My husband just retired this week. About five months ago we got serious about paying off debt. We had about $40,000 in credit card debt. Today, we are 100% debt free.

Here is what helped the most:


1. We began budgeting. Each month we figured out how much we needed to spend on each category and kept careful track. We cut streaming services and subscriptions, changed our cellphone carrier, and started grocery shopping at Aldi.

2. We prepared all meals at home. For five months we did not eat out, get take out or delivery.

3. We sold our clothes on Poshmark and collector’s items on eBay.

4. We used the debt snowball method to pay off our smallest debts first and worked our way up to the largest.

5. We set up and maintained an emergency fund of $1,000. This prevented us from having to reach for the credit card for car repairs or to pay for a root canal. (We had to tap into ours twice the first month.)

You can do this. Good luck. We now are not only debt-free, but our emergency savings has grown to $10,000. We thought it would take us two years to do what only took us 5 months. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can do this if you get serious about it.