Welcome to the Money Mindset Podcast, where you'll find a judgment free zone to help you free yourself from overthinking and the fear of doing things the wrong way. It's time to shed yourself of the mom, guilt, procrastination, and perfectionism so you can start doing the things that you really want to do with your money instead of just working to pay bills. I'm Ashley Patrick,

ex detective turned debt free, CEO of my very own business and stay at home mom of three. Not too long ago, my dreams of staying at home with my kids seemed impossible. I thought I'd have to stay miserable in a high stress and demanding job just so I could retire someday. After gaining the confidence and my own ability to manage my family's finances and a simple step by step plan to make it happen,

I was able to pay off $45,000 in just 17 months, which then allowed me to finally quit my job, stay at home with my kids, and build a debt free business. Now, my mission is to help moms like you conquer debt and free themselves from the mental load of handling their family's finances. If you're ready to shed the guilt and shame surrounding your past money mistakes and tackle your debt,

this is the place for you. Let's get started. Today we are talking about stage four of the Money Success Roadmap. If you are just happen to start with this episode, go back to episode 92, stage one, and then stage two, stage three episodes, 92, 93, 94, and then come back to this episode where we talk about stage four. So four is where you are really going to start making progress on your financial goals.

So the first couple stages are setting you up for success. It's laying that groundwork so that you can create specific smart goals, get your budget working for you, and plan for those things that always pop up and ruin your budget plans, right? You feel like, Oh, it looks so good on paper, but then at the end of the month you're like,

What the heck happened? How did this happen? I should have more money left. Right? The first three stages help you work on that and get a working plan for you that is realistic for your family. Now, stage four is called motivated. During this stage, you're gonna work on saving that basic emergency fund. I talked a little bit about that.

During stage three, you are going to create the debt payoff plan. You're gonna weigh the pros and cons and figure out which order you wanna pay things often, and you're gonna come up with some ways to stay motivated and on track over the long term because it's not always going to be easy. Every day is not going to be peaches and roses, right?

Things are going to come up where you wanna quit, where you want to give up, and you have to come up with a plan, especially mentally, before you get there so you can handle it better. So when in you're, when you're in this stage, you know it's possible for you to save money and pay off debt, you're motivated to do that,

and you're determined to do it sooner rather than later. So remember, this is not a some day plan. This is like a timely plan. The next five years plan, you are going to get it done. You've got a plan for how you're gonna pay for Christmas and or you know, a new to you car, even maybe some home improvements,

like you've created that plan in the earlier stages. So now you've got the confidence and you are ready to rock and roll on saving money and paying off debt. Now, in this stage, I hope that your spouse, your partner, your husband is finally on board working with you instead of against you, because I realize they may not have been on board in the earlier stages.

Hopefully at this point, they are seeing the progress that you are making if you're doing it without them, and they are getting board with you and so that you can work together as a team and not against each other, right? You're happier because you're working together. You've made your relationship stronger because you are working as a team and you've got that good foundation on making the financial steps to build real wealth and changing your habits for the long-term.

Cuz remember, this is all about changing your mindset, your behavior, your habits, so that you can have long term success because you know, if it were quick and easy, it's quick and easy to get off track as well, right? We wanna build those long term habits and routines so that you can stay motivated and focused on your bigger vision for your life.

Now, the things that you're going to accomplish during stage four, your action items, you are going to create a smart goal for the next three years. So you're gonna map that out. That's gonna include paying off your debt, right? So how much debt, what debt are you gonna be able to pay off in three years? So you're also identifying all your debt.

You're totaling it up so that you can't create that roadmap for paying off debt. You're going to compare different debt payoff plans. Okay? I have the impact method. There is also the debt snowball, the debt avalanche, and you may start with one and change to another. You don't have to do things exactly in order. That's why you've gotta figure out what you think's gonna work for you.

And it doesn't mean that you have to stick with it through the whole thing, right? You can change your mind, but just like each stage where you're focusing on one at a time, you're also focusing on one debt at a time. Now, you're not starting to pay off debt yet. That's stage five. This stage, you're creating the plan that you think you're gonna follow,

that you wanna start with for paying off debt. So you're gonna compare the debt payoff plans, you've figured out what debt you have, you're gonna use the debt calculator to figure out how you're gonna do that in three years or less up to five. If you have like a huge amount of debt, you know, over a hundred thousand, then let's say you make like the average 50,000 a year.

