The Average Person is Paying Off Debt in This Unusual Way

Come make a micropayment with me until I can pay off $136,000 in debt. Today is day one of paying off $72,741.06 worth of credit card debt and I am going to start a micropayment series where I use the engagement from the previous day's video in order to make a payment towards my credit card debt. For the first two weeks of this month I was able to save $384 so that's the amount that I'm going to be paying today towards my student loans directly. Hi I'm Gabby and I'm in $53,000 worth of debt. I've been using TikTok for 50 days now to make a micropayment towards my smallest credit card every day using the previous day's video's engagements. People are turning TikTok likes, comments, and shares into tiny debt payments and this single mom has $136,000 of debt. I'm really curious to see if this trend actually works. Come make a micropayment with me until I can pay off $136,000 in debt. Hi if you're new here my name is Stephanie and I am a 41 year old single mother of two who lives in Southern California and I am a full-time Instacart shopper. Today is day one of officially making micropayments towards my debt. Let's go! So I appreciate every single one of you that have engaged with me and are motivating me to pay off my debt sooner. If you guys are unfamiliar with my micropayment series I'm going to be taking my engagement from the video prior and multiplying that by a quarter of a penny. Whatever that comes out to be will be the payment that I'll be making tomorrow. Let's go over the numbers for yesterday across all of my platforms. Yesterday I had a total of 128 in engagement. That equals out to 9 likes on Facebook, 7 likes, and 2 new followers on YouTube, 6 likes, 1 comment, 1 repost, 1 save on Instagram, and on TikTok we got 76 likes, 7 comments, 3 shares, 6 saves, and 9 new friends. Thank you guys so much for joining me on this journey to becoming debt free. Here's me trying to make this micropayment and as you can see here it wouldn't go through because a firm was like no girl you need to have a minimum of one dollar. We're gonna save the 32 cents that I was supposed to pay today and until I can get to at least a minimum we will pay that to that lowest a firm loan which I think I only like 26 bucks on or something like that so that should be paid off soon hopefully if you guys get me there. Stephanie explains the micropayments the setup very very clearly. She's talking about using the previous day's engagement on her TikTok video and denoting a value to it so she said a quarter of a and then that adds up to the dollar amount that she's going to make towards her debt for that particular day. The only thing is her engagement wasn't enough or either her engagement wasn't enough or the value of what she put towards that engagement wasn't enough to actually make a full micropayment towards her first loan so I think if she would have just said a penny per that would have gotten her there but I feel like this is the part that makes it feel so satisfying. You're waiting to see what that micropayment amount is going to be based on the engagement and then you're also making that payment every single day. I think that's really cool but with that said you know she's starting with her lowest debt of $26 on a firm. She's got $136,000 to knock out so I want to see is she actually making progress on this first debt or is she starting off too small. I'll make a micropayment with me until I can pay off $136,000. Hi if you are new here my name is Stephanie and I am a 41 year old single mother of two living in Southern California and I am a full-time instacart shopper. My debt breakdown consists of $16,000 in credit card and loans $65,000 in student loans and $55,000 in charged off debt. I know it's a lot. Right now I'm only tackling my active debt and I am doing the snowball method so our first tackle is my lowest of firm loan which is $26.90 I believe. We should be able to knock that out pretty quickly. My micropayments are based on your engagement with me from my previous video. Yesterday's video generated 91 in engagement so 91 times that by a quarter of a penny comes out to 23 cents. We finally made it to the minimum of a dollar mark so I can finally pay a firm. Here is me making my first micropayment y'all. Let's go! I also wanted to do this video a little bit different. I thought it'd be fun to track my credit scores. So this is my current credit scores. This is with Experian. This is with CreditWise. Let's see what happens to my credit within the next six months. Today is May 10th. By the way, happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there including myself and we will check my credit again on November 10th to see what kind of progress we made. If we made any progress. Without further ado, let's go over the numbers across all of my platforms. We were able to get 68 likes, 9 comments, 7 saves, and we made 7 new friends. Thank you guys so much for engaging with me, following me on this journey, and continuing to encourage me on my goal of being debt free. Okay so she made her first micropayment of it looked like a dollar and three cents and I really love how she's tying in her credit score tracking into this habit so she's going to see not only the daily progress on her debt but she's also going to see how this is impacting her credit score