When Paying Off Debt Isn’t the Right Move (Yes, Really!) | 449
If you’re constantly paying off debt just to fall back into it, you’re not making progress—you’re stuck in a financial hamster wheel. True freedom starts when you stop managing money from a place of stress and start using a system that puts you in control.
Ever feel like no matter how much you earn, you’re still scrambling, stressed, or swiping a card just to make it to the next paycheck? You’re not alone—and today we’re calling out the sneaky habits that keep women stuck in the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle (even when they’re making great money).
Key Takeaways
- Having cash in your account doesn’t always mean it’s time to pay off debt—sometimes it needs to be saved for stability.
- Using credit isn’t “being smart with points”—it’s relying on someone else’s money. Real financial freedom comes from using your own cash.
- Split-second financial decisions made out of stress often create long-term problems.
- A budget system—not just a budget—is the key to breaking free from chaos and finally managing money with confidence.
Why Paying Off Debt Too Soon Can Backfire
In our coaching sessions, we often see clients who stay “busy” with their money—making quick moves, paying things off, shifting money around—because it feels productive. But sometimes those actions sabotage the bigger plan.
One client, a teacher, needed to save money from her June and July paychecks to cover expenses in August (when she wouldn’t have a paycheck). Instead, she decided to throw $800 at a debt because “it was annoying her.” While it gave her a quick win in the moment, it left her with no money for August, forcing her right back into the debt cycle.
Another client saw cash piling up in her account for the first time and couldn’t resist paying down credit cards. But that left her short on cash when big expenses—like her son’s wedding—came up. Instead of relying on the savings she could’ve built, she had to dip into her retirement account.
The lesson? Debt payoff is important, but it’s not always the first step. Sometimes the smartest move is building a cash buffer that keeps you from running back to credit when life happens.
Credit Cards Aren’t Helping You—They’re Owning You
We need to call this what it is: when you’re using credit, you’re relying on someone else’s money because you don’t have the cash flow set up to rely on your own.
Credit card companies have marketed debt as “financial literacy”—points, perks, scores—but it’s really just dependency. Our goal for you? Become your own bank. That means knowing:
- Exactly where your money is going.
- Having accounts set up for bills, spending, savings, and special events.
- Building the confidence that when you swipe your card, the money is already sitting in your account—no guesswork, no hoping it goes through.
Why You Need a Budget System
Most women don’t need another “budget worksheet.” They need a budget system that actually works in real life. A system that…
- Automates bills, savings, and spending buckets.
- Gives you permission to spend (without guilt or tracking every penny).
- Ends the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle for good.
When you put a system in place, you don’t have to white-knuckle your finances or make emotional money moves. You simply follow the plan—and the stress, fights, and financial chaos disappear.
Ready to Break the Cycle?
If you’re tired of feeling like your money is running you—and you’re ready to feel in control—start with our Simplified Budget System.
You’ll get step-by-step videos, walkthroughs, and the exact setup we use with our private coaching clients. Once you put it into place, you’ll finally know:
- Where your money is going.
- How to stop relying on credit.
- And how to actually make progress toward your financial goals.
Friend, you don’t need to work harder at budgeting—you just need the right system. Let’s get you set up so your money finally works for you.
Book Your Free Call Now!
We are excited to create the time & space to talk to you about your current money situation. This is a free, no-obligation call where we can answer questions you may have and maybe find some quick wins for your budget.
What do you have to lose?
Full Transcript
Today? We’re bringing your real life stories and lessons from our private coaching sessions. If our clients are dealing with it, chances are you are too. So we’re breaking it down to help you avoid the same mistakes, feel less alone, and walk away with some quick wins for your budget.
📍 Do you make good money, but have nothing to show for it. Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have a big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt-free but you don’t want to live on beans and rice or you don’t want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes. Hey, it’s okay.
If you don’t already know how to budget or if you’re using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it’s okay. If you want to seem like you have your finances all together, or you’re not on the same page with your spouse, when it comes to finances. We know what you’re doing, probably isn’t working, but guess what? You’re in the right place. We’re Shayna and Vanessa we’re best friends, business partners and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey we’ve been in business since 2019, helping hundreds of amazing people. Like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and know exactly what to do with their money. In this podcast we’ll share with you everything we know plus everything we’re working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals we want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget improve your marriages and even bring your kids in on the conversation we can help you no matter where you’re at whether you’re the single mom who’s never had $500 in her savings account or the millionaire who’s paid off for real estate mortgages and we’re not going to shy away from the tough love We’ll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time this is the financial coaching for women podcast
I have this client and she’s new and I love her so much, and we are working it out to you guys. But she likes to do a lot of things. She likes to make a lot of decisions between sessions that maybe we didn’t exactly talk about. And and I think, I’m gonna tell you exactly what she did, but I think that we know, we’ve seen clients that want to make it more complicated.
