Today's episode is brought to you by The Money Plan Bootcamp by budgets made easy. This is the five step framework to creating a money plan that you can actually stick to. The fun starts in just a few days. I'm so excited. And go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp to come join me only a couple more days so you don't wanna miss out on this.

And of course you can watch the replays and if you want access to the replays, the giveaways, the fun, the games, all the things you have to sign up. So go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp. Welcome to the Money Mindset Podcast, where you'll find a judgment free zone to help you free yourself from overthinking and the fear of doing things the wrong way.

It's time to shed yourself of the mom, guilt, procrastination, and perfectionism so you can start doing the things that you really want to do with your money instead of just working to pay bills. I'm Ashley Patrick, ex detective turned debt free, CEO of my very own business and stay at home mom of three. Not too long ago, my dreams of staying at home with my kids seemed impossible.

I thought I'd have to stay miserable in a high stress and demanding job just so I could retire someday. After gaining the confidence of my own ability to manage my family's finances and a simple step by step plan to make it happen, I was able to pay off $45,000 in just 17 months, which then allowed me to finally quit my job, stay at home with my kids and build a debt-free business.

Now my mission is to help moms like you conquer debt and free themselves from the mental load of handling their family's finances. If you're ready to shed the guilt and shame surrounding your past money mistakes and tackle your debt, this is the place for you. Let's get started. In today's episode, we are covering stage five of the Money Success Roadmap, which is my step by step plan toward money success.

And we use this roadmap inside of Money Success Club, step by step workbooks and trainings to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Now since this is stage five, if you haven't listened to the other stages this week, go back and listen to those. First I go into more in depth of what the Money Success Roadmap is and stage 1, 2, 3,

and four that starts at episode 92 and Monday will be the last stage episode, which will be episode 97 was stage six. But today we are going to cover stage five. And just as a reminder, you cannot be in more in one stage at once. I want you to focus on just one thing at a time. So if you have not completed all the action steps in a previous stage,

go back and finish that stage before moving on to the next stage. Because if you don't, you're gonna be overwhelmed and you're not gonna know what to do. I have set this up in such a way that you focus on one thing at a time and that is it. Then you move to the next stage because if you look at the big picture and all the things you've gotta do to get from broke and stressed out and not sure what to do with your money to financial freedom,

that feels overwhelming, right? You're like, How the heck am I gonna make that happen? That is why this is broken up into step by step stages with action steps and milestones for every stage. So once you're in stage five, you have a solid plan and you're super motivated to conquer your debt while still enjoying your life, okay? You don't have to live on rice and beans over here,

okay? You can still enjoy your life while you are paying off debt. Guess what? That's actually probably more realistic for you to have long-term success because when you deprive yourself of all the things that you enjoy when you're done, or maybe not even, maybe you don't even get to the point where you're done, but then you start, it's like fester famine,

right? And then you just start overindulging. And I know I experienced this once we were, we just like got so focused on paying off debt, you know, especially me, my husband and I dragged him along. He did eventually, you know, get on board with everything and start to change his mindset as well. But you know, toward the end it was like,

oh my gosh, just I have to do it as fast as possible. But then once we paid off the debt, it was like we started overspending. We didn't have a clear goal of what to do next and all the things. So you know, when you are more intentional with your overall plan of what you wanna do, including after paying off debt,

it's a whole lot easier to stay on track through the long term. And so that in means not depriving yourself of all the joys in your life while just because you have debt or while you're paying off debt, that doesn't mean that you don't make some temporary sacrifices. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I still want you to have some fun.

You don't have to say no to everything. You don't have to eat only rice and means you don't have to never go inside of a restaurant. You just have to be intentional with where your money is going. And if you wanna divert it to have some fun away from debt, that is perfectly okay. You don't need to feel shame and guilt about that.

Now in this stage, you also know what is happening with your money and you realize that it's progress, not perfection, because I know as perfectionist we wanna do everything the right way. And you know, if we're never supposed to eat out, then we're never supposed to eat out. And if you do, then you've failed, right? So we've gotta gotta move past that perfectionist mindset.

