You may or may not have heard of Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball. However, if you want to pay off debt, using this method combined with a few tweaks will help you pay off debt even faster. In just 6 months, we were able to pay off over $6,000 worth of debt! The craziest part is we did this on one full time income. If you had told me 5 years ago that I would be able to pay off an average of $1,000 per month of debt I would have told you you were crazy. Up until the point we decided to pay off debt, we had been living paycheck to paycheck. Here’s the breakdown of how we paid off $1,000 of debt each month for 6 months and what you need to know to do it too.
*This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures.
While you could probably leap head first into debt payoff and still get results, there’s a good chance you’ll end up back in debt. Most of us who wind up deep in debt do so because we have a tough relationship with money and haven’t properly learned how to manage it.
When our family originally paid off debt, we followed Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball Method. However, after better understanding my finances, I now align myself more with the No Budget Babe ICE Debt Repayment Method.
4 things to do before you pay off debt:
- Know Your Money – The Dave Ramsey method teaches basic budgeting principles that are important to understand before you begin paying off debt. No Budget Babe follows a similar method that encourages you to “Illuminate” your spending. This means getting to know your current spending, bills and more. This way you can eliminate unnecessary expenses as well as better plan your future spending.
- Get an Emergency Fund – The rules of the Debt Snowball state that you should have a $1,000 emergency savings in place, I wish our family would have continued to make automatic deposits to our emergency fund during debt payoff. You can do this with just $100 per month and can earn around 5% interest on the money you save!! This way you can keep beefing up your emergency fund while getting paid to do so!
- Understanding Your Habits – Something that the No Budget Babe ICE Debt Repayment Method covers that Dave Ramsey didn’t touch on is learning why you got yourself into debt in the first place. I love that she talks about mindset and beliefs, because if we don’t cover these things, we stand the chance of digging ourselves into debt again even after we pay it off.
Click here to learn more about the ICE Debt Repayment Method.
Evaluate Your Emergency Fund Needs
Through Dave Ramsey’s standard Baby Steps, he encourages people to build a $1,000 emergency savings. The problem with this can be that one single emergency can wipe out your entire emergency fund. If this happens, you will be stuck rebuilding your fund rather than focusing on debt payoff. This is what happened to our family which is why I now prefer the ICE Debt Repayment Method.
If I could go back and do the Debt Snowball Method differently, I would set a savings goal along with my Debt Snowball payoff. Even setting a goal of $100 per month can help continue to build your savings beyond $1,000 so you are more financially supported. See my 10x Savings Plan.
Continually contributing to savings (even a small amount) can help prevent you from having to re-build your emergency fund from scratch, therefore adding to your financial stress. Making the choice to commit to $100 monthly deposits to our emergency fund, (or whatever you can) can make a huge difference!
The Benefits of an HSA Savings Account
Another common mistake that people make when building a savings or emergency fund, is putting their emergency savings into a savings account through their current bank.
Things to know about HSA:
- Having a savings account attached to your checking account makes it easy to transfer money out of savings for things that aren’t an emergency.
- Savings accounts attached to your checking often don’t pay you as much in interest.
- Opening a high yield savings account will help your money make more money! Accounts like the Savings Connect account through CIT bank pay 5% interest when you save only $100 per month!
Investing During Debt Payoff
A big topic of debate during debt payoff is whether or not you should continue to invest while paying off debt. If our family were to have followed the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps during our Debt Snowball, the “rules” technically were to not to continue investing while paying off our debt.
I am so thankful we insisted on continuing to contribute to company matched 401K. This was something we started doing later in life and now have learned to understand the power of investing. Our decision to do this aligns more with the ICE Debt Repayment Method that focuses on wealth building as well as debt payoff.
If you are currently investing a lot and want to consider lowering how much you invest in order to still take advantage of your company match while also having a little extra money to put toward debt, that might be a topic worth discussing.
Pay Back Less Debt When Possible
When our family started the Debt Snowball method, no one mentioned to us that a good idea to help save money and speed up the debt payoff process would be to get a lower interest rate. Especially on things like credit cards. (Ours was at a whopping 25% interest!)
Learning how to cut costs, including negotiating credit card interest rates is the second step in the ICE Debt Repayment Method and I know would have helped our family pay off debt even faster! Even though we didn’t have that knowledge at our disposal at the time, we still managed to pay back less money in interest by taking out a personal loan that had a lower interest rate.
How to pay back less in interest:
- Negotiating with credit card companies
- Getting a lower interest rate loan Payoff Loans are designed for this
- Transfer debt to a 0% interest credit card and work to pay it off (keep in mind you will have to pay this off within the promotional period, or you will be hit with major interest charges!)
If you want more guidance on how to negotiate your credit card interest or find balance transfer credit cards, you can learn more with the ICE Debt Repayment Method.
Negotiating Credit Card Debt
If you are also fighting a high interest rate, a good idea would be to look up online scripts to help negotiate interest rates on some of your credit cards.
Negotiations are definitely a smart tactic, but unfortunately they don’t always work. That’s why it can be good to have a backup plan.
Getting a Lower Interest Loan
If you have a significant amount of debt to pay off like we did, (we had a $12K credit card bill on top of car loans, student loans etc), it might be worth looking into taking out a loan with a lower interest rate or consolidation. Options like the Payoff Loan are designed to help you pay off high interest credit cards so you can save money and pay back less!
By taking out a loan to pay off our credit card we were able to go from a 25% interest rate to an 11%! That was a huge load of my mind because it felt like we were actually able to make a dent in our debt payoff rather than just paying the interest. Check your debt payoff interest rate.
