6 Simple Habits of Debt Free People
Recently I’ve been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and everything he’s saying about building good habits and decluttering bad habits relates SO much to my debt payoff journey.
Every page I turn I’m just like.. YES! YES! YES JAMES! This is what I was doing but didn’t know, thank you for putting it into words!
The biggest take away from the book so far has been: friction.
Increase friction for bad habits and decrease friction for good habits.
For example: I don’t keep junk food in our house, if I want it I have to go out and get it.
That’s a lot of friction for an 8pm craving for ice cream right? What do I do a majority of the time? I eat fruit.
When I started exercising after my daughter was born I needed the least amount of friction possible.
I didn’t have a lot of time and I needed something I could turn on, it would tell me what to do for that short amount of time.
In order to decrease friction for me to exercise:
I would put on my workout clothes while I was working first thing in the morning.
I would work first and work out second so I could shower and my husband could watch her.
I also couldn’t have anything that involved me driving somewhere. That’s too much friction.
I found this amazing program called Mommastrong. It’s 15 minute workouts specifically for busy moms.
You show up with a leg band, sometimes cans, and Courtney (the instructor) sometimes shows up with her kids or just feeling like a mess.
You get 15 minute work outs that increase your heart rate, build your pelvic floor back up, and make you feel like a normal person.
All of these habits I’ve kept because of their lack or increase of friction.
Paying off debt was the same too. When I started paying off debt it was the pandemic and that was a great time to re-assess my spending because there was a lot of friction to spend money.
In order to spend money you had to go out to a store in a mask and be worried the entire time you were about to catch a serious illness.
What better time to start paying off debt? (you can read how I paid off over $20,000 of debt without sacrificing fun here).
I made debt pay off have the least amount of friction by setting myself up with a budgeting software and checking it every day. All I needed to do was log in, check my budget, and see if I was on track.
I didn’t have to worry or think about my spending, I had already done that at the beginning of the month with my budget.
Quest for you: What other habits do debt free people have and how can you install these habits with less friction as possible?
1) They have a savings account
There’s been times in my life when I’ve paid off debt and got right back into it.
You know why that happened? Because I didn’t have a savings account.
The next time an emergency came up here came my credit card to save the day. But that’s not what credit cards are for.
Credit cards are meant to be used as tools to get us points and cash back while growing our credit scores not as a savings account.
The best way to stay deb free is to build a savings account FIRST and pay off debt SECOND.
Debt free people know that a savings account is what keeps them debt free and they continue to always keep one.
Want to know how you can build a 6 month savings account even if you’ve never saved a penny?
Grab this free masterclass down below:
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2) They set goals
When’s the last time you set a real financial goal? Something tangible?
Not one of those “hope to be debt free this year” type of goals. I mean a goal that’s like “I’m going to build a savings account, I need 3 months of expenses, here’s how much I need to save” type of goals.
Every year my husband and I sit down and become really clear on our financial goals, like down to the penny and then we plan out how we can make that happen.
Now here’s some behind the scene’s: I would do this for our mutual goals but I WOULDN’T DO THEM FOR ME PERSONALLY.
I used to just keep hoping that I would make more money in my business and then poof my debt would be gone and I would have a savings account but I never planned out a specific goal or worked out how I could make that happen with the amount of money I knew I could make.
My goals used to just be.. “If I make this amount of money then yeah I’ll hit my goals” I blamed this all on fluctuating entrepreneur income.
I thought because I had fluctuating income I couldn’t plan for financial goals but that wasn’t true.
I should have done this first and then planned my income goals around that number, that would have been more financially savvy. I could see why it might be hard for a first year entrepreneur, that can be hard to do, but by your 3rd year you can have a general idea of what you can make minimum and it get’s much easier to plan your financial goals.
You can always approach this from a financial goal perspective FIRST, income goal plan SECOND.
