Have you ever wanted to be out of debt so badly, you could just feel it in your bones?  You have this ache to start living a different life. You want a life where you actually get to use the money you make, instead of paying it to other people you borrowed from a long time ago.  What if you could actually pay off $1,000 of debt in one month to jumpstart your journey?

I was totally there in 2015.  I was desperate to start living differently.  Staring at a mountain of debt, to the tune of $320,000, my husband and I knew we needed to do something drastic to move that beast.

We started to get a plan together (we started working this plan) and began our debt repayment.  

When you first start trying to pay off debt, it seems like this awesome idea, but sometimes the going is slow.  It’s like trying to push a boulder. It is super slow to get started, then once it actually gets moving, it will continue to pick up speed and becomes almost effortless to push forward.

Those first few inches can seem really challenging and almost impossible at first.  This is like your first $1,000 you put toward debt.

If you have never worked on debt payoff, you need to make your first goal to just be $1,000.  This is totally doable and something you can accomplish in a month.

Are you ready for the challenge?

Pay Off $1,000 of Debt in One Month

Use a written budget.

If you want to move $1,000 toward debt, you first need to know you actually have the $1,000.  Setting up a budget is step number one. This will be your written plan for the month.

If you have never budgeted before, here is what’s going to happen.  You will get organized, track your spending and see where all of your money is going.  Once you pay attention to your spending, you are going to feel like you got a raise.

There will be money you have been “wasting” in previous months that will suddenly become available to you.  You will also see places you have been spending your money unnecessarily that you can stop doing.

I didn’t even realize we were spending $700-$800 every month on eating out, IN ADDITION to our regular grocery budget.  That’s a problem!

Budgeting, just the act of writing down our budget, made us stop eating out so much during the month and we cut our food budget down to $200/month.  That was a $500 savings just by budgeting!!

You need to see all of your expenses for the month.  Your budget will show you what you have coming in and where it is going out.  

If you have never budgeted before, chances are you can find $500 you didn’t know you were wasting, just by putting your budget together.

WANT TO PUT YOUR BUDGET TOGETHER RIGHT NOW?  SIGN UP BELOW FOR OUR FREE BASIC BUDGET SETUP SHEETS TO GET STARTED!

Cancel memberships and subscriptions.

For one month, when you are trying to jumpstart your debt payoff and get $1,000, you need to cancel memberships.  Your memberships are costing you!

Common memberships you should be canceling:

• Netflix
• Hulu
• Amazon Prime
• Gym
• Sirius
• Barkbox
• Stitch Fix
• Cable (cancel this for good!  You don’t need this anyway)
• Dollar Shave Club
• Etc.

Any membership or subscription you have that is taking money from you every month should be canceled.  This money needs to be going toward your $1,000 debt payoff for the month. What you do after this month is up to you.  But, for one month, these things should be canceled.

When we first started this process we canceled Hulu, Amazon Prime, my husband’s gym membership, Sirius and I was in a coffee club (super sad to leave that).

Those things alone saved us $100 a month.  That was 1/10 of our goal just by canceling a few things.  Amazing!

Get started today and cancel some unnecessary things in your life.  If after a month you decide you can’t live without them, you can add them back to your life.  You may be surprised what you learn you can live without when the reason for it is so powerful.

Stop spending money.

This may seem like an obvious way to save money, and it totally is.  If you want to save $1,000 in a month, you need to stop spending money.

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, not spending money for an entire month is almost impossible.  Unless you go out and “prepare” for the lack of spending for the month, it may not happen.

If you “prepare” for not spending money by spending more money, that totally defeats the purpose.  So don’t do that.

What is reasonable is to not spend money for two weeks.  This means, legit, not spending any money on anything extra.  You can buy gas to get to and from work and staple meal items (you run out of milk), but nothing extra.

If you run out of hand soap, you use dish soap until the two weeks is up.  You do not spend money on anything extra.

You may be thinking, this is silly and isn’t going to give you $1,000.  But, I will ask you then, where do you spend your money in the month?

• Are you buying $1 items at the gas station every morning?
• Are you eating out for lunch more than twice a week?
• Are you hitting the drive-thru on your way home from work during the week?
• Do you pick up non-essential items while you at the grocery store mid-week for food you don’t really need?

Where are you spending your money?

My husband used to spend $120 a month on lunches.  $120! That’s insane. Packing lunch costs us a fraction of that and it is healthier.  

I used to spend $100 on a haircut every 6 weeks and at least $75 on expensive face lotion or other body products every month.  These things were not necessary. I haven’t had a haircut in 16 months and I found a $1 substitute for my expensive face lotion I thought I had to have.

We stopped spending our money on stupid things so we could start putting it toward debt and actually make our future brighter.

For two weeks, I want you to not spend anything.  Take the money you are saving and put it into a saving account.  Move it so you are not tempted to spend it.

At the end of the month, you will have this money to throw at your debt, and it is going to feel amazing.

WARNING:  When the two weeks are up, you do not need to go out and buy tons and tons of stuff!

While you are going through your two weeks of not spending any money, keep a list of the things you want to buy, but aren’t right then.

When the two weeks are up, look at your list and decide what you actually NEED to survive the rest of the month.  If you don’t need the item for survival, just skip it until next month. The goal is to keep all that money you just saved during the two weeks.

I do not want you to work so hard for two weeks just to blow it afterward because you are feeling deprived.  

You are going to feel deprived for two weeks.  You just need to know that and accept it. The $1,000 will be worth it.  I promise. After the two weeks, you can go back to normal living, but DO NOT overspend.

Sell some stuff.

There is the possibility with budgeting, canceling subscriptions and not buying things, you could still need more money to reach your $1,000 goal.  If that is the case, I strongly recommend selling your stuff!

Most people have more things of value in their home than they realize.  And, people will buy pretty much anything. It’s actually pretty insane.

I have sold some weird things I thought were completely devoid of value, but to someone else, it was exactly what they had been looking for.  I’m talking about broken lamps, matchbooks, weird baskets, a half-destroyed table, a broken mirror.

I sold nicer items as well, but I sold more “junk” items than I ever thought I would.  If you are not quite reaching your $1,000 goal just by budgeting and not spending money, you can easily make up the difference selling some of your possessions.

If you are in this to win it, the best way to approach selling your stuff is to walk around and “take inventory.”  My philosophy in my own home is if it hasn’t been used in the past year, we don’t need it.

Meaning, if we have things in storage we haven’t even touched in a year, it is fair game to sell.  If you don’t have emotional attachments to things, you can make tons of money by having this philosophy.

If you are like me, you will also feel a little bit free when you get rid of some of the clutter and “stuff” crowding your home.  It really is such an awesome feeling.

Related Post:

3 Amazing Benefits of Selling Your Stuff

When you implement these things into your life, you are going to come up with $1,000 to pay off some debt in one month.  No matter your income, there are always ways you can improve it. If you can live on a written budget, get rid of some dead weight memberships/subscriptions, stop buying stuff and sell some unwanted items, you will get there!

Don’t be afraid to try, worst case scenario, you save $1,000!  

Do you have anything else you’ve done to pay off $1,000 of debt in one month?

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