In the visuals below we used the Bankrate calculator to calculate the savings we were able to get by lowering our interest rate. With our original interest rate of 25%, we would have paid $14,069 in interest alone (more than the original balance on our card) and by lowering our interest rate to 11% with a payoff loan, we were able to bring our interest to $3,016 (an $11,000 savings). **Keep in mind that this would have been our savings had we made the minimum payment on our credit card. Because we paid more toward our card we were able to pay it off quicker and avoid even more interest fees.** See what you qualify for with a Payoff Loan.
Using a 0% Interest Credit Card Balance Transfer
A common promotion that credit card companies run is offering 0% interest for an extended period of time (usually a year). While running this promotion, they will often allow balance transfers from another credit card! This means you could turn a high interest card (think 25%) to 0%!
This can be an amazing way to completely eliminate the interest you are paying on your credit card debt, however, there is one big catch you need to be aware of.
If you choose to transfer your credit card debt to a 0% interest credit card, you will want to make sure you can pay off what you owe in the allotted promotional period. For example, if you have 1 year to pay off $12,000, make sure you can commit to paying $1,000 per month! If you cannot commit to this, and you go past the promotional period, you can be slapped with interest charges! To better understand this method and how to go about it, be sure to follow the ICE Debt Repayment Method‘s teachings.
Ok, that was a lot of debt payoff pre-game info, now it’s time to dive into the rules of the Debt Snowball if you’re not familiar with them yet.
How the Debt Snowball works.
- Create an extra $200 per month in your budget
- Apply that extra $200 to your smallest debt on top of your current minimum payment
- Pay off your smallest debt balance
- Take entire payment from your smallest debt and begin applying it to the next greatest
Debt Snowball vs. ICE Debt Repayment Method
Another difference between Dave Ramsey’s debt payoff method and the ICE Debt Repayment Method is that Dave Ramsey’s focuses on paying off the smallest debts first while the ICE Debt Plan focuses on paying off high interest debt first.
Starting with your smaller debts, like the Debt Snowball encourages can be great if you are looking for quick-win debt payoff, however, plans that focus on paying off high interest first (like the ICE Debt Method) have been shown to help you pay off debt quicker and pay back less money in the long run. Learn more about the ICE Debt Repayment Method.
Finding an extra $200
The first step in starting the Debt Snowball is finding an additional $200 per month to put toward debt. A lot of people believe that finding extra money means working more. In reality, there is a good chance you already have $200 hiding in your budget.
Strategies for finding $200:
Do a spending inventory
A spending inventory is when you do a deep dive into your spending habits so you have a totally clear picture on how you spend money, where you spend it, and where you might be able to cut back.
Cut your monthly expenses
One of the best and fastest ways to get more money in your budget is by cutting monthly expenses. All you have to do is go through your budget and find ways that you can reduce or eliminate the expenses that you pay for every single month. Top areas to cut:
- Subscription fees
- Reduce grocery budget
- Out-to-eat expenses
Get a side hustle for debt payoff
Another great idea to get more money to put toward debt payoff is to start a side hustle. I started a few different side hustles in order to help accelerate our debt payoff. These are jobs I was able to do from home while raising kids and homeschooling!
Again, these were not strategies that were discussed during the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, however, the ICE Debt Repayment Plan goes more in depth on ways to earn more money to put toward debt payoff that go beyond simply “cutting back expenses.”
More posts on side hustles:
- 10 Things I Did to Make Money From Home
- 8 Ways to Make Extra Money Without Working More
- 5 Easy Start Make Passive Income Streams in 2023
Organizing Your Debt Snowball Printout
Grab the Debt Snowball Printout here to get started and follow along, or you can get all of the teachings plus additional printouts when you sign up for the ICE Debt Repayment Plan.
Once you have your $200 extra per month, the Debt Snowball gets pretty simple. I recommend downloading my Debt Snowball printable to help you keep track of your debt payoff and to get an idea of how quickly you can pay off your debt.
How to fill out the Debt Snowball printout:
- Write out your debts – In the top column of the Debt Snowball Printout, write out your debts with the biggest debt in box #1. The #2 box will be your second largest, and so on and so on.
- Fill in your totals – Below each of these, fill in your total balance owed for each debt.
- Enter your monthly payment amount – Below that, fill in your minimum monthly payment for each debt.
- Apply your $200 – Lastly, you are going to take your $200 and apply it to your smallest debt first.
Applying $200 to your smallest debt
As you can see below, our $300 credit card was our smallest debt.
Our minimum monthly payment was $30.
By adding the additional $200 to that $30 we were able to put $230 toward our smallest debt of $300.
*Remember, you can always put more money toward debt if you are able to! This will help you pay off debt faster and save you from additional interest!
What if you have money left over?
As you can see, after we finished paying off our remaining $70 from our credit card, we took the remaining $160 and applied it to our next smallest debt.
Getting the debt snowball rolling
Once we paid off our smallest debt, we were able to take the full $230 that we applied toward it and begin putting that money toward our next smallest debt.
Because our minimum payment for our next smallest debt was $100, that gave us a grand total of $330 to apply toward that debt. Once that debt was paid off, we had $330 to begin applying to the next debt in line.
Now we had racked up a huge debt snowball and it just rolled faster and faster.
By the time we got to our biggest debt it only took a little over a month to completely polish off that remaining balance.
When we were finished paying off debt in 6 months, we still managed to have an additional $210 leftover.
Can everyone pay off $6,000 of debt in 6 months?
While we were able to get out of debt $6,000 of debt in 6 months, this isn’t going to be the case for everyone. Depending on the amount of debt you have, your income, and your motivation, debt payoff will look differently for everyone.
While being able to pay off this much money was a huge win for our family, I fully believe that if we had followed the ICE Debt Repayment Method we would have been able to pay off more. Oh well, live and learn.
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