking to how people think and not just how they act with their money. So this has been such a great conversation. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

Yeah, thank you guys. I love talking with you.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

Yeah, this is really, really great. That's a wrap on another episode of the Finance Girlies podcast. Nothing in this episode is meant to be taken as financial advice.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Please do your own research and talk to a professional if you need advice. If you like this episode, consider leaving a review. Better yet, send the show to a friend who might enjoy it too. Love ya. Bye. Nailed it.