Hey, it's Louis

Last week we peeked at the debt. This week we start doing something about it.

👀 IN TODAY'S STASH
• The reason credit card debt is worse than your mortgage. Even when the number is smaller
• A two-by-three inch piece of plastic that’s the most sophisticated psy-ops campaign in your wallet
• The one move that actually has a finish line

🌳 THE SHADE

If you've been making minimum payments and telling yourself that you're handling it... you're not wrong. You're surviving it. So grab some shade for a minute because surviving it and beating it are two different things, and most people don't know the difference. That's not on you. That's on the game being rigged to keep you right where you are.

🌰 THE NUT

Last time we pretended we were 13 again and checked out our debt like it was the lingerie section of the Sears catalog. Now we need to figure out what to do about it.

"Alright," you say. "How do we do that?"

Fair question. After all, we've spent years getting to where we're at.

The biggest generators of debt in America are mortgage, student loans, auto loans and credit cards. So with mortgage debt equaling tens of trillions of dollars, why does credit card debt deserve our attention first?

Let's step over to the WTF machine for a little comparison exercise using easy numbers.

Same $10,000. Two different types of debt. Typical rates for each.

In twenty years making minimum payments on a mortgage, it's paid off. Total interest paid... about $9,000. And you've got a house.

In twenty years making minimum payments on a credit card, you've paid about $12,000 in interest. And it's still not paid off. And you've got... what? Maybe some old shoes and a few dinners you don't remember.

THERE IS NO FINISH LINE.

The other kick in the acorns? Most of us don't have one credit card. We've three or four. And we carry a balance on all of them. 22% here. 19% there. It adds up over time.

Nobody sits down and decides to go $8,000 into credit card debt. It just happens. One tap at a time.

Now here's the thing. In this day and age having a credit card is genuinely useful. There are things you flat out can't do without one. Try renting a car without a credit card and let me know how that goes.

What we need to get better at is using it for the things we actually need it for. Not for the extra things… the things that are so easy to say yes to. The things they count on us saying yes to.

Make no mistake, my brother. These companies have an army of psychologists and marketers who know exactly how to play us. They know our emotions. They know our wants. They know how to play on them both.

Think about the last credit card commercial you saw. People having fun. Exotic places. Fancy restaurants. Everyone smiling and happy and going on an adventure.

What makes it all possible? That roughly two by three inch piece of plastic in your wallet.

They're not selling you on a credit card. They're selling you a feeling… and they're very good at it.

So what do we do about it? We stop playing their game and we start playing ours.

🐿️ THE STEP

There's something that's been around for a while, called the debt snowball. I know for a fact that it works. Here's how it goes.

Start with the card that has the lowest balance. The one that will be the quickest to knock out. Stop using it. Find any extra money you can; $10, $50, $100 a month and throw it at that card while making minimums on everything else.

When that card hits zero, you'll feel it. Kinda like being 13 again.

It doesn't feel like much at first. Just one card down. But you look at that zero balance and you think... okay. This can actually be done.

Then you take everything you were paying toward that card and add it to the minimum on the next lowest balance. Now you've got more firepower. The snowball is rolling.

And here's where the acorns really start dropping. Each card you knock out adds momentum. The balances start dropping faster. You start doing math you've never done before... not the "how much do I owe this month" but the "when this last card is gone I'm going to have an extra $XXX.XX a month" math.

That math feels different. That math has a finish line.

Dena and I did this. When that last one hit zero we looked at each other and said... well, what the hell do we do with all this money now?

We started our stash with it. That extra money that used to disappear into interest payments every month started building something… for us.

Start there, brother. Knock out that first card and start your stash.

Go find an inexpensive way to celebrate. You just learned the only debt math that matters.

Until the next Stash, protect your nuts brother.

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