In this week’s video, I talked about how I see budgeting fits into three levels in order. And keeping these levels prioritized is incredibly important for ensuring your money hits your necessary expenses first.

Level 1: The Four Walls

As Ramsey Solutions puts it, the four walls are the most important to prioritize with your money. These are (1) food, (2) housing (3) utilities and (4) transportation. Prioritize your money in these categories first so you cover the basic necessities for living.

Level 2: Other Needs

These are other things I tend to think of as “necessities” but aren’t vital for living or keeping your house functioning. Things like your debt payments, your phone or internet bill — those kinds of things.

Level 3: Wants

This includes the things that really aren’t necessities. Things like going out to eat, vacations, fun money, even gifts for friends (gasp).

As you put your budget together every month, if you focus on putting your money to these levels in order, you won’t ever wonder again about what your priorities should be. It’s not fun, but stick with those necessities first, and your life will be far less stressful.

Here’s the new video if you haven’t seen it yet!

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Shout out to Josiah and Isabelle for the progress they’re making towards paying off their house! They are just now kicking their payoff into gear but they’re making progress. They have paid off an additional $116 with a plan for regular additional payments.

Josiah said they just purchased their house in April of 2025 and got a 15 year loan (bravo!). But now that they’re settled in, they just increased their monthly payment by $500 to cut their payoff time significantly.

I found out that with their mortgage balance, an additional $500 per month will cut their 15-year loan down to under 11 years. That’s insane!

Josiah said that right now, they’re mostly putting extra money to the mortgage from savings, but they’re focusing on selling things they don’t need to help with the payoff.

If you want to be featured in the Payoff Challenge Newsletter or related videos on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, this is your chance! Any amount of debt payoff is worth celebrating here in the member spotlight.

Mortgage Balance on January 1st, 2026: $70,000

Current Mortgage Balance: $67,216.84 (▼$200 since last week)

Balance paid off since start of challenge: $2783.16

Source: Paycheck, Savings

*This includes monthly principal payments as well as additional payments.

Getting close to $67k! As we’re doing some early spring cleaning this week (yeah, I know… it’s February), I listed several things on Marketplace. Whatever we sell goes straight to the Payoff Challenge!

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