19 Strategies to Pay Off Debt (FASTER!)

What if you could pay off your debt faster without completely overhauling your life? From micro payments and bi-weekly payments to refinancing, found money strategies, and behavioral hacks, this episode breaks down 19 practical strategies to help reduce debt, save on interest, and accelerate the path toward financial freedom. 👉 Want personalized help from Andrew? Join Master Money Academy at https://www.skool.com/mastermoneyacademy/about 👉 Join Andrew’s FREE Investing for Beginners Masterclass: https://event.webinarjam.com/q05p7/register/0o8z9io?webinar_id=21 👉 Live Call Registration Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeqIw5xncfn5tZbGG_U22iZ3BUmyHe9fPvBQaC1vW_x1D7bJA/viewform 👉 One-on-One Coaching Application Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12UHo5Zmu1AyY_G4Gmbrcx9vThIZhxqFnaJ5dIihZL24/edit 👉 Master Money Wealth Building Strategy Call: https://calendly.com/irene-mastermoney/master-money-wealth-building-strategy-call?month=2026-09 What You'll Learn in This Episode How micro payments can help reduce debt faster and lower interest costs Why bi-weekly payments can result in an extra full payment each year How paying before a statement closes can improve utilization and create refinancing opportunities Why rounding up debt payments can make extra payments easier to maintain How to negotiate a lower APR with your credit card company When a 0% balance transfer can help and when it can make the situation worse How refinancing and debt consolidation can reduce interest costs Why principal-only payments can help extra payments go directly toward your loan balance How the debt snowball and debt avalanche strategies compare Why rolling payments forward can accelerate your debt payoff How to use tax refunds, bonuses, raises, and other windfalls to attack debt How canceling unused subscriptions can create money for debt payments Why selling unused items around the house can help generate extra cash How credit card points and cash back can potentially be redirected toward debt Why debt payments should increase as income increases How automating minimum payments can keep your debt plan on track Why freezing new credit card charges can prevent the debt cycle from getting worse How visual debt trackers can improve motivation and accountability How no-spend weeks or months can help redirect more money toward debt Start Here Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Try Master Money Academy FREE for 7 days today! https://mastermoney.co/join/ 👉 Join Andrew’s FREE Investing for Beginners Masterclass https://event.webinarjam.com/q05p7/register/0o8z9io?webinar_id=21 👉 Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! https://expert-hustler-605.ck.page/6aa7bb9a79 Partner Deals Hostinger → Build your website step by step at https://www.hostinger.com/ and use code PFP for 10% off Indeed → Get a $75 sponsored job credit at https://www.indeed.com/podcast Wayfair → Shop thousands of products for every style and budget at https://www.wayfair.com/ Leesa → Get up to 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off with promo code PFP at https://www.leesa.com/ Policygenius → Compare life insurance quotes for free at https://www.policygenius.com/ DeleteMe → 20% off with code PFP https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ Resource/s Car Insurance https://secure.money.com/pr/gc43ce394da5 Best HYSA https://secure.money.com/pr/r453ecf4d190 Stock Brokerage Accounts https://secure.money.com/pr/v8d06f8de92c Best IRAs https://secure.money.com/pr/oe09b73d1952 Favorite Travel Credit Cards https://milevalue.com/best-credit-cards/?aff=mastermoney Watch Next How to Build a Portfolio If You Are Worried About An AI Bubble https://youtu.be/NhfJVhSTedA The Millionaire Money Rules (Get to $1M Faster!) https://youtu.be/CNeIBcfXtUA The EXACT System I Use to Manage Every Paycheck https://youtu.be/o-URBMRnItU The 7 Habits of Great Investors https://youtu.be/TxI_S5rP9X4 How to Reach Financial Independence Without Putting Your Life on Hold with Justin Peters https://youtu.be/UuY_c3OuQ6I Connect with Andrew Instagram → https://bit.ly/Skool-Instagram TikTok → https://bit.ly/Skool-TikTok Facebook → https://bit.ly/Skool-Facebook Podcast → https://bit.ly/Skool-Podcast Youtube → bit.ly/Skool-Youtube Newsletter → https://bit.ly/Skool-Newsletter Website →⁠ https://mastermoney.co ⁠ X → ⁠https://x.com/mastermoneyco LinkedIn →⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-giancola-45027b340 ⁠ Question for you: Which of these 19 debt payoff strategies are you going to try first? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, 19 strategies to pay off debt faster.