overall which I think is is really fun to do. She can see the balance move this way because she's attacking it every single day and I think honestly with where she's at I think she could denote a penny value instead of a quarter penny just to make the traction feel a little bit faster but maybe that's all she can do right now as a full-time instacart shopper. Let's go ahead and see how she's doing after two weeks of starting her micropayment journey. Today is day 15 of me making self-funded micropayments to pay off $16,000 in credit cards and loans, $65,000 in student loans, and $55,000 in collections. I am doing the snowball method and I am tackling my smallest of firm loan which should only have about $2.15 left on it which is not a lot so we should be paying that off. My micropayments are based on your engagement on my previous video so let's go over my numbers across all of my platforms. Y'all have been kicking butt lately, I really appreciate it. Yesterday's video was able to generate 169 likes, 18 comments, 13 shares, 4 reposts, and 14 saves and we made 12 new friends. Welcome to the chaos! That generated a total of 230 in engagement. I am currently doing a penny per engagement but at this rate I might have to take it down because remember I'm a broke girl. We don't really have disposable income like that so that is a total of $2.30. We have officially paid off my smallest debt. Here's a video of me paying $2.15 to my firm loan. It is done y'all! Let's go! The remaining $0.15 is gonna go towards my next smallest debt which is also in a firm loan but I have to wait till I have a minimum of a dollar to make that payment so we're gonna put that in the bucket. I'm sure tomorrow we'll hit the dollar minimum because you guys are just amazing. She finally increased the the value per engagement so instead of a quarter of a penny she did a penny and that got her to pay off the affirm loan very very quickly. That's two weeks of just consistency of setting aside the the micro payment into a bucket until she had the dollar minimum to make another payment towards a firm and I think that is so smart. I really appreciate how open she is about sharing her financial mess and what types of debt she has, how she's working, her DIY debt payment. What I think is so clear about this to me is just the consistency. You do not need a social media platform in order to make micro payments. That should be the big takeaway here. Instead of a platform what you need is a trigger. Your trigger can be tied to a positive habit. If you packed a lunch for the day to work, send a dollar to your debt. If you skipped purchasing a coffee, send two dollars towards your debt. If you cooked dinner at home instead of ordering takeout, send five dollars to debt. Make a little cheat sheet for yourself and put it on your refrigerator or create a little instruction manual on your notes on your phone and stick to it. That kind of progress of tying your micro payments to a daily habit could really help you make progress on your debt payoff. We're not punishing yourself for past mistakes. What we are doing is rewarding good behavior by tying it back into your micro payments. And if you're working on paying off debt and want realistic strategies, don't forget to like this video and subscribe. This is exactly what we do here. Better budget behavior. Now this next creator has paid off $39,000 of credit card debt since January. And this is where I start to see this trend of making micro payments start to get a little controversial. Today is day one of paying off $72,741 and six cents worth of credit card debt. I'm giving myself the year of 2026 to get my finances in order to become credit card debt free and to just live more financially abundant going into my late 30s. Hi, my name is Amber and I am 36 years old. I am a full-time working mom of four and over the last few years we have found ourselves just kind of becoming drowning in credit card debt as we prepare for our future. I am currently sitting at $72,741 and six cents of credit card debt and I am going to start a micro payment series where I use the engagement from the previous day's video in order to make a payment towards my credit card debt to give myself motivation and to continue to make payments. I think that's going to help me feel more motivated towards paying this off versus just trying to make big chunky payments and I've seen it work for so many other people so I am excited to start this challenge. So if you are interested in following along I'd love to have you on here and if you are on your own debt payoff journey drop below what your journey is in the comments. I'd love to hear it for day one of engagement. I am just asking for you to let me know what is your 2026 goal or resolution when it becomes to finances. I am genuinely curious to see how many people are on a debt payoff journey or maybe working towards a better financial future via retirement savings or maybe finding more income streams whatever the case may be. I'm curious to see how everybody is doing it. My engagement are going to be based off of likes, comments, shares, saves and new followers and I think I'm going to be able to do a penny per to start with and we'll see where that goes. So let's see how it goes. So Amber's situation is intense because she's dealing with $72,000 of credit card debt which is tied