Like they feel like they need to be doing stuff and it’s more complicated because that’s like the. That is the status of anxiety and not drama, but like stress that they live in. They’re just used to it, so they have to keep creating it. Like it’s a self-sabotaging cycle. And so this client we’re, she’s a teacher, great.
Part of what one of her big goals is to get. What we teach, to the point where she’s got a paycheck all year round because we were setting aside some, unfortunately, she started in June, so we’re not there yet. But either way, what we do know is August, she’s gonna be completely without income because you know what?
It’s really nice for her. Hus, her ex-husband or her baby daddy, whatever. He does, he’s a teacher and doesn’t have to pay child support for that month. Isn’t that nice? I was like, oh, but you still have to pay the child. You have to support the child. And I was like, how does that work? So she doesn’t get her child support or a paycheck in August.
Okay. It’s drastic. It’s serious. We’re working on it. Okay. We’re working with some options that we have. One of those. One of the parts of the plan was that we were gonna save money that she did not need for the June and July budgets and put them in, put that into August as a paycheck.
She could decided between sessions that we had once maybe talked about at one point her paying off the set. So she should do it. So she just went ahead and took her $800 and paid off a debt because it made her, she’s like this. I was annoyed at this debt, so I just paid it off. I was like but and this is her she, this is a cycle.
Maybe someone or you’ve been here. I feel good. I paid off this debt, but now in August I have no money, so guess what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get more debt because I didn’t, I don’t have any money. And so we just keep ourselves in this cycle. What we were supposed to do is she’s gonna have a great September, we’re gonna be so rolled in, in September’s gonna be fabulous.
Like in September we’ll start paying off debt. We’ll start setting aside money for next summer. We’ll start paying off debt. It’s gonna be a party, but we’re holding tight. We were supposed to be holding tight. We should not hold tight. She paid it off because it was annoying her and it felt messy.
She wanted it gone. I was like, I don’t, I do not care what you wanted for. We were not talk. That is not verbally con. I need to like get a contract verbally signed before we end the session next time for with everybody. Don’t make, don’t buy houses, don’t pay off debts that we didn’t talk about. Don’t transfer money for random savings that we did.
Let’s just keep it the way it’s, I think I, that may have been the session that you texted me. And you said, can we put in our contract that they’re not allowed to make any big financial decisions without their coach in between coaching sessions and this makes sense. Yes. I think we’ve had people do this.
I had somebody buy a house. That’s why she was saying that They literally came to their coaching session, said, Hey. I bought a house, can I afford it? And I was like, Hey, no, actually you can’t. It’s a big move. Fan. Yes. So I see this poor lady, she probably was so excited that she had the cash in her bank account, so she wanted to pay off debt and make like real progress.
’cause she was like, I’m paying for coaching, I’m investing in myself. This is what I should do. So I’m doing it let alone in two months. She needs that money really bad, but, oh gosh. I’m so sorry. Poor thing. Yeah. And I think I see where her heart is. Yeah. We’re gonna work it out.
She’s very scrappy, so I know she’s gonna be all right. But I just the thing is we’ve gotta do one thing at a time, and it does feel like you wanna get this gone as quickly as you can, but. Trust the process. The process is there on, on paper for a reason. Okay? And, all, sometimes paying off debt is just not the goal.
And that, that unfortunately is the case right now. It may not be the goal at this moment. Give yourself a minute. Yeah, give yourself a minute. And it will become very easy and natural to pay off debt. Not making everything tight and crazy because you supposedly got this win of paying off credit card.
Nobody cares about the credit card. Nobody knows. What we know is, do you have food to eat? That’s what we’re gonna be knowing about. So anyway, it’s just making split decisions again. That’s what I’m saying. Like we keep ourselves in this mode of stress. That’s just what we’re used to.
We’re gonna stop doing that. We’re gonna write a plan and we’re gonna stick to the plan. We’re gonna be okay with the plan. We’re gonna be okay with, there’s money in there. We’re not gonna find a way to mess it up or spend it or pay off debt. We’re gonna be okay because we know we gonna need that money.