• 0:14Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to go through 19 strategies to pay off debt faster. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to MasterMoney.co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today, we're going to be diving into 19

• 0:58Andrew Giancola?

  strategies to pay off debt faster. And the way that I set this episode up is I set it up in four big categories. We're going to talk about payment timing hacks and some things that you may have not considered when it comes to being able to pay off your debt even faster. There are some brain hacks and some things I do with my money to allow me to make extra debt payments. And this is something I did when I was younger. It was super, super helpful. So I'm excited to share those with you. Also, we'll dive into interest reduction moves, ways to reduce your interest rate so that you can pay down that debt faster. And we're going to dive into a couple of different things that you can do that help you hack your way to being able to get rid of that debt. So we don't have to worry about it anymore. Then we're going to talk through found money strategies, ways that you can find

• 1:43Andrew Giancola?

  extra money to throw at your debt. Obviously, the more dollars that you have on hand that you put towards your debt, the faster you're going to pay it down. I'm going to give you a bunch of different ideas for that. And behavioral boosters, ways that you can shift, if you have issues with your behavior, these are ways that you can shift your behavior that are going to allow you to pay this down automatically. But there's also going to be ways where we can shift dollars towards that debt and get it paid off faster. Now, the reason why we do this episode, and the reason why we talk about debt pay down is because debt pay down is one of the most important things we want to prioritize, especially when we are building out our financial foundation. We want to make sure that we get rid of all high interest debt. So high interest debt is any debt above a 6% to 7%

• 2:27Andrew Giancola?

  interest rate. That is going to be classified as high interest debt. Now, something like your mortgage, you may be able to refinance. So you may be okay there, but everything else really needs to get paid down as fast as possible. Why? Because debt begins to rob us from the ability to build wealth. If you're making payments on a credit card because you have consumer debt, for example, then you're not going to be able to invest as much towards financial freedom. So it's robbing us from being able to build wealth. It's robbing us from being able to actually buy back our freedom because every single extra dollar that does not go to debt that we put towards our investments means that we are buying more financial freedom. We are buying our time back and giving ourselves the ability to one

• 3:10Andrew Giancola?

  day be able to retire. And I want each and every single one of you, if it's part of your financial goals, I want you to be able to retire early. And so debt robs you of this. And so you want to make sure that you go through and develop a plan that allows you to pay off debt faster. And so in this episode, that is exactly what we're going to be talking about. So I'm going to quit yapping. And without further ado, let's get into it.

• 3:36Andrew Giancola?

  All right. First, we're going to get into payment timing hacks. And I think these are super important for many people to think about if you are on your debt pay down journey. You may be thinking to yourself, well, maybe I've got a car loan to pay down. I've got, you know, a personal loan to pay down. I've got some credit card debt to pay down. And I know I need to get rid of this stuff. I know I need to get this paid down. Well, one of the things that you can do is what I call micro payments. Now, micro payments are something where you still have your regular debt payment that you're making, and you're making that as large as possible every single time you have debt paid down. But you can also take small payments every few days and start to throw them at debt. So let me give you an example of this. Let's say that you decide, oh, I'm not going to go out to

• 4:19Andrew Giancola?

  eat this week for work. And instead, I'm going to bring my own lunch to work. Well, what you can do is figure out what's the difference there. Let's say you save $10 a day, $50 per week, and you can start to throw an extra $10, $15, $20 per day towards your debt. What this does is over the course of a month, let's say you did $10 a day that you threw out at the debt, all of a sudden, you're paying an additional $300 every single month. How many of you out there listening right now just make random frivolous transactions that are $5, $7, $10 every single day? I know I've talked to people in the past, for example, who spend more than that just going to the gas station and going inside and getting a drink and some chips. And so you can think of some of those transactions that you make. And if you forego some of those transactions and turn them into

• 5:04Andrew Giancola?

  micro payments, it can be super, super helpful to get this debt paid down way faster. And for those of you who have larger balances, who feel as though it's not going to make a big impact, it absolutely will, because it's going to reduce the amount that you're going to be paying in interest every single time you make those extra payments. So if you set up a goal and say, for example, okay, I'm going to make the minimum payment on that debt because this is what I can afford, but I'm also going to make micro payments every single day. It keeps it top of mind. It keeps you motivated to continue to make those debt payments. And you're just going to start to watch that balance fall. And that's what we want you to do is stay motivated so that you'll be able to watch that balance fall. And I think this is one that really, really helps on things like credit

• 5:45Andrew Giancola?

  cards, because it lowers the average daily balance. And so less interest is going to accrue. It's actually going to save you money to do this. It's going to save you money to be able to make these daily micro payments. And if it's every couple of days, maybe you're making extra payments every single week. But make these micro payments, throw 15, 25, $100 every time you get it in. Do this over and over and over again, and you can see a major impact on the overall debt. We teach people to do this all the time. And I think it's one of the most important things that you can do on the debt pay down journey. Secondly, is let's make bi-weekly payments on your debt. So let's say, for example, you pay half the monthly amount every two weeks, and you are on this debt pay down journey. Maybe you're paying off a personal loan. Maybe you're paying off a HELOC. Maybe you're