That would look like:
I want to pay off $10,000 of debt this year
I’ll also need to pay expenses in my business ($6,000)
Pay myself $2,000 a month to cover my personal expenses ($24,000 per year)
and pay taxes (30% of your profit ~ $13,800)
Working backwards I know I’ll need to make: $55,000 in revenue in my business
There’s my financial and income goal laid out. The only thing I need right now is to stay on that track << that will be the hardest part of all of it.
That’s why people use step #3.
3) They have a budget or live below their means
Does the word budget make you cringe? It’s like one of those things that you think… ugh no not that! Anything but that please! I think we need a new word for budgeting.. something that doesn’t sound restricting because budgets really aren’t about limiting your spending.
Let’s think about it this way: a budget isn’t the thing limiting your spending, it’s your money that’s limiting you.
All a budget is…truth.
Truth about how much money you have and your expenses. The great thing about budgets?
You get to choose where you want your money to go instead of letting your subconscious decide where your money will go.
Becoming debt free isn’t just something that magically happens. It’s strategic, it’s daily decisions, and it takes discipline.
It has to be a choice over and over to choose to put your money towards your financial goals. It’s hard to do that when you don’t know where your money is going, a budget will help you do that.
Here’s a video I created on how to break paycheck to paycheck living with my favorite budgeting software: You Need a Budget. This is a PERFECT place to start with budgeting. Just look at what you can do with your money when you budget and allocate it.
Here’s a 34 day free trial:
Speaking of budgets.. using You Need a Budget helps my husband and I save 66% of our income every month. YES 66% OF OUR INCOME!
Which brings me to the second point: debt free people live below their means or another fun way to put it is they keep their expenses below the money their making. When I say my husband and I save 66% of our income I’m sure you picture us eating rice and beans every night and hardly buying anything new.
But that’s far from the truth of how we actually live, because we both decided that if we wanted to keep our lifestyle but save money, well we decided to do 1 thing: make more money.
We created new businesses, took on contract and consulting work, and yes we do think about our purchases but in reality our life looks like:
going out to dinner once a week for date night to a nice restaurant (we order lobsters or steaks sometimes too!)
ordering take out twice a week
buying Restoration Hardware bedroom furniture
paying for a house cleaner
buying quality clothing
spending $500 a month on house improvements or house upgrades
and we still save 66% of our income
This is possible because we worked on increasing our income while keeping our expenses at a certain amount each month. When we started making more money, we made sure our expenses didn’t go up or “lifestyle creep” because we had a budget.
Living below your means doesn’t mean rice and beans forever but it could to you. There’s lots of different ways to live below your means.
It just means your expenses don’t increase along with your income increase. That’s what get most people into debt.
4) They focus on creating more money
I hit on this point above but it makes sense if you want to be debt free right? If you increase your income, paying off debt might feel easier and will happen faster.
There’s only so much you can cut back on your current expenses before it really starts to feel like you’re miserable. I like the idea of increasing my income OVER giving up too much in my spending. I make sure to balance both of them, the increase in income and decrease in spending.
Plus if you if put time and energy into increasing your income that’s how you stay out of debt and save more money.
Finding new ways to increase your income could not be simpler in 2021. Seriously!
There are SO many different ways you can increase your income, here’s some things you can do right now:
ask for a raise
apply for a promotion
find a job that pays more
refinance your mortgage to a lower interest rate
transferring high interest credit cards to a lower interest rate or 0% card
negotiate on your telephone, tv, or other bills
Here’s ways you can start building little money machines (this may take some time)
write a book and self publish it on Amazon
create a course on a specific topic and sell it on Udemy
Create products or digital downloads and sell them on Etsy
Start a coaching business and sell high end packages:
Get paid to speak at conferences
Become an influencer (Youtube, instagram, TikTok)
Start a blog and sell products or become an affiliate
Sell services on Fiverr
Literally the internet is endless with ways you can make money!
