On Track to Retire a Millionaire After Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and today I have a very special surprise for you, my dear listeners. Today we’re going to share another episode from the Fire YouTube series that I host on the BiggerPockets Money YouTube channel that features stories of people who are either on their way to or have actually reached financial independence. Today we’re featuring Marissa May and her financial journey. Not long ago, Marisa was living paycheck to paycheck with max out credit cards, no emergency fund, and constant financial anxiety. Now she’s on track to retire a millionaire after learning how to pay off debt the right way, and that fixing your finances does not have to be an agonizing slog like most financial influencers would have you believe. We’ll dive into how she got on the right track in today’s episode. Before we get into the show, we want to thank our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Connect Invest real Estate investing simplified and within your reach. Now back to the show. Marissa, I am so excited to talk to you today.

Marisa:
Hello. I’m excited too. Thanks for having me.

Mindy:
So let’s jump into your financial history as an adult. In a nutshell, what did your financial life look like before you hit your breaking point?

Marisa:
I mean, that hot mess I feel like is a great descriptor. I would rack up my credit card, not really know how just day-to-day spending, just living my life, right? It’s not like I was frivolously going and buying Chanel bags every weekend. Somehow rack it all up, then hit that enough is enough moment, have to pay it all down, hyper restrictive budget and pay it all off or hit a tax return and use that to pay it down. And then a couple months later, there I am again with the card racked up again and having no clue how it happened and I just had no reality other than I’m just going to live paycheck to paycheck in overdraft and just, I’m never going to be credit card debt free. That’s just not a thing for me. That’s for other people. Somehow other people have it figured out. Other people are good at math, other people aren’t good at money. That’s just not me.

Mindy:
This is a common thread that I have heard from a lot of people. I just assumed that debt would be part of my life and I just assumed I would always be in debt. So what was your breaking point?

Marisa:
Well, picture this. There I am in Las Vegas and I’m Canadian. I’m over there in Vegas and I’m curled up in a ball in the hallway of a conference center that stage past hysterical crying where it’s just completely shut down, paralyzed, just terror feeling where you can’t even cry anymore. So just shut down. Well, yeah, that’s me curled up in a ball in Vegas. I was there for a work conference that was supposed to be covered and paid for by my employer, but I forgot I was paying in USD instead of Canadian dollars. And so I got some excursions and forgot to factor in the exchange rate. I accidentally got the dates wrong. It was a last minute trip and had a couple nights that I needed to fund at a hotel that I wasn’t expecting and just like this after this, after this, after this.

Marisa:
So there I am curled up on the last night. Well, it was supposed to be the last night of my trip and I have no hotel booked for that night. I don’t know anyone in Vegas. And my credit card is not only maxed but over limit from this trip. I’m negative overdraft. Somehow I was $50 over my overdraft. I literally had $0 to my name, less than $0, and no idea if my card would be approved to stay in a hotel room that night. And it was just that moment of just panic and terror and more than that, the embarrassment of I cannot believe this is my life. This is it. I get to say, and I say that this isn’t how the rest of my life goes. Enough is enough.

Mindy:
I’m getting hard palpitations just listening to that story. I know where you’re coming from. I hear those. I am desperation, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Marisa:
So I was fine. I made it. I made it to today. I’m still here. Yeah, I mean, as far as after that, do you want me to get into what I did? I would love that after that point, that enough is enough moment. I’d already been poking around on TikTok, following content creators specifically I was resonating with, I’d found a couple of Canadian content creators and neurodivergent content creators. At the time, I only knew that I was a DHD. I didn’t know that I’m also autistic and have a math learning disability. I threw myself into personal finance and financial literacy, and I read over 20 books in the span of probably eight months and just it was like, okay, the information has to be out there. And it

Mindy:
Was, the information is out there, but don’t beat yourself up and anybody watching this, don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t been able to find it yet. You don’t know what you don’t know. So when you’re trying to fix your finances, hey, I want to fix my finances, is a great thing to start Googling, to start seeing what other things are out there. But there’s also a lot of scams in the financial world, like debt consolidation that is a thing, but there’s a lot of people who are scamming out there. So what sort of credit card debt are we

Marisa:
Talking about here? Funny enough, I had one credit card. That was it, thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness I’d only been approved for one card at the time and it had a $5,000 limit. I just graduated university and it was at five grand and I had a loan for my laptop and a couple of other small little consumer things. So over the span of about 18 months, I paid off 10 to $15,000 of consumer debt across credit card and those other small consumer loan things. And I did all of that making less than $40,000 Canadian. So even less American, probably about $35,000 American.