• 6:30Andrew Giancola?

  paying off, you know, something else that is a larger amount. This works out to 13 full payments in a given year instead of 12. I like to tell people who have, you know, a house or a mortgage, if they want to pay off that mortgage faster, and they feel as though they're going to be at that house for a long period of time, you can do this where you make those payments twice a month, just cut them in half, make it twice a month. You're not going to miss the difference. And this is going to allow you to pay off that debt even faster. And this works especially well on things like car loans, on those mortgages. And every single time, your lender is going to apply each payment as it arrives. And every single time, then you'll be able to just watch that balance fall down faster. This is something I did when I had car loans, is I would make those extra

• 7:13Andrew Giancola?

  payments, and I would do this half every single month. And then over the course of, say, a four year loan, then you have four months less of payments when you do something like this. And the cool thing about this is when you look at things like mortgages, for example, you're really reducing the amount of time that it's going to take to get a mortgage paid down. You're reducing years off of your mortgage if it's a 30-year mortgage. So I think it's really, really important and really powerful to be able to do that. So that is payment timing hack. Number two is bi-weekly payments. Number three is pay before the statement closes. This is a fun one, because if you have a lower reported balance, this improves your utilization rate, and it can help you qualify

• 7:54Andrew Giancola?

  for better refinancing or balance transfer. So one of the things that we can look at when it comes to paying down your debt faster is if you feel as though you're on your debt pay down journey, and you know, okay, well, over the course of the next year, or over the course of the next 18 months, maybe you can transfer some of that debt to a lower interest rate, something like that. Well, if you feel as though you can do that, and you make these extra payments before the statement closes, there are some cool things that can happen. One is if your HELOC is structured in a way, or you have a variable rate that resets, then this can be very, very helpful to reduce the amount that you're spending. But also, it's just a great thing to do to get this paid down faster.

• 8:31Andrew Giancola?

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• 9:15Andrew Giancola?

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• 9:56Andrew Giancola?

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• 10:40Andrew Giancola?

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• 11:24Andrew Giancola?

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• 12:09Andrew Giancola?

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• 12:20Andrew Giancola?

  All right, number four. Now, this is one that anybody out there can do. This is to round up on every single payment. So let's say, for example, you're making debt payments, and you're saying to yourself, okay, well, if I am paying $474 every single month, let me round up to $500. This is going to ensure that you send an extra $26 towards that debt payment, and those types of things can add up over time. Because if you do this throughout the course of a year, you're going to be making an extra $312 worth of payments just by rounding up. And so if you think about this, and you think about, okay, if it's a $800 payment, and you feel as though you can round up to $1,000, then do that. If it is a $200 payment,

• 13:02Andrew Giancola?

  but you can round up and even go higher and make extra payments to $400, you can do that. But rounding up on every payment can really help you get this debt paid down faster. And so that is another hack that I think it barely registers against the budget, and you'll still have the ability to be able to make that payment. And a lot of times, people find it easier to have rounded numbers, to have an even number that they can ensure, okay, I know exactly how much money is going towards this debt payment. It's not $426.33. No, it's $450. Or it's not $472.86, it's $500. That's how much I send every single month. It makes it easier to budget, especially if you are type A, then you know that with your budget, you're trying to make sure that you have it down to the dollar.

• 13:46Andrew Giancola?

  Well, this is really, really going to help you, in the long run, budget this out. So just round up, make a little extra payment, especially on that high-interest debt, and this can help you tremendously. Now, I want you to think about some of the things we just talked about here, okay? With these payment timing hacks. One, let's just say you make a bunch of micro-payments. In addition, you do $10 every single day over the course of 30 days in a month. That's an additional $300 worth of payments that you're making towards your debt. Plus, you do the bi-weekly payments, and you decide, okay, I'm going to actually make these regular payments that I make bi-weekly. And then, all of a sudden, you get to the end of the year, and you've made an additional month worth of payments just by doing the bi-weekly payments. And then you pay before the statement closes, which means that you're reducing the amount that you're saving in interest, and you round up every payment.

• 14:31Andrew Giancola?

  And if you round up every payment and save yourself an additional $300 throughout the year, this can be an impact that can save you thousands of dollars throughout the single year just by doing these four payment timing hacks. And I think for many people out there, they will be surprised at how easy this is when you start to trick your brain a little bit. You're going to realize that sometimes we are the problem. Our spending is the problem. And if we get those dollars out of our hand, and we start to trick our brain or make this like a fun little game, you can get this paid down faster. And so I love payment timing hacks. I used to use them all the time when I had debts that I wanted to pay down, and it really helped me. Just prioritize, have a little fun with it, too, and I loved just watching that balance fall.

• 15:15Andrew Giancola?

