If your debt is going to take you an extended period of time to pay off, chances are good that you will experience burnout at some point if you haven’t already. I’m welcoming Jen from Frugal Millennial today to share six smart ways to avoid burnout while paying off debt.
When you first start paying off your debt, you may feel wonderful. You may be able to pay off your smallest debts quickly, and with each debt you eliminate, you feel a weight lift off of your shoulders. It becomes more challenging when you get to the larger debts. Maybe you started with a couple of $500 or $1,000 student loans, and now you’re left with only $10,000 loans.
Now, getting out of debt seems like an endless nightmare. You may feel like you are getting nowhere even though you are making progress. This is when you start to experience debt burnout. You get tired of scrimping, working long hours, and making sacrifices that your friends do not have to make. If this is how you feel, try following these steps to stay motivated so that you can finally ditch your debt for good.
Make a realistic plan
If you are trying to pay off $100,000 of debt in one year on an income of $15,000, you are probably going to become frustrated. This goal is impossible (unless you find a way to drastically improve your income immediately). Your goal should be challenging and maybe even a little crazy, but it should be reasonable given your income and the sacrifices you are willing (or not willing) to make.
Try to find a side gig with a flexible schedule.
If you work 100 hours per week in an office, you may feel worn out pretty quickly. If this approach sounds exhausting to you, try finding a side gig with a more flexible work schedule. You could try starting your own photography business (your hours would likely only be weekends), doing freelance work (which can be done from home!), or starting a blog and monetizing it. If you try any of these options, you can earn some extra cash and do what you love – instead of working 100 hours per week at a job (or multiple jobs) that you hate.
Find free things to do for fun
You need to work hard to pay off your debt, but it is still important for you to find time to relax and have some fun. Relaxing may feel like a waste of time when you have so many other things that you need to do, but this could not be further from the truth. Having fun is crucial for your physical and mental health and will help to prevent burnout while you pay off debt. We often think that having fun requires spending money, but there are actually plenty of fun things that can be done for free. Try taking a free yoga class, going for walk around a park, having a board game night or Netflix night, attending a free festival, or checking out a free museum.
Celebrate small wins
It is easy to feel motivated when you pay off small debts because you can pay those off relatively quickly. If your smallest debt is $10,000, it will take some time to pay that off. The slow process can be frustrating and demotivating. Instead of waiting until that $10,000 debt is paid in full, celebrate paying off each $1,000 or increment or reward yourself every time you make an extra payment on your debt (no matter how small the payment is). You do not need to treat yourself by spending money. Instead, try engaging in one of your favorite (free) activities or share your victory with others who inspire you to continue on your journey to debt freedom.
Share your struggles with someone else
When we go through difficult times in our lives, it is important to have a strong support system. Venting some of your frustration to a friend who is a good listener can make you feel heard, validated, and supported. When you are struggling, it is always nice to know that there is someone in your corner rooting for you to win. Remember to confide in a friend who makes smart financial decisions – not one who will encourage you to stay in debt!
Dream about your debt-free future
Paying off debt has its challenges, but it will be worth it when you achieve financial freedom. You are making these sacrifices for a reason, and it helps to focus on the end goal. What will you be able to do once your debt is paid off that you would not be able to do if you still had debt? What does your debt-free future look like? Focusing on the long-term goal, instead of the short-term challenges, will give you perspective and keep you motivated to ditch debt for good.
Paying off debt as quickly as possible is a challenging goal. To stay motivated, you need to do what you can to avoid experiencing burnout and giving up. To prevent debt burnout, try setting a realistic goal, finding a side gig with a flexible schedule, finding free things to do for fun, celebrating small victories, and focusing on the end goal. If you follow these steps, you can finally attain financial freedom!
How about you?
- What do you do to avoid burnout while you’re working hard on your financial goals?
Jen is an HR/Finance professional and frugal lifestyle blogger. She and her husband are currently working on a crazy goal of paying off 117k of student loan debt in just three years. Jen blogs about healthy eating on a budget, destroying debt, increasing income, and living frugally. You can find her blogging at www.frugal-millennial.com.
Love your blog and this post! As a photographer, I just feel like I need to mention that starting a photography business may not actually be a great way to earn quick money. If you are going to start a safe, legal and profitable photography business, there are quite a few start-up costs (liability insurance, insuring your gear, software subscriptions, etc). Most experts suggest that starting a photography gig from the ground up will cost you about $10-15K if done legally etc (https://www.themoderntog.com/cost-start-a-photography-business/). Anyway, just throwing that out there 🙂
I like the idea of finding free things to go for fun. While it’s important to focus on paying off your debt, it’s also important that you take care of yourself while doing so. Thanks for sharing the tips.
It’s definitely important to give yourself a break and relax once in a while!
Great tips! I recently finished paying off $90,000.00 worth of credit card debt and celebrating my success. I wish I had done some of the tips listed here during the five years that it took me to pay off all of the debt. I did not think that I had the “right” to relax and as a result I overworked and fell into bed every night exhaused. Even if I did ring up all of that debt I still had the right to relax and recharge and I needed to allow myself to stop for a few minutes. Thanks Jen!
I can definitely empathize with the burnout! We started off with about $90,000 in loans, the smallest of which was a credit card balance of $3,000+. In retrospect, it was pretty easy and motivating to pay off because it only took a few months, but now we are working on our student loans. We have five groups, one of them with a $30,000+ balance!
I have motivated myself so far by setting up an expected repayment strategy based on our income by month, so for example, I expect that we will be at a certain place by April 2016. Each month, as we pay as much as we can, I compare our balance to what I hoped it would be, and it helps me feel like we are staying on track.
I think the hardest part is when you have already been making sacrifices for years or even a decade in our case to live frugally for different reasons. When we first got married, we worked/sacrificed to pay off my husband’s seminary loans of $18K in one year. Then we started to have children and live on one income in a high-cost of living area which had its own financial challenges. Then my husband decided to go to law school, which meant minimizing our expenses even more to avoid more loans than necessary, and now we are in loan repayment mode.
I think it’s also important to consider what you personally need to make it in the long haul. We are doing some minor improvements to our home to help it feel more comfortable for me because I homeschool and am literally in the home most of the day.
It definitely gets harder when you start working on the larger debts. Now that I have paid off my small loans, my smallest remaining loan is $6,000 and the largest is $20,000. I agree that when you’ve already been making sacrifices for years, it’s challenging to continue making sacrifices. It can be a lengthy process if you have massive debt, but it’s definitely worth it to pay off debt early! Best of luck with paying off your debt! You’ve got this!