to high interest. That interest accrues daily. It gets added to your principal and then the process starts all over for the next account period. So she's probably feeling a little stressed out maybe a lot stressed out but it can feel crippling when you're only making one monthly payment and you're not really feeling that progress which makes micro payments so much more appealing. You're going to be able to stay on top of the interest that's accruing daily because you're making micro payments daily. Another thing that I like about Amber and Stephanie too is that they picked a specific debt to go after. They're not applying the micro payments towards every single debt that they have but they're applying the micro payment towards a specific loan which I think is going to be so helpful in helping them pay that off as quickly as possible. Amber's actually been documenting her journey for a long time on TikTok now since January so I want to catch up with her about 75 days into this situation to see how she's doing. We are officially TikTok paid today so stick around and find out how much it was. You may be a little shocked. Let's calculate our micro payment today. If you're new here hi my name is Amber. I'm a full-time working mom to four little boys and I'm on a journey in 2026 to try and pay off over $72,700 worth of credit card debt. Almost every day I make a self-funded micro payment based on the engagement of a previous day's video so let's break down those numbers. First and foremost we did gain 1,008 new friends yesterday. Hi, welcome, thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to continue to share my journey with you and at a half cent per new friend that is going to contribute five dollars and four cents towards our micro payments today. Next our post yesterday had a total of 3,454 engagements in the form of 2,458 likes 406 comments 380 shares and 210 saves and at a quarter of a penny per engagement that is going to contribute $8.64 towards our micro payment today bringing the micro payment to $13.68 for our and we did receive our payment today and it's going to shock you. I know a lot of people are expecting a huge payment. Our total payment today was $303.06. Now why is it this amount? This was for February and I went viral in March so although the amount might not seem like what you're expecting I still find it to be a huge blessing and April will even be more amazing. Currently we're looking at upwards of 2,600 plus dollars depending on how the remainder of this month continues to perform so there's hope at the end of this tunnel and I can't wait to share that payment with you guys next month. Now because I do have to take into consideration tax implications and this is something that's been a hot button topic for so many of you for a while, this is where I'm going to start my tax savings plan. My TikTok creator rewards program payments are going to have 50% of that amount go towards a savings account for taxes. Now why am I doing more than what you've probably heard of the 30%? I'm doing that extra 20% to account for contributions income and that is based on a very conservative tax law. If you want me to get more into that please let me know I can do a whole nother spiel on that. Now I'm not a tax accountant so I'm not going to give you tax advice but I can share with you my knowledge. So because of that we are going to add $151.53 of our earnings towards our micro payment today but again y'all said that wasn't enough and through the generosity of friends here on TikTok we did receive contributions as well yesterday totaling $33. Those contributions are never expected they are always greatly appreciated and I just want to let you know that watching and engaging will always be more than enough but thank you all so very much. So if we take into consideration our self-funded micro payment our earnings here plus our contributions our micro payment today is going to be $198.21. We are currently working to pay off our Capital One credit card and at the beginning of the day the balance was $6,024.38 and after our payment today we broke that threshold and we're down to $5,826.17. Our overall credit card debt is down to $56,684.51 and we do have a short-term goal by the end of March to have our overall credit card debt down to $56,000 even and after taking into consideration our future planned minimum payments on our cards we would need to make micro payments totaling $113.03 through the end of this month. If we break that down over the next 15 days that's just $7.54 a day. She made a $198 micro payment for most of us that's the whole month's payment so the fact that she's making that is a micro payment is insane. Now this is where she starts to kind of break off of what the average person can do because she's now monetized on TikTok and she earned 300 bucks from her content creator rewards system and so she's taking that contribution and throwing partially throwing it towards her debt if she was talking about taxes. The thing that really caught my eye with this that I don't know if you caught or not she said somebody gave her a contribution of $33 towards her debt so she's accepting donations as part of paying off her credit card debt and this is where I start to kind of raise an eyebrow here because I'm not entirely sure if this is justified. I'm going to get to more of my thoughts on