  So try out some of those payment timing hacks. And now, let's get into interest reduction moves. These can have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of impact.

• 15:26Andrew Giancola?

  All right. So when we think about reducing our interest rate, this can be super important for high-interest debt. This can be something that helps you pay down debt significantly faster and can be something that will produce a much better result where you can save tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how much debt you have on hand. So, interest reduction move number one. Many people don't know you can do this, but you can actually call and ask for a lower APR or a lower interest rate. It takes about five minutes, and you can call the credit card company and begin to negotiate your interest rate. How many of you out there knew this? If you didn't know this, and you have credit card debt, go ahead and try to negotiate those interest rates. Very often, if you've been making your payments on time, and you have a pretty good payment history, and you're saying, hey, I've been making my payments

• 16:11Andrew Giancola?

  over the course of the next 12 months. I had a little blip, I had to go into this credit card debt. But now, I've been making my payments on time, and you can see that over this timeframe. Can you reduce my interest rate so that I can get into a better situation? And so you can have a conversation with them back and forth. But if you have a 24% interest rate, and you get that reduced down to a 16% interest rate, for example, that's a huge win. In fact, that's going to save you a ton of money throughout the year, depending on how much debt that you have on hand. And so this is something you can do for a lot of different things, but it is easier for things like the interest rates on credit cards or the interest rates even on personal loans, if you can have some conversations about that, or the interest rates on some of these other debts that we have on hand. Okay?

• 16:54Andrew Giancola?

  So, I would recommend right now is if you do have credit card debt, call up the credit card company and start having this conversation. Start to say to them, hey, I've got a 24% interest rate currently. I would like to request an interest rate reduction. What can you do for me? If they say they can't do anything, say, I'm trying to make sure that I can work with you. Otherwise, I'm going to need to figure out a way to transfer this balance or move this balance somewhere else. Can you reduce this interest rate? And you can go back and forth and kind of threaten to move this debt somewhere else so that you can get this figured out. And so I think that's really, really important when you are having these conversations with these card issuers. Now, the next thing you could do, which is number six overall on our list, is a 0% balance transfer.

• 17:38Andrew Giancola?

  Now, we've done an entire episode on this, on talking through, okay, what are the considerations if you are going to do a 0% balance transfer? But the way that this works is that the whole payment goes to the principal during a promo window. And so what you do is you take your debt, and you move it to a 0% balance transfer card or a 0% balance transfer loan, personal loan.

• 18:03Andrew Giancola?

  During that specific window that it is 0%, you want to aggressively start to pay down that debt. So this only makes sense for people who are planning to pay down their debt super fast, or know that they can pay down their debt in like whatever the promo period is. So whether the promo period is six months, nine months, 12 months, I've seen them at 18 months. That's when you want to make sure that you move your debt over and you want to get that paid down as fast as you possibly can. Now, when you think about this balance transfer, especially a 0% balance transfer, you do not want that balance transfer window to expire, because then all of a sudden you have a ton of interest on hand that you're going to have to pay. So instead, you've got to make sure that you are certain that you can make these payments if you are going to do a balance transfer.

• 18:47Andrew Giancola?

  The reason on the psychology side, why I don't love balance transfers for some people, is because you're just going to feel as though, okay, I moved it, now I can relax again. No, you need to make sure that you're prioritizing and paying down that debt fast. Otherwise, it's going to make no sense whatsoever, and you're going to put yourself in a worse situation. If you have fuel to the fire, you know you make enough to be able to start to make these debt payments, then a 0% balance transfer can save you thousands and thousands of dollars. But if you don't, it can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. So you need to make sure that you're reading the fine print and understanding how this works. All right, number seven is refinancing or consolidating some of your debts. So I've seen people do this with personal loans, for example. I've seen people do this a number of times with obviously your mortgage or your car loan.

• 19:31Andrew Giancola?

  But let's talk about this. One is you can refinance a car loan pretty easily. I've done this before where I would purchase a car. I did it through the car dealer and then got to the end of the line and they showed me the interest rate. The interest rate was pretty high, signed on the dotted line and realized a couple of days later, now I'm going to refinance this thing. Called up my local credit union and they were able to refinance the vehicle. And so when I did this, I saved myself from an 8% interest rate all the way down to a 4% interest rate at that time. And so this was something that made a huge impact overall on the car loan, because an 8% interest rate versus a 4% interest rate is thousands of dollars throughout the lifetime of that car loan. And so that is a really easy example. You can also refinance mortgage payments.

• 20:16Andrew Giancola?

