Welcome to the money mindset podcast, where you will find the inspiration and motivation. You need to manage your money better. So you can stress less ms. Glen, the life you want. Today. We have Marcus Garrett with us to talk about how he paid off $30,000 in debt. And now he is working very hard on helping inspire others to do the same and manage their finances better.

And a little bit about Marcus. He is a motivational speaker, a staff development manager, and author of debt free or die. Trying how I buried myself $30,000 in debt and dug my way out. He is the co founder of paychecks and balances and award winning business dedicated to helping working professionals make money, save money, and get out of debt before selling his stake in 2020.

Now this is a really fun interview and I can't wait to get to it, but before we dive in, don't forget, you can get your budget. Starter kit budgets made easy.com/budget-starter-kit, and it comes with everything you need to get started on your budget. If you're overwhelmed, you're not sure where to start. This is where you start. It comes with a free printable step-by-step guide,

as well as a budget checklist. You make sure that you did everything that you needed to to get it set up and running for you this month. So go grab that. It is free and now let's welcome, Marcus. All right, Marcus. Thank you so much for being with us today. I'm really excited to talk with you today because you just,

I mean, you're just so much fun. I've been checking out your Facebook and Instagram and some YouTube videos and you just really make learning about finance fun and interesting. And that's pretty hard to do, I mean, honestly, but you know, you make it really interesting and I'm really excited to talk to you about paying off a lot of debt and some things that you learned along the way that you can share with our listeners.

But before we dive into that, can you just kind of give us a little bit of background about yourself? Well, I appreciate that I'm a senior millennial, a strong firm's senior millennial coming up on 38. And that also that like makes me an example, which I'm pretty sure is made up in the middle, but my coping strategy is sarcasm. And when I truly panicked,

I actually make more jokes. So that's kinda where that comes from. It's just naturally my personality laugh to keep from crying type of thing. So I appreciate that exactly what I try to do completely by accident. And I'm an auditor by trade, which is also fascinating to some people because they typically, I try to be like your neighborhood friendly auditor. You know,

they think it's very dry and it is don't get me wrong. It's not a profession I would recommend for excitement or anything like that, but I've been doing it for 15 years, have tried my best to escape. I made it out for about six to eight months and then they lured me back in with the promotion and more money. And it's like the mafia,

man, you can't escape it. And so I've spent 15 years trying to deny that I'm an auditor and now I run an audit division, but most people actually know me from a podcast that I did. We specialize in helping millennials make money, save money, and get out of debt. I've since, since gone freelance. That's why I'm here on your show.

And I was just out here, back in the streets, freelance writing, freelance podcasting, freelance, YouTube channel freelance, all social media is except for the ticktock Trying to get out of it. So can you tell us just a little bit about your debt payoff journey and kind of where that started for you? Yes. It precisely started at age 22 at about $9,000 in debt graduated college with about three credit cards,

I guess, technically it started at age 18 cause I had to get into debt first and I got like every millennials or every college millennials story. You're walking through the yard and everybody's getting free money. They're handing out t-shirts and swag and you feel left out, you sign all the contracts. I got a Jojo. I'm actually very proud of. I have no idea where it is and you know,

credit card arrived and started charging that one up. And then as credit tends to do another one or ride in another one and another one and assistant and a brother, you know, it goes, and before I graduated, I had $9,000 in debt, which in hindsight is actually pretty good for, you know, the average college student. That's not too bad.

Yeah, no max cars. And I don't know what happened. I got a, a what now? I didn't know what it was at the time. It was a consolidation loan, but it was just like one low monthly payment. I was like, Oh, of course. You know, I signed all the contracts again. Another contract four years later,

two years dumber and it arrived in the mail. And the crazy thing is I've told this story a hundred times. I even talk about it in the book. I have no idea how much that credit card consolidation loan was. And it doesn't matter because I didn't use it to pay off any credit cards. Excuse me. I paid off one of the credit cards.

I bought a car. I was shopping. I like bawled out of control. And the story I talk about in the book is I got $26,000 in debt and it's 72 hours before the next I was $26,000 in debt. And that is what became ultimately the story that I did not know, I was going to write seven years later, how I buried myself,

$30,000 in debt dug my way out. Okay. Yeah. But now you get to share your story and inspire others to do the same. So, so you learned along the way, I mean, you know, you're telling the story, so you came out on the other side of it. I get that question a lot, you know, do you regret it?

Would you do it again? And I'm like, you know, I don't know. It was one of the fork in the roads, you know, of a genie popped up. Like if you could change one thing in your life and it's like, well, but for this experience, it took me seven years to get out of that. That's 72 hours for the kids.