that in just a second but the smart thing here is she had her capital one balance go dramatically down from the $6,000 to now $5,800 and I'm really curious to see how well and how much of a progress that she's made on her capital one card along with the rest of her debt. So I caught up with her account on day 149 so almost 150 days into making my micro payments. I want to see exactly how she's doing. Let's make a payment together if you're new here hi my name's Amber I'm a full-time working mom to four little boys and I'm on a journey this year to try and pay off over $72,000 almost every day I show up on here and I make a self-funded micro payment based on the engagement of a previous day's video so let's get into the numbers first and foremost yesterday we gained 307 new friends hi welcome thank you so much for being here really excited to continue to share my journey with you at a half a penny per new friend that is going to add a dollar and 54 cents towards our micro payment today next our post from yesterday had engagements upwards of 19,691 in the form of more than 13,000 likes 2,478 comments 2,618 shares and 1,595 states at an eighth of a penny per engagement that is going to add 24 dollars and 61 cents towards our payment bringing our total self-funded payment to 26 dollars and 15 cents but y'all said that wasn't enough oh no through the generosity of one friend here on tiktok we did receive a contribution yesterday totaling 150 dollars these contributions are never expected they are so deeply appreciated you're watching and engaging will always be more than enough but thank you so so much taking into consideration our self-funded micro payment plus our contribution we will be making a payment today totaling 176 dollars and 15 cents that payment is going towards our second city card and the balance on that card at the beginning of the day was 849 dollars and 91 cents and after our payment today we are down to 673 dollars and 76 cents you may be wondering why i'm smiling like a fool it's because i know that if all of this ends tomorrow with my snowball payment i can pay that card off this month and that is a huge accomplishment i'm really giddy for that anyhow our overall credit card debt is now down to 34,011 dollars oh my gosh and we do have a short-term goal by the end of june to have our overall credit card debt down to 30,000 even and if we take into consideration our future planned minimum payments less a little bit of interest that will accrue we will need to make additional self-funded micro payments totaling 2727 dollars and 21 cents or over the next 33 days just 82 dollars and 64 cents each day she started at 72,000 of credit card debt she's down to 32,000 that is insane she paid off capital one synchrony city synchrony and now this would be the fifth card that she's going to pay off basically halfway through the year that is awesome now her and her husband both work so that's the power of dual income coming into play and she's making huge micro payments here's one thing that i definitely want to address from this particular video is that she received a contribution from one person one follower totaling 150 dollars is this the new go fund me is this appropriate to do and clearly she's very kind in the in her video and says it's not expected but it's greatly appreciated obviously she set up a link on her tiktok profile for people to click into and donate towards her debt so she's not above accepting the donations and i'm just curious i want to hear from you in the comments is contributions like this is it appropriate is it enabling the creator is she going to go back to poor financial habits or is it actually going to help her reach her goal and continue to stick with positive financial habits permanently but to be 149 days into this and have nearly five credit cards paid off that's huge progress that you just can't ignore and clearly micro payments is working for amber and her family another thing that i like about amber's approach is how detailed she is with tracking and making sure that she denotes the value towards every single engagement and totaling up her micro payment and if you're watching this thinking okay well i think i need a better system for how i'm just handling my money i have a free budget toolkit that you can download it's linked below for you to organize your income expenses your debt payments and your savings goals so you have the awareness of where your money is going because the goal is not to just throw random dollars at debt or even at multiple debts the goal is to have better budget behavior so that you know exactly what you're focused on and if you want to copy micro payments without a tiktok platform grab a deck of cards pull out a random card and whatever the face value is on that card make that your micro payment for the day or take a pair of dice roll the dice and whatever number you get that's the dollar amount that you're going to be putting towards your debt for that particular day it's easy it gamifies the approach and it's something that you can track i'm all about gamifying your approach to debt payoff but when i saw one creator using couponing to make micro payments i went down a very long rabbit hole welcome back to my series let's make our weekly micro debt payment so that way i can finally be done with my student loans in 2026 i'm gonna explain