We gotta move past the overthinking. So you have a plan, you know what you need to do, it's clear, it's realistic, and you are going to make it happen. So you've built your confidence, you have figured out some ways to stay motivated, and you were really focused on paying off your debt while still enjoying your life. Now in this stage,

some of the action steps, I want you to identify some ways to increase your income cuz we can only save so much, right? And if you're already behind and you already don't have enough money to cover all your bills, you have to increase your income. We've already talked about ways to save money and you've already got your emergent, your basic emergency fund.

Now I want you to start thinking about ways to increase your income, ways to make some extra money, and keep in mind that it's temporary. And there are lots of ways to make money online, which you can do at night or in the mornings or you know, while your children are asleep. It just kind of depends on what you are willing to take on and what you can mentally and physically handle in addition to like your main responsibilities.

But start thinking of some ways that you can increase your income and reminder, you're focusing on one debt at a time. So at stage four you've identified the different debt payoff methods and you've created a plan for what you want to do and which debt you wanna focus on first, or which debts in the order that you wanna focus on them. But you're only focusing on one of those debts at a time.

So you're focusing on one. So you can make progress a lot faster, which mentally is way more rewarding. So you're not sending $20 to this debt and $20 to that one, you would send $40 to the one debt and you're gonna make progress a lot faster on that one debt. So you feel like you're actually doing something if you spread it out too thin,

it doesn't feel like you're making progress on anything. And so I want you to focus on just one debt at a time. Just like you focus on one stage at a time, you're just focusing on one thing at a time. You're focusing on paying off one debt at a time. And that's also why I want you to save first. So you save,

then you're not trying to save and pay off debt at the same time. You focus on one of those at a time, you feel like you're actually making progress. And mentally that is way more rewarding and motivating and it will help you stay on track in the long term versus the short term. Cuz if you don't feel like you're actually doing anything, you're gonna get discouraged really quick.

So you've also have created your visual progress trackers and this is just where you are knocking out your debt. And so this stage is going to take you a little while. You're gonna be in this stage a while. Once you have paid off your debt, then you're done with stage five. So stage four, you've created that plan. Stage five is where you're actually doing it.

And so, you know, you may, if things come up, you may have to go back to stage four and then go back to stage five, you know, if you have to focus back on savings and things like that. But if you increase your income and you find ways to make extra money or sell things, it's gonna go a lot faster.

But keep in mind that at this point you've done all the groundwork, you've laid that foundation so that you can be successful in the long term. Now I also want you to realize that this stage may take two to three years. So remember we talked about ways to create your plan so that you can do it in three years or less and now you're implementing it.

Now you're doing it. And so stage five is going to take you a lot longer and you're gonna be working on yourself through that process. But if you can find ways to speed it up, you're gonna be more successful cuz you're able to kinda speed things up a bit and then you can move on to the bigger picture items, right? Because you're not doing this just so you can say,

Yay, I'm debt free. Woohoo. Like you have a bigger vision for your life, right? And this is the stage where you're finally getting it in progress, you're making it happen, you've laid the groundwork and you're able to really see that big picture vision and just you can feel it and you can smell it, you can taste it, right?

Like you are seeing that you can build wealth. Like even if you grew up who, if your parents weren't great with money, you are doing better and you can see the reward, you can see that light at the end of the tunnel. You're gonna be able to pay off your mortgage early, you're gonna be able to save for retirement, you're gonna be able to build a college fund for your,

your children, be able to pay for those things that you want to help them with, but that you just can't with all the debt. And so you can finally see that you're able to do that and start making progress on that. And stage five is you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna love it and hate it at the same time at different points,

right? So you know, you've gotta find ways to stay motivated, you gotta keep those visuals around. You gotta create that vision board and that's why we kind of do all that prep work in stage four because stage five is gonna take you a while, but I want you to be prepared for that mentally and financially so that you can make progress and get through this stage.

Now, if you were already in this stage, good for you. But I do want you to go back and make sure you've created all those other action steps, even if you are already at the point of paying off debt. Because there may be some other things that you need to clean up or do from the earlier stages, like making sure you're setting aside the right amount of taxes and insurance policies and just kind of review those things periodically as well as you're going through stage five.

Because stage five will most likely take you a lot longer to finish unless you are like super motivated and you don't have, you know, a ton of like a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt. You know, if you have more of an average 30 to 50,000 and you make decent amount of money, if you find ways to increase your income, you're gonna be able to knock that out in less than two years.