So the kids are like, Oh, I can just go get credit cards balled out. And then I could do podcasts in the future. No, that's not how it works. But at the same time, like you said, it did give me a story. It did give me a very traumatizing and impressionable and event that apparently I'll be talking about for the restaurant.

Yeah. I get the same questions with paying off my debt too. And you know, would you change anything? But you know, if you change it, then you wouldn't have the story to tell and, you know, be able to help influence other people and help other people get out of those same mistakes. So, you know, it is what it is.

I try to remind myself the other timeline might be scarier. So that's again, you know, that's how I sleep at night, laugh to keep from crying. So, you know, what was your aha moment? Because you know, something had to change where you're spending all this money on the credit cards and not really realizing what you're doing to paying off $30,000 in debt.

Like what happened along the way to make you flip that switch? Well, I wish I could say I got him dead. That was it. I learned my lesson. And by the next weekend I was on a debt free plan, but it actually took five more years and a lot more spending. And what happened is I was so much further in debt by that time I'm five years removed from school,

which I thought, you know, you went to school to get rich. So I'm a little irritated that I'm not rich yet. I'm working three jobs. Actually, I have my full time job. I work at a hotel on nights on nights and weekends. And I did contract work, putting computers together at this little, like probably a sweat shop now,

but it was like a warehouse with literally no air conditioning where you put computers together for a great rate. And then they would fire you as soon as they didn't need. Like, they were higher up for like a Christmas season and things like that. As soon as they didn't need you anymore, they'd lay you off. So I'd work on all these jobs.

And it got to a point where I couldn't even afford to make the minimum payment with three jobs and the cars were starting to get near max. And I missed a payment with like one of my earliest credit cards and the interest rate jumped to 29% over overnight. Sometimes I missed a payment and I was like, you know what? I'll just call my boys up.

You know, we been cool since I was 18. I was like, Hey guys, what's up? And the call center, I need y'all to do something about this interest rate. And they were like, hashtag NA. And I just remember, it's, it's scary how long you can be in denial about it. And I realized that night and or month that I didn't know how I was going to make the payment the next month.

Like I could not afford to make a 29% interest payment. It was quite literally a balloon payment. Maybe even like a, I feel like a balloon payment is not doing it just like a helium balloon payment is due next month. And I was not ready for that. And I called first, I waited, you know, denial the five stages. Then eventually I called for another consolidation loan 27 at this point.

And I just remember how miserable I felt. And they were asking what I now realize are basic questions are like, what's your credit score? How much debt do you have? How much total outstanding debt do you have? How much money do you make a year? The only answer I got right on that test was my first and last name. I was like,

I don't, I don't know the answer to any of these questions. And I also realized that if they did not say yes to this loan, I did not know how I was going to forward to make rent in this car with rims that I bought at 22 payments now at 27. And that was my decision. I was like, I'm going to get myself out of this situation.

Had no idea how, but I was like, I'm going to get myself out of this situation. So what did you do to get yourself out of the situation? Did you follow a certain plan or just kind of figure it out as you went along? I did the letter. I figured it out as I went along. So now I have a much more clarity of hindsight,

better organized book, but I'll talk about what I did in reality. And then I'll talk about what I wrote about in the book. So in reality, I just figured it out. They're actually still around, but I went to the bank rate.com and I probably did. This is how old I am. I did a Yahoo search. I don't think I did a Google.

I'm not even positive. Google was around at the time. So I was like, dear, yeah, I need to get out of debt. Like, I don't know. And then they were like bank rate and bank rate. They're still a great bank rate.com calculators with the S and I, I put in all my debt and I, I remember printing it out to a PDF cause I'm that old.

And I was like, whoop, this is, this is my debt free plan. And I just started following that. I didn't, I had loosely heard about snowballs. I knew about this Dave Ramsey that my parents listened to on the radio. You know, I knew these things existed, but I never applied them in my own life. And so I just went about it.

Haphazardly, whenever I had extra money, I'm working three jobs. So whenever I had extra money, I just put it towards the debt. I paid off a small school loan that I had first. And I remember these, I remember these events. So distinctly someone tells me you remember the traumatic events. And so I remember the traumatic events distinctly, and I remember paying off that student loan because I hadn't seen a balance at zero in so long that that stuck with me.

And I was like, Oh, I must be doing something works here. It was proof of evidence. So anyway, I did the haphazard approach. The no plan plan is what I call it, but now what I recommend to people is actually a four step plan that I use for debt. And it's the acronym. So my book is debt free or die trying.