to you exactly how i'm able to come up with this much money in my current existing budget without having a super restrictive budget without getting a second job or working more so if you guys want to do the exact same thing definitely click that follow button and follow along so we can pay off our debt together so for the first two weeks of this month i was able to save $384 so that's the amount that i'm going to be paying today towards my student loans directly so here's exactly how i've been able to save that much money so you guys can too so first what i do is i use digital coupons and i stack my deals at different stores so that way i can pay off my debt using only my phone so if you're currently paying full price right now you're probably paying 500 some of my clients were spending 1200 a month on all of their family essentials what in your first 30 days of doing this you can cut that in half so imagine if you were paying 500 for all of your family essentials your toiletries your laundry products etc now you're paying 250 so in just one month you'll have an additional 250 still sitting in your bank account that you can put towards your debt so that's what i'm doing what i do is i track my spending every time i go to the store and i do my different deals then when i come home i track it in a super simple budget spreadsheet at the end of the week i'm going to be making this as a micropayment and you guys are going to be able to follow along let me know if you have any questions so this was the very first video that i had ever seen from brie and i was curious about how she's doing tying and couponing to her micropayment and notice she said she's doing a weekly micropayment instead of a daily one this is a different version of the micropayment trend and i was so curious about how she is using the the couponing savings as the dollar amount towards her micropayment so instead of using tiktok's engagement she's just using the savings that she generated from her digital coupons to make the micropayment good in theory she gives an example though inside this video where she's saying you're spending five hundred dollars one client was spending twelve hundred dollars a month a month on family essentials i want to know what deems a family essential item she mentioned laundry products toiletries i mean toilet paper at costco the big bundle is 30 bucks that lasts you a month i hope at least for a family of four i'm just a little skeptical about her numbers but i can see how you could use couponing as a way to kind of gamify it and say oh like i just saved so much money well hey i just used a coupon on abercrombie.com is that that amount that i saved that i would have spent on those clothes is that going to now be applied as my micropayment i don't know so i had to dig into brie's account a little bit further to see how she's addressing this here's how you're actually going to start couponing in 2026 using only your phone that way you can create so much more breathing room in your budget and you can use the savings to be able to pay off your debt that's what i've been doing and i've paid off almost two thousand dollars worth of debt so far this year and it's only been the first four months so in this video i'm going to break down step by step exactly what to do so you can get started save this video so you can reference it at any time so step one you're going to pick one store to start with just one store what you want to do is i recommend picking cvs or walgreens they have way more ways to stack your savings and stack your deals compared to a place like dollar general or family dollar but if you want to start there you can couponing anywhere is better than paying full price so pick one store to start with then you're going to download their app and create a completely free account this is where you're going to go through the weekly ad that you're going to find on the app or on the website so you can go to cbs.com or go to the cbs website and you'll be able to find it this is where you're going to find all of the products that are going to be on sale what you want to do is the four layer saving stack system so this is what it means you are stacking sale prices using digital coupons you're using rewards that you'll earn from the store and you're getting rewards back sometimes we're getting cash back on top of that all on the same product when you're able to stack all four layers every single time you go shopping that's how you can start saving 75 or more on everything your family needs step three you are going to start putting together your deals and you are going to pick three maybe four deals to start with again you want to start small so you can really learn how couponing works at that one store that you chose and really master it you're going to break up your deals into two transactions so if you have four deals that you want to do you're going to do two deals in your first transaction and two deals in your second transaction that way the rewards you earn back from your first transaction you can use that immediately in your second transaction to lower your out-of-pocket cost next you're going to cringe when I say this but you have to track your spending in a very simple digital budget spreadsheet that way you can track exactly how much money you're spending and see how much money you're saving this is going