The Fastest Way To Get Out Of Debt
We're using the "debt domino system" do become debt free as quickly as possible
8/3/20266 min read
The Fastest Way To Get Out Of Debt
Most people don't have a debt problem. They have a debt order problem.
People pay on their debts, they try to pay on their debts. Money leaves their bank account every month to be owed on something. After a year, the number they owe is almost identical to the number from the year before. It is the frustration that money was spent but the debt number never changed.
This is what usually happens, money is dispersed evenly among everything and nothing ever gets completed. Five balances are aligned all inching down. The effort takes a toll on people's belief of the plan. Because when nothing ever gets crossed off, they stop believing it is working, and when they stop believing it is working, they stop.
The order matters, not the amount.
The domino analogy
Have you ever thought of your debt as a wall? Think of it as a line of the smallest debt first, largest debt last.
You don't push the whole line of dominoes at once to knock them all over. You tip the first domino along the line. Each of the dominoes will fall and eventually knock over the last domino the line. Something you never would have been able to move by yourself has been moved with a simple push with your finger.
The same is true for debt, as a particular mechanic states: when a debt is gone, its payment is not gone. That money is still in your budget. It is just free now. And if you catch it and aim it at the next debt instead of letting it dissolve back into your spending, every debt you clear makes the next one fall faster.
That is the whole engine. Small win, freed-up payment, bigger push, bigger win
How to set up your dominoes
Step one. List every debt, smallest balance to largest.
Every single one. The credit cards, the car, the student loans, the medical bill, the thing you owe your cousin, the buy-now-pay-later balance you forgot about. Rank them purely by how much you owe. Ignore the interest rates completely for right now. We will come back to that, and I will be honest with you about it.
Step two. Pay the minimum on everything, every month, no exceptions.
This is not optional and it is not the exciting part. It keeps every account current and protects your credit while you work. Set them on autopay if you can, so this layer runs without you thinking about it.
Step three. Send every extra dollar to the smallest debt. Only the smallest.
Whatever you can find beyond the minimums goes to debt number one on your list. Not split across two. Not "a little to each." All of it, to the smallest one. This will feel wrong if you have been trained to spread it around. Do it anyway.
Step four. When a debt is paid off, roll its payment on to the next debt.
Everyone skips this step, but it is the most important step in this method. Let's say the first debt has a payment of $75, and you have paid it off. Do not take that $75 and put it in your regular budget. Add that $75 to the second debt's payment. Because of that, the second debt payment is now greater than the stated minimum.
Step five. Continue, and watch it grow.
Debt two falls. Now debt three gets its minimum payment, plus debt one's payment, plus debt two's payment plus the extra payment. By the time you get to the highest debt, you are hitting it with the combined force of every debt you have already killed.
What the rollover looks like in practice
To better illustrate this with (simplified) numbers, let's say you have four debts, and you have $100 you can allocate each month to these payments.
Debt A: $400 balance, $25 minimum
Debt B: $900 balance, $40 minimum
Debt C: $2,600 balance, $65 minimum
Debt D: $7,200 balance, $150 minimum
Month one, Debt A is getting $125 (its $25 minimum plus your $100). It is gone in about three months. That is a real, complete, crossed-off win before the season change
Now Debt B is getting $165 a month, which is its $40 minimum, plus the $25 freed from A, plus your $100. It falls much faster than its balance suggests.Then Debt C gets $230 a month. Then Debt D gets $380 a month, which is more than double the payment it ever would have received if you had just spread everything evenly from the start.Same income. Same $100 of extra. Wildly different result, purely because of order.
But should you not attack the highest interest rate first?
This is a fair question, and should be addressed without a sales pitch.
Mathematically, and therefore also true, the method of saving more in interest by starting to tackle the highest interest debt first, also known as the avalanche method, is correct. If you are the type of person who is really driven to optimize the numbers, and who knows and believes that you won't lose motivation during long periods of time where you have no visible result, then do the avalanche. It is a valid method and you will be better off doing it.
The majority of the time, debt repayment is not a math issue, but is in fact a problem of stamina.
The majority of the time, debt repayment is a problem of stamina, not a math issue. Almost no one quits because of the interest rate that they have. Most quit because they feel the same for 8 months. The Debt Domino has been intentionally constructed to clear a debt early in the process in order to help provide a quick debt repayment win early on that will provide the required motivation to continue the debt repayment process. The win will help provide the needed motivation to continue. The motivation for the process is the win that is accomplished, and is not the system. Efficiency is not the main goal of this system.
The goal of this system is to help win and provide motivation to continue. A win and the motivation to continue is the true goal of the system. A mild adjustment to the order is allowable to provide a greater motivation. Afterward the order cannot be adjusted multiple times because that will defeat the purpose of motivating the person to continue.
If one of the debts has a higher rate of interest, then that debt should be tackled first, even if it is not the smallest debt.
Finding the extra dollars
The method needs some amount of extra money to run on, and it does not have to be much. A few places people usually find it:
Subscriptions you forgot you had. Check the last two months of statements line by line. Most people find at least one.
The next windfall. Tax refund, bonus, rebate, birthday money, a side gig payout. Send half of it at the smallest domino.
One recurring swap. Not a whole austerity plan. One thing, swapped, permanently.
A temporary pause. Pick one category and pause it for sixty days, not forever. Sixty days is survivable in a way that "never again" is not.
Start with whatever you can actually sustain. Ten dollars a month that keeps going beats two hundred dollars for one heroic month followed by a quiet collapse.
When you fall behind
You will have a month where it does not work. A tire, a vet bill, a slow paycheck, a hard week. This happens to everyone running this method and it is not a sign that you failed.
Here is the only rule for that month: keep the minimums, skip the extra, and do not restart the list. You are not back at zero. Every domino you already knocked down is still down. You just take a quieter month and pick the extra back up when you can.
The people who finish are not the ones who never had a bad month. They are the ones who did not treat a bad month as permission to quit.
Your move this week
Do not overhaul anything today. Just do step one.
Write down every debt you have, smallest to largest. That is the entire assignment. Seeing them as a numbered row instead of one shapeless terrifying total is the shift that gets people moving, and it costs you fifteen minutes.
Then find one extra dollar to send at that first domino. A dollar, twenty, fifty, whatever is honestly available. The size of the first push is not what matters. What matters is that the row starts moving.
You do not clear your debt in one heroic weekend. You clear it one domino at a time, and one day you look up and the wall is not there anymore.
Want a simple way to keep this going week to week? Grab the free Weekly Wealth Checklist at https://tinyurl.com/wealth-and-wellness-checklist. It is the small, repeatable version of everything above, so you always know your one money move for the week. Print it out and follow it.
Remember.... wealth + health = Total Richness
This is educational content, not financial advice. Your situation is your own, so for guidance specific to you, please talk to a licensed professional.
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