Each week, people in the Payoff Challenge can anonymously share how much they’ve paid toward debt. Those numbers roll into a weekly Community Debt Payoff Snapshot so everyone can see the progress happening together.

The goal is simply to help motivate you by showing how much everyone is paying off together.

If you want to be part of it, the challenge is free to join. You’ll be able to submit your progress and even get featured in the newsletter or weekly videos.

Okay, this might rub some people the wrong way—but if you’re trying to increase your income (or at least your take-home pay), I recommend pausing retirement investing temporarily while you pay off consumer debt.

Yes, that means missing the company match for a season—and that’s okay. What you need right now is momentum, and momentum is much easier to build when you’re focused on one thing instead of spreading your energy across five financial goals. Don’t worry—you’ll get back to investing.

When I do coaching calls, my top two recommendations for freeing up cash quickly are:

Both can create immediate cash flow that you can throw at debt and actually feel progress.

The biggest pushback I hear is that this doesn’t make sense mathematically. But here’s the deal: paying off debt guarantees a return, because every dollar you put toward it permanently eliminates interest you would have paid. That’s not a hypothetical — that’s real! I like how Mark Cuban put it:

Shout out to Isaac for the progress he’s making towards paying off his house!

In the last 2 years, he’s paid off $23,000! His biggest challenge so far has been other home maintenance items that have eaten up some of his extra funds. But in addition to his job, he does photography as a side hustle which gives him some extra money to put on his mortgage on a regular basis.

This is what he said about his journey so far:

I think paying off the house takes some extra mental effort because since the timeline is so long and the balance is so large, it’s hard to see real progress. But it really does make a difference! 3 years is a lot of time to cut off the end of the mortgage.

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: $68,510.28 (▼$200 since last week)

Balance paid off since start of challenge: $1489.72

Source: Paycheck, Savings

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

This $200 was partly from savings, partly from my paycheck last week! Man, this is slow progress. But I should be taking the same advice I’ve been saying here every week — any progress is progress. It’s just I haven’t been able to make any additional income beyond my normal job just yet. Which is fine, just gotta be patient. I knew this would be slow from the start.

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