to help you with the last step and it's going to help you stay motivated because you're going to see how much money you're saving it also leads into step five you have to take action with the money you're saving at the end of every week or at the end of every month see exactly how much money you've saved to the penny take that and put it directly towards your debt that way the savings look at her storage room okay this is giving the extreme couponer vibe you know they made a movie about this she's got stacks upon stacks of what I think are pull-ups she's got multiple spray bottles of hairspray I think this is where it can turn into another version of overconsumption if you're not careful now one thing that she said is that she's using this layer savings stack the four layer savings stack you've got to look for the sale price of a particular item and of an item that you need and then use a digital coupon then you're going to use the store rewards and then she said you're earning cash back I'm assuming she's using a separate app something like ibotta or fetch rewards where you are uploading the receipt and then you're getting points and then those points turn into cash back but here's the thing a discount is not automatic savings if it made you buy more than what you need so most of brief content is actually around couponing and finding good deals on amazon or walmart but she has a debt payoff guide and I was really curious what she was saying inside of that guide now I'm not going to expose it on this video because she does have it behind a lead magnet so you have to give your email address in order to get it so one thing she says in the guide is to use coupons for family essentials like toilet paper laundry products hair care oral care but later the guide encourages users to go to CVS or Walgreens every single week in order to stay consistent with stacking up your savings and my thought was who's going to Walgreens CVS every single week for family essentials so I tested one example I looked up a package of Huggies diapers a 66 pack at my local Walmart and it was $30.93 including taxes now I hopped over to my Walgreens app and saw that there was an $8 off coupon which was amazing for the exact same product but Walgreens had them listed for $33.99 and with the $8 coupon applied and after taxes the total came out to be $28.42 so that actually adds up to $2.51 in savings which is still savings but we have to ask did it cost extra time extra gas did we make an extra stop that we didn't really need to now I only looked at it from strictly coupon sure you could have add rewards to it if you had already made a previous purchase at Walgreens and then also taking into account scanning a receipt and uploading it into a rewards app which is something you can already do with your regular shopping routine so the caution here is to never coupon if you're already buying household items absolutely look for coupon deals but don't chase deals to the point where the micro payment is being funded by spending more than you otherwise would have spent micro payments should help you make progress not justify more spending but this next creator is using the micro payment strategy in a completely different way hi I'm Gabby and I'm in $53,000 worth of debt I've been using TikTok for 50 days now to make a micro payment towards my smallest credit card every day using the previous day's videos engagements however today is going to be a little bit different type of content so I had a meeting on Friday at my job I work at a college with undergraduate students and I do work on a grant so if you are in the United States we are working under an HSI grant Hispanic Serving Institute grant that had gotten defunded in September my college floated my salary until the end of this semester and our meeting on Friday solidified that I no longer will have a job after May 29th in this current role so I'm staying positive I've taken some time the last two days to just reflect and see how I can best process this and my next steps to find a new role hopefully at the same college but we will figure that out as time goes on but I didn't want to stop posting on TikTok so instead of stopping my debt payoff because I still will be making minimum payments towards all those debts I think that I will create an emergency fund so I'm going to start using the engagements from my videos to put money towards an emergency fund so I already have some money set aside so I'm going to take a moment and gather those numbers for you and gather the amount that I want to get to in the next 12 weeks before I no longer have my salary coming in so give me one second all right so my emergency fund is currently at $3,000 and I would like it to be at least at $6,000 or $7,000 by the end of this 12 weeks which means I'm going to have to save $300 to $400 every paycheck plus put aside any money coming in from side hustles I do work for my dad's food truck and luckily we are turning the corner on the weather so I will be working a little bit there so any money that I make besides my regular income is going to be put towards this emergency fund and I will start making micro payments starting today using the TikTok video engagements to put towards that as well so day 50 I know it's going to look a little different around here but we are getting to it let's get into it yesterday's