In this issue of The Payoff Challenge:
Community Debt Payoff Snapshot
Submit your debt payoff totals for this week!
Debt Payoff Shout Out: Sandra
Weekly Action: Find Your First $100
My Home Payoff Update
Community Debt Payoff Snapshot
Congrats to the everyone who took action this week! Let’s put it into perspective.
Payoff Challenge participants paid off a total of $1700, about a month’s worth of daycare for one child.
$425 was the average paid off, which is like 121 gallons of chocolate milk. Let’s gooooo.
Numbers only move if people act—which brings us to this week’s check-in!
Member Spotlight
$54,000 of Student Loans Paid Off!
Shout out to Sandra for the progress she’s making on paying off student loans!
In the last 20 months, she’s paid off $54k of student loans! She still has $73k left, but that amount of progress in less than two years is wild. Right now, she’s focusing on continuing to put as much of her income as possible towards paying off those loans.
This is what she said about her journey so far:
I borrowed $127,000 to pay for my doctorate in occupational therapy. Crossing the $100,000 milestone was huge — and so is how proud I am of sticking to such a big task for so long.
I pick up overtime when it is available, do some dog sitting, but otherwise I've focused on reducing my spending. I spend less than $200 a month on discretionary expenses and practice "value based spending" to make sure I'm getting the most out of my money.
As a way to help encourage others also paying off debt, she’s documenting her journey on YouTube and TikTok if you’d like to follow along. She’s killing it!
If you want to be featured in the Payoff Challenge Newsletter or related videos on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, this is your chance. Just remember, not everyone has the story of paying off debt this quickly. Any amount of debt payoff is worth celebrating here in the member spotlight.
Caleb’s Actionable Strategy
Find Your First $100 (like rn)
To pay off debt on a weekly basis, we gotta first find the cash to do it, right? So let’s discover where your bank account is leaking funds.
Action: Scan your last 2 bank statements for subscriptions you haven’t used in the last 30–60 days.
The New Year is a perfect time to re-evaluate if you’re actually using certain subscriptions or if that $15 per month video streaming service can be turned into $180 of annual debt payoff. If you haven’t used it in the last 30-60 days, consider cutting it!
I was listening to the Nateland Podcast (R.I.P.) recently and one of the hosts actually mentioned how he’d been paying for a Planet Fitness membership without using it for the last three years! Why, Aaron?
I get it, money leaks happen. Main thing is when you find a leak, go fix it immediately instead of waiting months down the road to realize you’re still paying for it.
Caleb’s Challenge Update
Progress We Made Towards Our Payoff
Goal: Pay off our remaining mortgage ($70k) by our 10-year anniversary on June 17, 2027.
514 days left
Mortgage Balance on January 1st, 2026: $70,000
Current Mortgage Balance: $69,010.28
Balance paid off since start of challenge: $989.72
Source: Paycheck, Savings
*This includes monthly principal payments as well as additional payments.
Current Mortgage Balance
Not huge numbers, but it’s what we were expecting here at the start of the challenge. Time is short for making money tbh.
Here’s the deal, though — I said in my launch video that the goal of my own personal payoff challenge was to build scalable income. I don’t want to simply be trading in my time for money because to accomplish this goal, I don’t have the time each week to just put in more time at work. I’ve got some fun ideas for scalable income I’m going to share in an upcoming video.
Refer a friend and receive my quick-start guide for saving money TODAY on your existing expenses.
That’s it for this week! I already can’t wait for next couple week’s editions as we start getting numbers to include. If you have any feedback, respond to this email or drop me a line at [email protected].
Till next week!
Caleb
