Ever take a deeper look at what’s actually happening with your debt?
I hadn’t. The thought never even crossed my mind. It was just… debt. You have it, you make the required payment, and someday it’ll be gone. Right?

After listening to Get the Hell Out of Debt (I linked it in my last post, but I will link it here as well: 🌿✨Amazon Associate link Here), I decided to finally take a deep dive into mine. One of my debts had a massive monthly payment. I was paying it every month, but the balance barely moved — or at least it felt that way.

Now that I had something I truly wanted to work toward — that dream property — I started getting mad. I felt powerless, and I hate that feeling.

So here’s what I did.

I took my balance, found my interest rate, plugged in a monthly payment that felt comfortable, and asked AI:
How long will it take me to pay this off?

Why AI? Because it doesn’t judge me for the uneducated (and sometimes dumb) questions I needed to ask in order to understand my debt. As much as I like to pretend I don’t need help — I did.

When I saw how many years it would take and how much extra money I’d be giving “them,” I immediately asked another question:
How do I get free from this debt?

I didn’t expect it to actually help — but it did.

First, it explained why making only the minimum payment would keep me in debt for so long. Then it showed me a few different payment options: slightly higher, moderately higher, and significantly higher — and how many months each option would take to pay the debt off.

I didn’t love the bigger payments…
…but I did love how much money I’d save and how much faster the debt would disappear.

The first month I tried to hit my new goal payment, I didn’t quite make it. I paid more than usual — just not the big goal number. The second month was the same. Then something interesting happened: the required minimum payment actually went down.

That felt strange, so of course I asked AI again. It explained how many debts are structured to prioritize interest — not helping you get out of debt quickly. They’re designed to keep people paying for a long time.

And that’s when I got a little fired up.

Some of you might be thinking, “Well, yeah… obviously.”
But like I tell my students:
“You can’t know what you don’t know until you learn.”

So I started learning.

Months have passed, and I’m still working toward consistently hitting that bigger goal payment. Each month I pay a little more. Sometimes I make small payments throughout the month — $20 here, $25 there — after making my minimum payment, of course.

I track what I pay and subtract it from my goal payment to see how close I get each month.

For example:
If my regular payment is $550 and my goal payment is $800, but I’m comfortable paying $625 upfront, that leaves $175 left to reach my goal. I’ll hop on once or twice more that month and make smaller payments until I get closer.

In education, we call this “chunking” — breaking a big task into smaller, more manageable pieces so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Turns out, it works for money too.

If it helps, I also made a free printable debt tracker you’re welcome to use as you start tracking your own progress.
🌿 Download it here.

One thing that’s kept me going — besides my big dream — is tracking my balance. Watching that number drop every month is incredibly motivating.

(One important note: this particular debt grows because of interest. So if you’re working on something like credit card debt, it’s essential to stop using the card while paying it down — otherwise it becomes much harder to make progress.)

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