video received a total of 854 engagements and then I received four new followers so we are going to round that up to a nine dollar micro payment towards my emergency fund okay so I'll put that here thank you all for being here I know that this is probably not the concept that you signed up for but I am not going to stop my debt payoff I've already paid thirty seven thousand dollars in the last two years yes with the salary that I have been earning but I am going to find a new role we're going to pivot shift to other things I also have a small business for macrame so I will be doing some some things there to make some extra income so I have a consignment deal with a local plant shop to sell my plant hangers looking at different other different plant shops to have consignment deals with or even boutiques around my area also doing craft fairs so I'm not giving up on debt payoff I just need to save an emergency fund that is more than what I have right now just in case I need to float myself because that's how we stay out of debt right that's that's going to prevent me from getting into further debt if I do it this way so thanks for being here have a good night everyone and I'll posting it tomorrow okay micro payments but for savings the only flaw here with Gabby is that she didn't have her emergency fund fully funded to really help her during job loss before attacking the debt so she was really going hard on her debt payoff but now she's had to switch gears because her emergency fund wasn't enough to keep her afloat while she's trying to look for a job so I feel for her this happens especially in universities or any kind of non-profit institutions where your salary is dependent on grants so I can understand that but this just proves that micro payments don't just work for debt they can also work for a savings goal so she's using the previous day's engagement on her videos to do the micro payment towards her savings she has three thousand dollars and she said she basically needs to double that within three months this is why I recommend having a starter emergency fund prior to really going hard on making extra payments on your debt starter emergency fund is equal to two to three months of your basic living expenses your rent or your mortgage payment your utilities groceries not restaurants and transportation costs those things need to be lumped together added up how much do you spend on those items in one month multiply it by two or three and use that as your starter emergency fund Dave Ramsey will tell you a thousand dollars and it's simply not enough for today's economy and for today's prices you need to have more so let's check back in with Gabby a few weeks later and see how she's doing on her emergency fund I'm Gabby and I'm fifty two thousand dollars worth of debt come with me today to make a micro payment towards my job loss fund because I have five paychecks left until I lose my job I'm currently trying to find a new role because I was grant funded and lost my position here which has been very challenging and it's why I haven't posted a bit it is very overwhelming this whole process I never thought I would be looking for a new job let's get into it my current debt is fifty two thousand five hundred and fifty eight dollars and twenty six cents my emergency savings is three thousand four hundred and fifty seven dollars I hope to get it to at least seven thousand dollars by the end of May just in case I need to use it to find a new job and even if I find a new job I'll use this towards debt and then we'll go back to an aggressive debt payoff but we are just trying to save some cash right now to uh just float myself in case I need to and it makes me feel better so let's use the engagements on the last video to make a micro payment towards that fund um so I had 583 views 70 likes two comments four shares six saves and six new followers that is total engagements of 671 which will be a seven dollar micro payment if I'm rounding it to um the nearest dollar at one cent per engagement um I also got paid last week but with some kind of shuffling around of bills and things that were due I was able to put ninety six dollars towards this fund so that will be a new balance of three thousand five hundred and sixty dollars so every day I'll be trying to post a video um to make a micro payment towards this fund so I can uh float myself should I need to. Aside from her kind of shifting gears into the emergency savings clearly micro payments has been working well for her because she had on screen she started with ninety thousand dollars of debt and she's now down to fifty six fifty two thousand that's incredible progress if it's worked for her debt payoff journey it's definitely going to work for her emergency fund savings she was even able to build it up after two weeks to thirty five dollars so she started at three thousand so it's moving up she's making progress but if you know you'll be without a job in eight weeks then you have a definitive timeline in order to get that six or seven thousand dollars that she needs if you know that you need that money I would be tempted to move over large amounts of money now because you want to be sure that you have the ready to go when your job is over and it's different than debt payoff because with debt there is no definitive date in order to pay it off you can make that