It’s gonna be fine. See? I’m fine. Everybody’s fine. She’s fine with it. I’m fine with everything. It goes along with my client story, because she was. Building cash in her account. And the first thing she wanted to do was pay off debt. Like I remember one session I spoke to her and she said Hey, I put $5,000 on the credit card.
And I was like, why? But no, why did you do that? She’s that’s what we always do. We rock it up, and then we paid it off. And I was like no. Like I have been telling you that we need the minimum payment, that’s all that you’re doing. But to her, she saw cash in the account, saw an opportunity to pay off the card because she didn’t wanna pay the one month of.
Interest on the card, even though she’s been, okay, here’s the thing. Yes, you may not be paying interest. We hear people, we don’t never pay interest. You just pay it off every month. You’re still paying and buying more things and racking up debt because you are, you’re not using cash. So it’s like a whole cycle.
It’s, again, a game that you’re not winning at. They’re winning the game. But she saw the cash in her account, saw an opportunity to pay off stuff, and did it. And then realize like what the actual plan was, which was to build the cash in the account because we needed that to set her up to where she wouldn’t have to use or be, or, rely on debt in the future.
Because she, we needed to set her spending accounts up. We needed to set her savings accounts up. Her son was getting married. She needed the cash. Do you think she, huh? That’s expensive. Do you think she had the cash? Oh man. No. You want me to tell you what she did instead? She pulled out of her 401k. Oh my goodness.
It’s just getting better and better. Yes, it is. It was a great session. She pulled cash out of her retirement account to pay for the wedding because she didn’t have the cash, because she used the cash to pay on the card that she wasn’t supposed to. So it’s like a whole cycle. I think especially when you’re starting this financial literacy journey.
You may see cash in your account for the very first time, and you wanna do so many things with it, but you need to really take a step back and go, okay, what is the best decision for me first? What am I gonna use this cash for? To build a buffer for myself so that way I’m not going back in debt ever again.
Like what if this was the month that you never used credit again, and how, what does that look like for me? And how can I make that happen? Oh let me tell you. To make that happen, you have to fund your gas and groceries account. You have to fund your personal spending account. You have to. Fund your restaurant account or your kids’ account because when you don’t have that money, that’s what you put on debt or that’s what you rack up and use credit for because you don’t, you haven’t planned to have the cash available to spend on those things.
📍 📍 All right.
Budget besties. It’s time for some real talk. You don’t need another budget. You need. Need a budget system. Our simplified budget system is what you’ve. You’ve been looking for, it’s going to allow you to be bougie on a budget. You’ll be able to easily. We set up a system that runs automatically and shows you exactly where your money is going.
And. And it’s going to give you permission to spend everybody loves that. Yeah. It’s straightforward, pretty impact with walkthrough videos. That break down the exact methods we use with our clients to get out of debt set up a bills account, separate spending bills, savings buckets, and end the. Paycheck to paycheck feel. If you’re new to budgeting, this is the perfect way. To jump in and if you’re already a budget nerd, like us you’re about to meet your new obsession.
This is the upgrade. Grade to your finances that you need right now. Yeah. So head on over to budgetbesties.com/budget and grab yours now back to today’s show.
I think that what stands out to me is that we just need to call this what it is. You’re using credit because you’re not managing your money. Okay, it’s, you’re not using credit ’cause you’re smart at points. You’re not using credit because of any other reason. You’re not being responsible to manage your own money.
What Vanessa’s saying is, when we’re using cash, it sounds super novel. No, you’re using your own money to pay for stuff. That’s what that is. When we stacking up the cash so we can pay our own bills, so we can buy our own groceries, we’re not relying on someone else. That’s what credit is. It’s relying on someone else to pay for something for me.
’cause I can’t do it myself. What we know is that’s not true. It’s not the actual truth of the situation, it’s just a habit that you’re in. But I just wanna call a spade. You are relying on someone else to pay your stuff for you, because when you’re using credit, that’s what it’s, you’re asking someone else to figure it out for you.
We’re like putting the responsibility over there. That is not what we want for you. We want you to. Own your finances. Know your numbers and that’s why the scripture says the borrow is slave to the lender. You’re in this cycle of asking permission for money, for using someone else’s money, paying someone else, yeah.
To use money. This is not the cycle that we want for you. This is not the life, or we want to call it out right now. That’s what it is. What we want and said, as we’ve said many times, is for you to be your own bank, we want you to see the cash checking up. We want you to know I have money in this business account because I’m going to be paying all my bills next month myself.