And the acronym is D define the problem E establish a plan B, build a budget and T trust the process. And that's also time will pass on its own. That's actually the one thing you don't have to worry about. That's awesome. Yeah. So you started off with one that you could pay off fairly quickly, I assume. So you could see that $0 balance.

Yeah. It was about a $30,000 student loan. So most of my school was actually paid for, by a scholarship denied. My parents had helped me get Texas used to have, and it ironically went bankrupt. Texas used to have a Texas tomorrow fund. And you could pay credits for future school. Hence the tomorrow, I don't think they knew that college costs would go up 300% when they established this fund.

And thus, they went bankrupt, but I got in, cause I'm old, you know, that's one senior millennial, you slip in sometimes and it paid for like, it would have paid for all four years. It would pay for any public school institution within the state of Texas. But I, you know, my life is really just a, a long gated Forrest Gump story,

but I, I transferred schools and I lost a bunch of credit hours. Like my parents basically shrugged their shoulders, like good luck paying for that. So I had to figure it out. I had a small student loan and that's what I paid off first. That's great. I didn't know, Texas did that. I knew Florida did and like a couple other States,

but I didn't know Texas. Yeah. I wanna say New Mexico or Arizona has a fun. I mean, a lot of these States they don't promote them anymore. So Texas has another variation of the tomorrow fund. Now I hardly ever hear about it. I don't think they're eager to pay for it. They like whispered it in commercials. Or like if you sign up by this state,

like they don't like promote the date or anything like that. It's like whispered in the back of a commercial about something else, like the fine print for drugs or something like that. It still exists. You just might need to do a Google instead of a Yahoo search to find it. But it is out there. And I, I share that because I want people to know a lot of these avenues,

I guess, with the pandemic, we'll see where college goes, but I looked a lot of these avenues. They're not publicized. So to inform yourself about your finances and I call it putting the personal and personal finance. Absolutely. So now what do you wish you knew by the age of 30? Because you know, you did all this stuff in your twenties and now you've climbed your way out of it.

So what do you wish people knew or that you knew by the time you were 30, I've done a lot of talks. Now, people it's actually interesting that people pay you to talk about your screw ups. It's probably than they do about your successes. Cause I actually watched one, I went to a talk about from one of the guys from Iran,

which was fascinating. He's not very apologetic. He's also very rich and he does a talkie circuit now, but that being said, you can Google it. You can Google it. I wish I knew the power of $500 as one of the talks that I do. And I say that whether it's two 50 or 500, had I been saving or investing the wealth that I would have at this age due to compound interest and really just how math works and the inverse of all the interests.

I lost paying eight to master's card. I wish I had known that. And to your earlier point or question it's it's, you know, youth is wasted on the young, like I don't know that even if someone had taught it to me, would I have appreciated it. But I do at when I was in 20, someone had sat me down and explained both the value of money,

the cost of money and like opportunity cost and compound interest and the growth of money. These are things in concept I'm applying now, but I'm applying them in my late thirties. Glad I learned about them. Well, first of all, I had to get out of the debt that I got myself into my early twenties. And then I didn't really gain an appreciative appreciation for them until my mid to late thirties.

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like, if you start investing in your twenties, but you just don't have the foresight to do it, or maybe not even a lot of times the income, cause you're still going to college or, you know, entry level jobs and things like that. But it's like, if you can just save a little bit,

you're going to have so much more money just because of that time. Right. I've never met anyone that is like, you know, I, I wish I saved less money in my lifetime. And so that's, that's, I I've done, I've done over 150 interviews. I know cause we had the episodes enumerated on the other show and that's just not something people say,

and I'm not going to say it here. So I'm waiting to meet that person. So that's, that's the thing I wish, I wish I knew the value of money to learn it earlier. Now, what do you, and I know you talk about a lot of different topics and do workshops and all that kind of stuff. What do you wish people knew about their finances besides the compound interest,

you know, in your twenties? Like what else can people do now with their finances to make a big difference. I'm going to go with credit cards and then, you know, there's a battle between credit cards and student loans, as far as which should you pay first and which is more important than personal. First of all, my thing is the best plan is a plan that works.

I go with credit cards because the math is easier. I don't have these numbers in front of me, but it's something to the effect of the average household has about $6,000 in credit card debt. The average interest rate is 18% and people aren't going to believe this so they can go to bank rate to validate this. They have a minimum payment calculator. And if you only make the minimum payment on that $6,000 debt,

I want to say it was 40 years and about $40,000 to pay it off $6,000. Again, you can go and validate that math, but I can guarantee you it's a long ass time for a lot of money. If you only make the minimum payment. And you know, some people, some people already appreciate that. They're like, yeah, of course other people are like,

you know, shocked and appalled. And the reason is is the credit card is it's an inverse calculation. So your minimum payment is based on your outstanding balance. Typically a credit card has a 2% minimum payment requirement. Some go up to 2.5, some have 3%. So just look at the math there, you're paying 18% on the balance, but you're only paying 2% off each month and they put it towards the interest first.