  At the time I'm recording this right now, mortgage rates are at the highest they've been throughout the entire year. At the time I'm recording it, I just looked at it this morning, 7.5% is where mortgage rates are. And let's say you locked in a 7.5% interest rate on your mortgage, and then a couple of years down the line, those interest rates drop down to 5% or 4%. Well, you can refinance your mortgage as long as the numbers make sense and you have the refinance costs, you've run the numbers, you understand the closing costs and everything else, and you say to yourself, actually, this makes sense, I'm going to go ahead and do this. Or maybe you have a personal loan and you see some personal loan intro rates that are going to allow you to reduce your monthly payment and reduce the amount that you're spending every single month. Those can be great as well. And so between all of these different areas, refinancing can be awesome. Or you can consolidate debts.

• 21:02Andrew Giancola?

  I've seen people take credit card debt, for example, that is 24% and consolidate it into a personal loan that's 10 to 12%. I always want you to first, though, prioritize making sure that you're making those payments and aggressively paying this down. What we don't want you to do is move these debts over. And then all of a sudden, you're going to decide, yeah, I moved the debt over, but I also am just going to relax now because it's only 12% instead of 24%. You can't do that. Anything above that 7% interest rate, you got to make sure that you are aggressively paying down. So if you're going to do stuff like this, I just want you to make sure that you commit to yourself and know that you are going to pay this down faster. But if you look at things like that, there can be ways that you can consolidate and you can pay down those debts. So we have some examples of places that you could do this.

• 21:47Andrew Giancola?

  I will link them up down below in the show notes of ways that you can make sure that you get this done. But again, you got to stay committed, you got to stay on top of this. And then number eight is to make sure extra payments actually go to the principal. So principal only payments. So I've done this before, like for example, with a HELOC that I had, where I would call up every single week the HELOC company, because I was making weekly payments, trying to get this thing paid down as fast as possible. And I would call up the company, the local credit union where I had my HELOC, and I would say, hey, I'm making extra payments, can I make a principal only payment? And the only way that they would make a principal only payment is if you called them. They don't make this easy to go do. But what a principal only payment does is it makes sure that the payment that you are currently making doesn't go to interest,

• 22:31Andrew Giancola?

  it only pays down your principal, your loan balance. Now, you're still going to have your regular payments, but the principal only payment allows you to make extra payments where it doesn't also go to interest. And so you want to make sure that if you are going to make extra debt payments, you do principal only payments where applicable, because this helps you pay down that debt faster, where not a portion of that payment is going towards interest. Instead, it's all going towards the balance of your debt and paying down that balance. And that's what we want you to do. Some lenders count them as early payments on next month's bill. So you just want to make sure that instead you are calling and saying, hey, how do I make principal only payments? Some places let you do it online, some don't. And in fact, a lot of them make it pretty difficult to do this, because obviously, banks make money when you pay interest.

• 23:16Andrew Giancola?

  And you don't want the banks to win. Instead, you want to win, I want you to win. There's a reason why when you drive into any major city, you look at the high rise and what names are on the high rise out there? It's bank names and it's insurance company names. They're going to win every time. And so you just want to make sure that you're trying to beat them at their own game, especially if you get yourself in a position like being in debt. Those are four additional interest reduction moves, and that takes us through our eight tips so far in this episode. Now, we're going to go through found money strategies that can help you with your debt pay down journey.

• 23:53Andrew Giancola?

  All right, so number nine is going to be talking through these found money strategies. And we're going to go through first, what is the strategy that is going to help you pay down this debt fastest? Now, many people talk about the difference between the debt snowball and the debt avalanche. I've had episodes talking about both these and comparing the two. But for many people out there, I prefer the debt snowball over the debt avalanche. Why? Well, the debt snowball is going to keep you motivated, and studies have shown that folks who go and do the debt snowball, stay more motivated and they actually end up paying down more debt than folks that do the debt avalanche. Why? This is because of psychology. Your money psychology matters when it comes to a debt pay down plan. And so when you look at the difference between the two of these,

• 24:36Andrew Giancola?

  you will see pretty quickly that there is some motivation factors in play. Now, if you don't know what the debt snowball is, this is where you start to pay off the lowest debt balance first, no matter what the interest rate is. And then you make minimum payments on everything else. So you throw every extra dollar towards the lowest debt balance first. Once you pay off that first debt, then you take all the payments that were going to that first debt and you roll them into the second debt and make every extra payment towards that second debt and make minimum payments on all your other debts. And you keep going down the line on this until your debt snowballs and all those extra payments are actually going towards the final debt where you get it paid off. That's the debt snowball, and it keeps people motivated,

• 25:18Andrew Giancola?

  because the small debts just get removed, you get them paid off, and you get excited, you get happy. And this is one of those areas where I think it can be really powerful. But there's a second option, which is the debt avalanche. I've always called it the debt wrecking ball, because it does pay off your debt a little bit faster if you stuck to it. But the debt avalanche says, hey, no, we're going to pay off the highest interest rate first and go down the list based on the highest interest rate. The problem is, if your highest interest rate debt is $40,000 and then you have all these little smaller debts that are $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, you're going to be paying off that high interest debt for a very long time. And it's going to take you maybe years to be able to pay this off. Wow, you still have those little debts lingering, you never really get rid of them.