I’m gonna be paying for my trip or whatever myself. I’m going to be paying for the groceries at the end of the month, even, whatever. ’cause I have money and I’m paying it myself outta my bank account because I am using my own money and managing it well, it reminds me of like when you said that I think of going back to being a dependent.
Like on your taxes when you were dependent on your parents. That’s what this is like you’re depending on them to help you pay for this until you can get the cash to pay them back. It’s, that’s, it’s not what we want for you. We want you to be able to do this on your own, but in order to do that, you have to have a system and you have to have the cash to do that.
And it has worked every single time. I had a brand new call this morning with a future client of ours and she said, look. We made $250,000 last year. She’s we live paycheck to paycheck for absolutely no reason other than we have no idea how to manage our finances. And she said that they when they go to buy something, they will just pick a card.
The card that goes through, like that’s how they’re doing things. They’re, they have multiple cards on their PayPal or Venmo or whatever. I don’t even know how that works. And then when they go, or shop account, whatever. So when they go to pay for stuff, they just. Click until one allows it and says, authorize or accept, or whatever that is.
Yeah. And so this is back to borrow a slave to the lender, what you said, dependent you say a lot. Parent-child relationship, that’s what this is like. Let me, any me money mo see who will give money to buy this thing that I actually can afford with my own money. I just don’t know it like, and again.
I think, we say it before, but your great grandmama didn’t have any credit cards. None. Zero. So I don’t know if I can say grandma anymore. We might be getting right, right in there. Great grandma, but your great grandmama for sure. This is a new thing and no, the only thing that you’ve ever heard or learned about it is.
Get that credit score girl. Get your credit cards, get those points. That’s what you’ve learned. So it’s not your fault. We’re not even teachers are saying that. Yeah. Yeah. We’re, it’s not your fault. You don’t know. You’ve just get gotten caught up in the game that got the, all of the words thrown at you.
When Vanessa says financial literacy, the only financial literacy you’ve gotten is what the credit card marketing companies have made sure that you got through their campaigns. That’s fine. So you’re just caught up in this whirlwind of credit cards. Venmos affirms like everything’s free and everything’s available.
We get it. It’s just a lot. What we’re telling you is that is a bad situation. We don’t want that for you. It is the parent child. It’s dependent. It’s your. Borrowing money from people. That’s what it is. Yeah. And it’s causing all of the stress and anxiety. You don’t even know if you can afford something.
You should know when you drive up and you see whatever it is that you’re trying to pick. The credit card thing is that you should be like, yeah, getting that is coming outta this account. I got the money. Hey whatever, you can do any kind of dance or party or hair flip that you want because you know that you have the money.
We don’t want this. I hope it’s gonna go through, or I hope we have enough credit left over and we’ll figure out later how we’re gonna pay for it. Nope. We’re all done with that. Yeah. That is not a life that we want for you. That’s not life that you should want for yourself. You are making good money.
It’s the most money you’ve ever made in your life. You’re. Gonna continue from this point on to make more money as you get older. And we want you to be good stewards of it as we know that you wanna be good stewards of it. So you just, you need a plan, you need a system. It’s way more than just paying off debt or anything.
It is having a budget system in place. And I think we have one. I know it’s weird when you said that I was like. I know someone. Yeah. Okay. We have a budget system. Have we talked about it very much? Not really. But look, it tells you how to set all of this up. We, and not only that, Vanessa keeps saying financial literacy, we actually teach you.
We have videos that teach you and walk you through everything we’re saying because you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s okay. There’s no shame we get it. That’s why we created a budget system. It’s literally gonna tell, do the math and help you figure it out. And the walkthrough training videos so that you can learn all of this.
And once you do learn it, once you put it in place, you’re gonna, your mind’s gonna be like pew. And what do one of the number one feedback that we hear is why is, why didn’t anybody tell me this sooner? Why doesn’t everybody know this? We’re trying. Okay. And we want tell a friend. Yeah. Tell a friend, phone a friend.
Yeah. So get the budget system and then Yes. Tell all of your friends and take ownership of this. Understand you were never taught it. We get it. We all, we’re all in the same boat. But learn now and take control of your finances.
📍 If you’re tired of feeling like your finances are all over the place and you’re ready for a simple, set it and forget it, wait a budget, we have something special for you. Watch our Automate Your Budget masterclass@budgetbestuse.com slash automate.
We’ll show you step by step how to finally organize your money, how to set up your accounts, and put your budget on autopilot. So your bills saving and spending run like clockwork. Imagine less stress, more savings, and the freedom to spend money without having to track every dollar or babysit your bank account.
Go to budget besties.com/automate to start today.