So you never pay down your principal, which is a balance like, so if you went out and you bought a $6,000, I don't know what the hell you bought for $6,000, but let's say you bought one thing for $6,000. You're never really putting money towards that $6,000 until like the 20th year, all the other years, that 2% is just going towards the interest.

And that's why you always see those tweets that go viral where people are like, I've been paying for 10 years. Then the balance went up and it's like, well, you never paid on the principal. So yes, that, that can mathematically happen. And I, I wish people, I guess just had a greater understanding of that. And thus,

the simple fix and I talk about this in the book is I'm chased in an analysis a little bit different numbers. I think they said $2,000. If you just added $10 over the minimum, you'd pay it off in four years versus 11 years. And you know, four years is still four years, but you know, many of us went to college.

The four years is going to pass regardless of what we do. So you could be debt free in those four years as well. So again, you don't have to do something astronomical. I think that's what people think. Like I got to pay the 6,000 off. It's like, or try adding $10 over the minimum each month. You'd be surprised the difference it will make.

Wow. I have literally never thought about it that way. Cause I've never, well, I guess I probably did in college cause you know, I had the credit cards in college too, but I guess since I paid off that chunk, I haven't carried a credit card balance. Like I just paid off every month. And so I didn't even think about like how much interest that was occurring.

Now I had figured that out for my student loans and how much, you know, because I had, it took me, I paid like 10 years and I had only paid like $3,000 on my student loans. Like it was ridiculous. So, but I never thought about it from the credit card aspect of it. So I'm really glad that you mentioned that.

Well, another thing, yes. That's all true. I mean, folks can, if you type in minimum payment calculator actually think bank rates is the first choice and I do not. Yeah. I love their<inaudible>. People were probably like, this guy works for banquet. Exactly. I'm not going to pay it or otherwise this is unpaid spokesperson. And I,

I say that because yeah, you know, it's, you know, ignorance is bliss. Most people just don't know. But if they're probably a lot of people listen to this still, aren't going to believe, you know, I got guys making up, never, I very strongly encourage you to go look. And the other place to look is actually right there on your bank statement about,

well, probably about 10 years ago now they Pat they had to pass a federal law where banks had to put your minimum payment and then how long it would take you, if you only made the minimum payment and how much it would cost to pay it off in 36 months. The problem is that most people get electronic statements. They probably wouldn't even see it.

Like I have to go like search out my things. I haven't seen physically my bank stuff mailed to my house in probably nine of those 10 years. And so if you did go out there and look, trust me, they're in PDF and you have to go in your account settings. They're probably not easy to find. And you click your bank statement.

It will show you your minimum payment and how much it would cost to pay off at 36 months. And I'll show you how much it would cost you if you pay the minimum payment and it's going to be in the thousands. I, I guarantee you it's in the thousands. I actually take that bet that it's at a thousand. Oh, I believe you.

Yeah. I just hadn't. I just hadn't thought about it that way. Cause I'm just, haven't, you know, seen this statement like that and like you said, yours, like, I couldn't even get them in the mail anymore. So it's like, wow, I hadn't even thought about that. So tell us a little bit more about what is in your book.

Cause it's not, you know, it's not just about like how you paid off debt, right? Like you've got other stuff in there. Yeah. I've got a little bit of everything. So I tell the story of how I got into dead. I also hid on student loans and just some recommendations generally around student loans and actually what you're speaking to there that generally speaking people just don't know how student loans work and that's fair because they're complicated as far as paying them off,

most of the payment is going to be tied to, and then it'll be a B across private and federal and all the there's just no simplified way to get it. What I recommend recommended my book just to get it all in front of you is to go to annual credit report.com. That's the only federally mandated free website. You can get your credit report from all three bureaus using the college metaphor.

Your credit report is like the courses you took for this semester and your credit scores like your GPA. So how did you actually do in those courses? And you can get all of that for free. And in fact, during the pandemic, it's actually free. You can get it. It used to be once a year, but for the pandemic, you can get it all the way through April 20,

21 for free. So people want to access that as annual credit report.com, make sure you type it correctly. Cause like all scandalous things. If you type in like.com, I don't know where it'll take you probably some brushing website or something like that. But these are the things that I talk about in my book is I have a number of life hacks.