• 26:00Andrew Giancola?

  And so this can be problematic for people who like to see progress, who like to see things shift and change. And if you feel as though that's you, then the debt snowball could be better. Again, studies show the debt snowball actually allows people to pay off more debt because they stay more motivated. Now, the difference between the two is honestly minimal. If you took off two debt pay down plans and you looked at the difference between the two, it's actually minimal in comparison for most folks. And so we just want to make sure that we do the best, what's best for our situation. If you don't know the difference between the two, just do the debt snowball. That's what I recommend for most folks. Another found money strategy, and this is our number 10 strategy on our list today, is to roll payments forward. So similar to how the debt snowball works, every single time that you pay off a debt, roll those payments to the next debt.

• 26:45Andrew Giancola?

  Make sure you roll them forward to the next debt. So let's say, for example, you have two separate debts and you decide, well, okay, I'm going to pay off first my car loan, which is costing me 500 bucks per month. And then I'm going to pay off my personal loan, which is costing me $700 per month. When you pay off the car loan, what many people do is then they decide, oh, now I have an extra $500 per month, I can go and spend it. No, instead, take the $500, put it towards your personal loan, and now you're making a $1,200 payment towards your personal loan instead of just the $700, so you can get paid off faster. This is what I mean by rolling payments forward. And when you think about this, you'll see that all of a sudden, your path to debt pay down accelerates when you begin to roll payments forward.

• 27:30Andrew Giancola?

  You get your car paid off, or you get your credit card paid off, roll those forward to the next one, until you get completely debt free. You will be amazed at how freeing this is and how much faster you can pay off your debt. Now, I want you guys to just think about what we've talked about thus far. And we've gone through 10 different strategies already. If you shifted to a bunch of these different strategies and you executed by listening to this episode right now, you could be saving yourself hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in debt payments. And that's what I want for you. So I'm taking a pause right here to tell you, I want you to not just listen, I I want you to execute, take action when we tell you this stuff so that you can get yourself in a much better financial situation and on the path to wealth building. So take action right now, okay?

• 28:15Andrew Giancola?

  As we start to talk through these, list all the ones you're going to take action on. And after this episode, I want you to make sure that you're taking action. This is not a podcast for people who just sit on their hands. This is a podcast for action takers, and I want you to make sure that you are doing that. Number 11 is my windfall rule, okay? So I want you to set a percentage of every single tax refund, every single bonus, every single raise that you get, or a rebate, all of this money, commit right now to putting it towards your debt. Because if you don't, and if you don't set a percentage, and it needs to be a percentage that's pretty good, but if you don't set a percentage, all of a sudden, you're just going to spend that money. And your financial freedom is too important to just waste money when you're in debt

• 28:58Andrew Giancola?

  on some of these frivolous things that you could go out and buy. Sure, you can enjoy a portion of it if you feel as though you've been restricted for a while, but I do want you to make sure that you're putting a good chunk towards debt. Start with 50%, start with 70% if you can, or put the whole thing towards your debt if you can. But we want to make sure that every single windfall we get goes towards our debt payment. I remember, you know, early on, when my wife and I were working on paying off her student loans, we first just graduated from college, we were paying off her student loans, she had about $20,000 with the student loans. And every single refund we got, or every single tax return we got, or every single windfall, bonus, all those different things, we threw at those student loans. And we were even on modest salaries, able to pay off those student loans pretty quickly

• 29:40Andrew Giancola?

  and reduce our overall debt obligation because we would take every single windfall and throw it at that. It made a huge difference and paid it off so much faster than just making the minimum payments every single month. We would probably still be paying that thing down if we were not diligent about this. Another way to find money is number 12, to cancel and redirect. So I want you to look at your subscriptions. I want you to look at places that you spend money, and I want you to cancel or remove anything that you don't feel is really bringing you value. So if you have 10 different subscriptions, and if you look at today's day and age, guess what? Every single subscription, when it comes to like a streaming subscription or something like that, they cost 20 bucks.

• 30:22Andrew Giancola?

  So Netflix, maybe you have Disney, maybe you have Hulu, maybe you have HBO, maybe you have all of them. And if you do have all of them, then go look at which ones you're not using, cancel them, and redirect those dollars towards your debt payments. If you cancel three of those, you could be saving $60 every month towards your debt payment, which can be a huge, huge number. It can be $720 every single year. And so this is a really impactful thing that once you cut back some spending, I want you to redirect it towards your debt payment. Don't let it commingle in your checking account, don't let it commingle in your savings account. Instead, redirect it as a debt payment and increase the amount that you're paying towards that debt automatically. This allows you to ensure that you're on top of this and your money is actually going where you want it to go, okay?