journey as long or as short as you want to but when you know you have unemployment coming up there is a hard date that you absolutely need to have that money by so I saw Gabby had just posted about her being unemployed so let's see exactly how much she ended up saving good morning come save some money with me welcome to day 73 of changing my financial life today is the first day of unemployment which is really weird but yesterday was my last paycheck so I got some discretionary funds to my spending account which normally I would spend on groceries and other spending like getting my nails done and things but since I'm trying to get this goal reached by this weekend of saving seven thousand dollars for you know a job loss fund just to float myself I have decided to reduce that discretionary spending because it's no longer available in my budget so I just put fifty dollars towards groceries for the week and the rest of it we are moving over to this savings account so we are moving over four hundred fifteen dollars to the savings account it was at five thousand eight hundred and five dollars and it's now at six thousand two hundred and twenty dollars which means I only need seven hundred eighty dollars by the end of this weekend and I think I'm going to reach it because I will get the rest of my paycheck tomorrow and usually that is for you know towards my bills but because I had some money you know in my bills account I'm already I've already budgeted for most of June's bills with whatever's in my saving in my checking account right now so with that being said I only need like seven hundred dollars more in my checking account to pay off June's bills in full so then I'll have June 1st through 31st already fully funded before June begins which is the goal which is why I've been you know saving money trying to build up this fund and that's without touching this whole savings account so I feel really good about where I'm at so I think when I get paid tomorrow I'll be able to put another five hundred dollars or six hundred dollars towards the savings account and hopefully we will be able to have it fully funded so yay for this new chapter all right have a great day everyone bye so clearly like gloves are off she's like screw it I'm just gonna throw as much as I can towards my emergency savings I need to have it funded she actually moved the goal post a little bit I think she feels more comfortable with the 7k amount versus the 6k but she's there and it sounds like she also was like I need to pull back on discretionary spending I'm just going back to basic necessities bare bones in her previous videos she had said she does side hustles to help bring in some of that cash flow while she's working on figuring out her full-time full-time job very smart but at the same time this is what I was like I think she should just go ahead and dump as much money as she can but I do appreciate that she's gamifying the approach as much as possible by using micropayments to put towards her savings micropayments can absolutely build the habit but the deadline shows you how aggressive you need to be so let's gather all the fragments of what we've learned about micropayments so you can apply this first make progress visible micropayments is unusually satisfying because you can see the progress every single day small daily payments or contributions can help you see that progress instead of waiting at the end of the month to make one big chunky payment second pick a trigger you do not need a social platform in order to copy this instead pick a trigger tie it to a habit if you like tracking your daily steps for every 100 steps you take in the day put 50 cents towards your debt use packed lunches dice rolls no spend days or you skipped an impulse purchase anytime you're making those positive habits is a chance for you to make a micropayment third beware of deal chasing don't let micropayments be disguised as this coupon saving method brief coupon example shows us if you're already spending money on household items look for coupon deals but don't chase the deals to the point of overconsumption the fourth takeaway is one goal focus on one goal at a time amber and stephanie did a really great job at this by focusing their micropayment on a specific debt amber was tacking the capital one card and then later the city card and stephanie was really just trying to get that a firm business in order pick the smallest balance or the worst interest rate let that be the focus one thing at a time and the fifth micropayments are not just for debt this can also be applied to savings just be aware of the timeline so if the goal date is close then you may need a specific micropayment daily amount in order to hit that goal not just whatever the micropayment happens to be for the day my final take is i like micropayments they make progress visible and visibility is what keeps people going so you do not need tiktok or social media platform to do this but if you want to i mean you do you there are other ways that you can apply micropayments through the form of rolling some dice skipping your takeout or utilizing steps taken in the day and using that as a micropayment just put some boundaries in place and that's better budget behavior and if you're really curious about how people are paying off credit card debt this year then you'll want to watch that next