Basically anyway to start an online business or freelancing is to use the skills you have studied or acquired over time and exchange money for them.
My first business was a wedding floral design business, I started out doing it as a hobby, took a class and grew my skills freelancing and doing free internships at wedding businesses.
Then I started my own and people paid me money in exchange for my skills. Easy right?
You can also ask for more money just through the simple every day things you pay for right now like bills or your mortgage or the interest you’re paying for on a credit card.
There’s always more money to be created!
PSSSTTT: If you’re starting a coaching business let me save you a lot of time and show you how to start making money in your business NOW.
Here’s an in depth blog post about creating a $5,000 coaching package and selling it now.
5) They don’t allow for emotional spending
Emotional spending occurs when you buy something you don't need and, in some cases, don't even really want, as a result of feeling stressed out, bored, under-appreciated, incompetent, unhappy or any number of other emotions. (Thanks Investopedia!)
I'm an emotional spender, but as a money mindset coach I had no idea that I was...until I wanted to pay off my debt.
I realized how much I used to spending when I was bored or frustrated or unsure, or any other negative or positive emotions.
One of my biggest emotional spending emotions was FOMO.
I was terrified of:
missing out on the next big coaching program or
going out with friends or
missing out on some new cool trend I needed to buy
Once I got my spending under control and started to pay off debt I saw how much of my spending was motivated by present emotions and not by what I wanted my future to look like.
This action was probably my biggest action I needed to take in order to pay off my debt and keep my debt paid off. Another characteristic that most people have that are debt free which leads you to keep your emotional spending in check is discipline.
My emotional spending was a result of lack of discipline. Lack of discipline was because I wasn’t thinking of my future and I was only thinking about what present Shannon wanted.
It’s like wanting to eat the cake but wanting to lose weight and look good a couple months from now. You get emotional eating and discipline in check and ta daaa.
6) They ask questions
Have you ever been to a restaurant and they say what special or bottle of wine they have. But never mention the price?
Are you the person that will say.. how much is it?
See I wasn’t one of those people. I never asked for discounts or negotiations or for prices of things.
I know a lot of you are probably rolling your eyes over there, I can feel them, like duh Shannon OF COURSE I do that stuff but I’m talking about asking all the questions.
But what about all the ways we can ask questions about money that make us feel uncomfortable.
Like asking for a pay raise. AWKWWARDDD.
Like raising your prices. AWWKWWARDD.
Asking for a discount. (but then won’t people think we don’t have money?)
Or when you go to buy something else that was on the clearance rack and it’s not on sale.. do we just stay quiet and buy it?
There’s lots of different reasons we don’t ask questions with money but a lot of them boil down to:
we feel uncomfortable asking for more money (or wonder if we’re worthy of it)
we hate feeling like we can’t afford something or even feel like it could be a power play (like yeah I can buy that $100 t-shirt!)
I remember the one time I was Christmas shopping and I was at a bed bath and beyond. I knew they had those 20% off coupons but didn’t have one on me, I asked if they had one laying around or an extra one at the register.
It seems so silly but it was SO EMPOWERING.
I got my 20% off! I saved some money who can recall how much it was now but OMG I felt SO GOOD.
I used to worry what people would think of me.. like this girl needs discounts and coupons WHAT A CHEAP-O, haha but I felt like this girl who CARES about her money and that felt BAD-ASS.
When’s the last time you asked a question about your bills or purchases?
Do you ask for a discount, a pay raise, or a 20% off coupon?
Becoming debt free and staying debt free is the most financial freeing thing you can absolutely do for yourself, for your family, and for your future you.
It opens up the opportunity for you to start making the most use out of your money instead of paying the banks for that purchase you made 5 years ago.
If any of this feels overwhelming it’s important for you to give yourself the grace of building a habit.
Go buy Atomic Habits by James Clear and use his tips to leverage the power of habit building to become a debt free person.
Trust me, you’ve got this.