And then I also just kind of have some bonus tips and tricks that folks generally just don't know about because these things aren't taught to us to a great podcast, podcasts like this, to figure it out. And one thing I will mention with the annual credit report, you know, you get one from each Bureau, so you can spread it out through the year.

Like you don't need to get all three at once, so you can get like one and then, you know, wait a couple months, get the second one, wait a couple more months, get the third one. So you can, so you really, you get like three in the years, just one from each Bureau. So you can kind of spread that out a little bit,

like watch your progress. I agree. The other thing I would add, someone actually told me this. I don't use them, but I heard good things about credit karma. And they'll give you your report as well. And I don't have anything against credit karma just generally to a rule of thumb to keep in mind is that if something is free, this a website is coincidentally free.

Cause it's mandated by the federal government. They had, they came in and saw all of these college students, $30,000 in debt and decide to finally do something about it. As you see now is a little bit late, but the thing is, if the product is free, then you're the product. So just kind of keep that in mind that they're going to sell you things.

And this goes for any app out there. So kind of keep that in mind if you log in and it says free you're the product. Yeah, exactly. And it may not be a hundred percent accurate, like, so like if you go to the credit annual credit report.com like that is from the credit Bureau. So that is accurate. What's on your credit report.

So I know, I don't think I've had any issues when I've checked credit karma. Like everything's pretty accurate, but like I know people have talked about like their score, isn't accurate a hundred percent accurate all the time in there. So just keep that in mind. Like you can just go straight to the source instead of using the app, the credit karma app.

Correct. Now I ask everybody at the end of the podcast, what is your favorite nonfiction book? So besides your book, cause I'm sure that is your favorite besides yours. What is your favorite nonfiction book? So I'll hit three. My favorite nonfiction book is actually the millionaire next door. And I'll say that cause it's a personal finance book. Another one that I hit recently was atomic habits by James clear.

So I've been reading, I tried to read a book a month and I do that by reading 10 pages a day. This is actually an exercise that came up from one of our podcasts, a guest recommended. It's always fascinating when people do basic math and it blows your mind. They're like, yeah, if you read 10 pages a day, that's like a 300 book page,

page book a month. And I'm like, Oh, I'm like, wait, I could do that. I never can seem to find time to read a book. Exactly. So I was like, all right, you know, there'd be so that's impossible that math doesn't make any fits. And so I started reading 10 pages a day and I ultimately read 15 books and then I reviewed them for our podcast.

So millionaire next door was still at the top. Tommy habits is one that I read later in the list, but I still like it a lot. And then another author that I like, I couldn't, he wrote devil in a blue dress. Some people know that cause of the Denzel Washington movie, but it's a Walter Mosley is my favorite author. And I just like his mystery novels.

I like mystery novels. Oh I do too. I'll have to check those out. Yeah. Wealth for people, you know, they're like this personal finance guy, I'm going to read a book about money. So, you know, I'll give you some options. Oh yeah. Definitely. Like I, I don't like to just read all about money either.

So I like to have new ideas and other things. So I really appreciate you being on the podcast with us today and sharing your story now, where can people find more about you or follow you? Appreciate it. As you said, I'm on all the social media, is that protect most well? I'm not sure it'll be around by the time this podcast comes out.

But that means that I want to, I will spiral I'm most active on Instagram, but folks can visit D Marcus, garrett.com two R's and two T's. And if they do so they'll get 12 weeks of free on me and the TMG team. I have a whole community that I'm building up my most popular post and frequently asked question is how much debt can you move forward on a 30,

50 or a hundred thousand dollars salary? I answered that question and you can find out for yourself@themarcusgarrett.com. All right. And how can people get your book? Because it is, they can get it maybe for free for a certain period of time or something like that. Yeah. I'm actually given the way the book free for financial planning month is October it's October 1st through fifth.

So depending on when you hear this, you might need to rush over, but throughout the year I actually gave a chapter away and it's the chapter on how to get out of debt. I give that away for free throughout the year, and they can find that@themarkusgarrett.com slash debt-free. So either way you can get a free copy of the book or a free chapter for the book and throughout the year,

I just do specials where I give the whole book away for free. Awesome. Well, I mean, that's very generous of you and I really appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with us today. Thank you for having me Be sure to check out Marcus's book, grab it on Amazon or his website. And don't forget to also get your budget starter kit for free and includes everything you need to get started.

If you're not sure where to start on your budget. This is where you get started, comes with a step by step guide and a free budget checklist. So go get that. A budget's made easy.com/budget-starter-kit really should make that shorter, but there you go.