• 31:07Andrew Giancola?

  Number 13 is I want you to go look at stuff that you have in your house. There could be stuff in your house right now that is worth money, that you can go and sell, and you can then take those dollars and redirect it towards your debt. Imagine being debt free by just looking around your house and looking at all the junk in your closets, selling all of that stuff that you don't value anymore, and making $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, or even more, and then redirecting it towards your debt. I talked about this in a past podcast, but when I moved from my starter home to the home we live in now, I sold a bunch of stuff on Marketplace that I didn't want to move. I made like $3,000 just from selling the stuff I didn't care about anymore.

• 31:47Andrew Giancola?

  And I think many of you, many of us, when we have space at home, when we have a closet at home, we fill it. We fill it with clutter, we fill it with things we don't really value. And so you can probably go through the house, and I don't care if it's $5 or $10 and you sell it on Marketplace, if it helps you pay down your debt faster, just do it. Just sell it on there, throw it up there, no shame whatsoever. I don't care what it is, whether it's an old laptop, or an iPad, or computer, or it's a kid's bike, or it's a whatever it is. Put it up there and try to sell it for something. Because every dollar that you put towards those debt payments means it's less money that has to come out of your pocket to go towards that debt. And so I would highly recommend that you go through your garage, go through your closets,

• 32:31Andrew Giancola?

  go through your apartment, go through your house, look for things that you can sell so that you can get rid of this debt. Because it's a pants-on-fire emergency, especially if it's a high-interest debt or something like credit card debt, and we want to get rid of it as fast as we possibly can. Number 14, and this is something that many of you may not have looked into, but look and see if the credit card you use, if you are in credit card debt, has cash back to debt. One of the things that you can do is if you have points on hand, for example, and you have like a Chase card or a Capital One card, take the points and put them towards your debt payment, because that can help you, long-term, get this done even faster. And it's free money that is just sitting right there. So you can go and check, go into your payment portal, see how many points you have available. If you have like 50,000 points, for example, that can be a $500 payment going towards your debt.

• 33:16Andrew Giancola?

  And if you're trying to save it up for travel or whatever else, no. Put it towards your debt first, get the debt paid off, and you can save in cash for your travel moving forward. And number 15 is to increase the amount that you're paying towards your debt every single time your income rises. So if your income rises and you get a raise, or your income goes up and you earn more commission in a given month, try to increase the amount that you're making towards that debt payment. This is going to help you accelerate your path to debt pay down and just get there faster. Because if you don't do this, you're just going to have lifestyle inflation, it's going to increase the amount that you're spending every single month, and you're not going to be happy with where you are. So if you raise those payments every single time your income rises, this can be super

• 34:01Andrew Giancola?

  helpful for a lot of folks when we start to begin to think about how we get this done faster. All right, those are the found money strategies. Those are ways that you can find money right now and take some action so that you can get your debt paid down faster. Now, we're going to go to the last section, which is behavioral boosters. And these are some of my favorite things that you can do.

• 34:23Andrew Giancola?

  If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, cooling my room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things, but nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Leesa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night, and you spend a third of your life sleeping, and it can make a huge difference on how you feel the next day. Leesa has mattresses designed for different sleep positions and comfort preferences. And their sleep quiz can help you get matched in less than two minutes. Plus, they're designed and they're assembled in the USA, and they come with free shipping,

• 35:06Andrew Giancola?

  easy returns, and a 120-night free sleep trial. So go to leesa.com for up to 30% off mattress plus and get an extra $50 off with promo code PFP, exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com, promo code PFP, for 30% off mattresses plus, an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Leesa.com, promo code PFP. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before.

• 35:48Andrew Giancola?

  And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers, side by side, for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen, it's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just

• 36:31Andrew Giancola?

  $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to policygenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com.

• 36:45Andrew Giancola?

  All right, let's talk about the behavioral booster. So the behavioral boosters are things that you can do that are going to allow you to change your behavior that will help you A, get to the point in time where you're paying this off faster, but B, also keep you motivated, and C, make sure that you don't go deeper into debt. So number 16 on our list is to make sure that you are automating the minimum payments to every single debt, no matter what. Then, if you do feel as though you can make extra payments, then you manually can go in there and start to make those extra payments. Or if you feel as though, hey, I got a raise and I make more money, then you can increase the amount that you're sitting automatically every single month if you can handle those dollars. But automation is going to be the key that is going to help you manage this whole debt

• 37:27Andrew Giancola?

  pay down plan and process so that you can ensure that you're going to get there as fast as possible. Let me give you an example of this. Let's say you're doing the debt snowball and you've decided, okay, I'm going to attack this one specific debt and I'm going to make minimum payments on everything else. Go ahead and set up the automations for minimum payments on everything else. And the one that you're attacking, you can increase the automation based on the amount of extra money that you have. Then if you're going to make micro payments, or if you're going to make extra payments or big bonus payments, then you can manually go in there and do that every single time you have a little extra cash on hand. This seriously helps you when it comes to just managing all this stuff and making sure you're on top of it, so everything happens automatically. The last thing you want to do is make a late payment or a payment that doesn't make it in time. And so instead, automating this helps you so much.