So maybe that might take you closer to five, but I really want you to focus on how you can get there in three, and that's why I want you to play around the debt calculators, because you can play around with the amounts. Okay? If I do 500 a month on average, keep on mind. Keep in mind this is an average.

It doesn't mean that you have an extra 500 every single month to do that, but maybe you get a tax return, maybe you sell something, you get a bonus, you change jobs, you get a second job, things like that to bump up the average, you know, play around with the calculator, see what you do need to have each month extra to get it to that three years or less.

It might be a thousand, it might be 1500. And so once you identify the amount, you see the numbers, you see what's possible for you, you're more likely to make it happen. And I want you to create some visual progress trackers. So you're gonna get started with paying off your debt next in the next stage. And so I want you to get,

you're preparing for it in stage four. So create those visual trackers. I wanna, I wanna visual tracker for your overall debt total, but also for each individual debt so you can really feel like you're making progress it. It could also be a vision board. It could be all of the things. It could be specific trackers for each thing, and then an overall vision so that you can stay motivated during this stage.

You can move on to the next once you have your emergency fund saved. So keep in mind, this isn't your full emergency fund unless you want it to be. If you're expecting a job loss or a job loss is possible for you, you don't have a lot of job security, okay? Full emergency fund, which is three to six months of your basic expenses.

Those things that you would pay if you lost your job, not all the extra stuff that you wouldn't be paying for if you lost your job. The basic things this, if you're not going to save the full emergency fund right now, if you're not expecting a job loss or you don't need to save for like a big move or something like that, then this is just your basic emergency fund,

which could be a thousand dollars, $2,000, whatever that amount you decide on that you kind of talked about and thought about in stage three, this is where you're going to save it. So once you have that saved, that's one of the, your milestones for stage four, you're also creating your three year smart plan. So that's, you know, paying off your debt,

you've created the plan, okay? Not that you've done it, not that you've finished, but that you've created the plan and you have created your debt free plan. So once you have created that, that vision, that plan, what you're going to do, and you have your emergency funds saved, then you can move to stage five, then you're paying off the debt.

So keep in mind that this isn't completing the debt payoff. This is creating the plan for the debt payoff, but you are saving your emergency funds. So this stage will take you a little bit longer than the others, especially if you're saving a larger amount. So this one might take you just slightly longer than the other ones. But if you need a goal,

let's just say on average three to six months, depending on how much you're actually trying to save, what your income is, you know, this is, I don't want this to be a year in stage four, you should be able to save your emergency fund relatively quickly depending on the amount that you're doing right and what your situation is. So I'll give you a couple more months to finish this stage and then then you can move on to stage five.

When you have saved your emergency fund and you are ready to start paying off your debt, we want to save first before you start paying off your debt. That way, when things come up, it doesn't derail you financially and mentally, you're able to cash flow it. You're able to avoid using your credit card or going further into debt when things come up because things will come up that's life like.

But when you have a plan for it, you're able to handle it a whole lot better financially and mentally because mentally handling it is important as well, so you don't get derailed and so you don't get off track and just, you know, hard to get focused and get back to it. You know, that does happen and that's perfectly normal. You may not be able to bounce back,

you know, the next day. But I want you to still keep focused on your longer term goal. Keep focused on how you're going to get back on track, save that money back up again. Get back to paying off debt. When you have that plan, you're able to accomplish it so much easier. So don't forget if you haven't already to listen to the stage one through three episodes,

92 through 94, and next week we all have a few more days left. So come join me inside the Money Plan bootcamp, budgets made easy.com/bootcamp, where I'm gonna walk you through my five step framework for creating a money plan that you can actually stick to. It's free, even the v i p is free and there's gonna be lots of prizes with the vip,

you get extra, some extra fun things with me, and it all starts Sunday. I'm gonna have the welcome celebration on Sunday and the live training starts on Monday the 17th. I hope to see you there again as budgets made easy.com/bootcamp.