And once you start going, you get motivated and you find ways to do it even faster. So as an example, when I first did all the calculations and I created my debt payoff plan, it was gonna take over two years. Well, by the time we finished, we did it in 17 months. I knocked off almost an entire year off of our initial debt path plan because it was just like,

oh my gosh, okay, how can I do this faster? How can I do it faster? I found different ways to stay motivated. Some of the things that I did to stay motivated is I read debt payoff stories like every single night. That's why I love sharing them here on the podcast. I share 'em on my website as well. I have lots and lots of debt payoff stories for you to use this motivation and kinda help you stay focused.

You know, I created visuals. So I had a thermometer that I drew on some construction paper for my student loans and I just filled it in as I paid it off and I, you know, let people know what my goal was. You know, some of my friends thought we were crazy and they didn't like me saying no to some things and they make comments like,

well what if you die tomorrow? But I was also able to find communities online that of people that were doing the same thing. And so that's why I have built the community for the Money Success Club so that we can support each other because our family and our friends are not always the most supportive when you are on this journey for paying off debt cuz they don't see the bigger vision that you see for your life.

And so when you create that supportive community and when you have that support, it's a lot easier to stick with it and to stay on track over the long term. Of course there's gonna be ups and downs and bumps in the road, right? But as long as you keep moving forward, you're making progress. And so a supportive community really helps you do that,

especially in stage five because it's gonna take you a little bit longer to do that. Another thing I did to stay motivated is I figured out how much interest I was paying every single day. And so it was almost $5 a day when I started, it was like four, I think it was around 4 62, so not quite $5, but very close.

And I would periodically like through the month, okay, it was like, all right, I made this payment, what is it now? And I just slowly watched it go down and down because almost $5 to take just an interest was actually more than my payment, my just my minimum payment. And which is why I had the debt so long and why I barely paid any of it off in 10 years because I was barely making the,

or barely paying the interest that was occurring every single day. And so I think I had paid off like $3,000 in 10 years and I still owed 25 grand on my student loans when I started like focusing on it. And I just could not believe the amount of interest that it was occurring every single day. And so that's one way to kind of get motivated when you see like the real dollars that the debt is costing you because it's easy to ignore that and just say,

Okay, I'm making the minimum payment, I'll pay it off in a few years. Like it's not that big of a deal, but when you're seeing like, Oh my gosh, this costs me $5 today. Like I could have put $5 towards something else, like it adds up really quickly. And so that was one way that I kind of stayed motivated and as I saw that number drop,

I was like, Okay, all right, I'm making some progress. Like I can actually see what I am saving every single day by focusing on paying off this debt. So, you know, figure out what works for you that may not be, you know exactly what you wanna do. You know that map may feel overwhelming, but you know, you can,

I believe my account just told me what it was and I just tracked it. Or I divided what it the monthly was by how many days or I, it's been so long now. I don't remember exactly how I figured out the daily interest, but I wanna say that the my student loan might have had, it may have told me what the day to day interest was.

I feel like it probably did and it like accrued, like every day it was adding to it. It was ridiculous. So, alright, so let me know when Instagram budgets made easy, what you are doing to stay motivated in the long term. And don't forget that the Money Plan Bootcamp starts Sunday night with the welcome party. The live training starts on Monday.

If you haven't signed up yet, go sign up right now. Don't forget budgets Made easy.com/bootcamp. I've got over $150 worth of stuff that I'm giving away. I'm giving away a physical living, well spinning, less planner. It's the planner I've been using for the past four years. I love it. The actual planner, I'm giving away highlighters, pens,

stickers, and the Power of One More by Ed Mylet, which is one of my favorite self-improvement books that I've read in, well at least this year, maybe even longer. It's really one of my favorite books right now, and I'm giving one of those away as well. So the big giveaway, you've gotta join us and be a V I P,

which is also free. So the v i P group is free as well, but you've gotta be a V I P to get into that big giveaway, over $150 worth of stuff that I will ship to you. If you're in the US or Canada, I will ship it to you, but come and join us. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

You're gonna learn a lot and you're gonna be able to create a money plan that you can actually stick to, which is what we want, right? There's no point in creating a money plan, a budget if you can't stick to it. We want to achieve our dreams and live the life that you want. Well, you gotta make a plan that's realistic that you can actually stick to,

to get there. It's not a one size fits all. So I'm gonna teach you how to do it and how to make it realistic for your family. I hope to see you there.