• 38:11Andrew Giancola?

  I want every single person to make sure their debt payments are on automation in some way, shape, or form, so you're not having to remember to make those payments. If you try to rely on your memory to make payments, that is the wrong way to look at debt, especially when we are looking at our bills. Now, number 17 is a big one, and this is freezing any new charges. So I want you to remove your card from any digital wallets that you have. I want you to remove your credit card from any digital Chrome wallets, or your iPhone wallet, or your Google Payments wallet, or your Android wallet, or whatever else you are using to make those payments. And I want you to stop using a card, especially if you're using credit cards and are in credit card debt. And instead, I just want you to get rid of them for the time being. While you're paying down debt, there's no need to utilize credit cards.

• 38:55Andrew Giancola?

  Instead, you can, I'm a big credit card proponent, but if you are in debt, you need to just go ahead and use the debit card so you don't get tempted to go further into debt. The number one thing you need to do is if you are in a hole, is to stop digging. And if you don't stop digging, you are going to end up inside of a crater instead of just a small hole. So I want you to make sure that you decide today to get rid of those cards. You don't need them. You can use a debit card, only pay for things with cash that you have on hand, and you'll be much, much better off. But you got to go into all the places like Amazon, or Walmart, or wherever you spend money, remove those cards and just put your debit card as the sole card there today. Okay? So this is a big action item that you need to be doing if you are in credit card debt.

• 39:38Andrew Giancola?

  I want you to remove it from all those different places. Now, number 18 is that you can get a visual tracker. I love tracking things visually. And when you start to look at your debt and you start to get your debt pay down going, you can do something like a thermometer, or a coloring chart, or you can even set up something in a spreadsheet that allows you to see your debt progress. Monarch Money does this. There are other tools out there that do this that allow you to make sure that you see the progress with your money over time. This is why fundraising companies had those big paper thermometers that were on their wall for years and years and years. Well, this actually motivated people. Charitable organizations do this. You can see the progress of how much money you have raised, and it really does just help

• 40:23Andrew Giancola?

  with money psychology and help you stay on track. Maybe you put it on the fridge with your family, you talk to your kids about it, you talk to your spouse about it. You all are on the same page when it comes to this debt pay down plan. You celebrate every single time you hit different milestones. It's a really fun thing to do as a family and having the ability to be able to kind of work towards this. The last thing, number 19, is no spend weeks. So, one of the things that I have seen people be really successful with is to have no spend weeks when they're on the debt pay down journey. Maybe there's one week every single month where you only spend on essentials and nothing else. And you take those extra dollars and you put them towards your debt. This is going to help you make those extra debt payments to get this paid off faster. And it could be something that could be a fun little challenge that you do on a monthly basis. You could do a no spend month.

• 41:08Andrew Giancola?

  I have seen people do that and be able to pay down their debt significantly faster, where they just buy essentials and that's it. And they do an entire no spend month that allows them to reduce the amount that they're consuming and instead redirect the money towards their priorities and the amount of wealth they want to build. So, listen, I really appreciate you guys being here. That is our 19 strategies to pay off debt faster. I hope you got a ton of value out of this episode because our goal is to bring you as much value as we possibly can. If you did get value out of this episode, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you want me to help you with your debt pay down plan, Master Money Academy is the place for that. We help people every single day in there with a debt pay down plan.

• 41:51Andrew Giancola?

  You send me your debts, I send you back a video with all the information of how I would pay off your debt and the order I would pay off your debt, the order of operations and all those different things. So Master Money Academy, we teach you how to invest and build a portfolio for financial freedom, but also we help people in their foundation, paying off debt and doing all these other things as well. So, Master Money Academy is a great place to join. It is a community of wealth builders who are all working towards one common goal, which is financial freedom. And I'm weekly on group coaching calls inside Master Money Academy that you can join, you can talk to me, you can ask me questions every single week. So consider Master Money Academy if you haven't. We will have it linked up down below in the show notes. All right. So, that is it for today's episode.

• 42:34Andrew Giancola?

  Again, if you guys have questions, feel free to reach out to me. Thank you so much for being here, and we will see you on the next episode.

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