Mindy:
That’s awesome. I mean, it’s not awesome that you had that much debt, but it’s awesome that you paid it off in 18 months and thank you for sharing your income because a lot of people would hear you paid off $10,000 and only 18 months. Wow, how’d you do it? Well, when you’re making $40,000 a year, that’s a lot of money that you’re taking out of your salary to throw at debt. So that’s a very impressive payoff schedule.

Marisa:
The craziest part about it for me is that I did it all without eliminating impulse spending or the things that brought me joy. I never gave up Starbucks very early on. I was like, I’ve tried restrictive budgets, I’ve tried crash budgets, I’ve tried to cut out everything and that just does not work for me. So what would happen if I kept little luxuries? So I never gave up buying cute candles or fuzzy blankets at home goods or home sends. I never gave up Starbucks. I found a way to be intentional with my finances instead of restrictive or eliminating everything. And that’s honestly a huge part of what made the difference.

Mindy:
Okay, now we’re going to dive into that because I think that’s fascinating. Most people are like, okay, I’m going to pay off all my debt. That means no extra 80 is spending. How did you keep those in while

Marisa:
Still paying down debt? Lots of strategy pieces, and I would love to share one of them. The overarching theme is my ethos has become, my motto is the best financial plan is the one you’ll stick to. Yes. So instead of building that perfect on paper budget, that falls apart in a couple of weeks, a couple months, even six months, and then you revert back and just end up in the exact same spot A couple of months later, I was like, Kate, that doesn’t work. So what if I built a slower on paper, huge air quotes, slower on paper, it looks like it’s going to take longer because I’m keeping those little luxuries, but it actually has me get to the end goal instead of giving up halfway through or a quarter of the way through. I would so much rather do that. I want to actually enjoy my life and enjoy my world.

Marisa:
And that is so much more motivating to me and has proven not only for me, but with my clients to keep them on track. And one of the ways that I did this specifically with Starbucks, I would load a gift card at the beginning of the month and that was my Starbucks allowance. So I would load 40 bucks at the beginning of the month, and that was my Starbucks. And so I could use it whenever I wanted and not feel any guilt or shame or blame about using that gift card because I’d planned on spending that $40 on Starbucks and then when it was done, it was done and I could keep an eye on how much I had left. I could ration it, if you will. I don’t like that word. That’s very lack mindset. But I could be intentional with when I was getting a Starbucks and I was in control of it, and it eliminated the shame and blame of getting star bes as I like to call it.

Mindy:
Okay. I love this idea. And I have never heard it articulated quite like that. I think that’s fantastic. There are very few places where you can shop or spend money that don’t also have gift cards. What a great idea. I’m going to spend $40 at Starbucks this month and here’s my $40. So that’s all I’ve got. And if you don’t spend it all great, then it rolls over to the next month. And if you do spend it all, that was a conscious choice.

Marisa:
Totally. And so for people who don’t have that one place that they find that they feel like they can’t spend at or shouldn’t spend at blah, blah, blah setting even, I’m going to buy a $50 visa card like a prepaid visa, and this is my intentional fun money where it does not have to make sense to anyone else when I purchase at this money. This is literally just for fun, impulsive dopamine hit spending, and then the shame and blame is gone. You’ve already set it up. You’ve already set that money aside. It’s out of sight, out of mind.

Mindy:
Let’s talk about your debt payoff. Did you have a specific dollar amount that you were paying off every month or did you have a specific percentage of your income that you were paying off? Or how did that look?

Marisa:
I focused on just my spending money and my fixed expenses. Okay, how can I hone in on these two areas and get to breaking even first? So what I have coming in is what I have going out and then start to create wiggle rooms sustainably. So that’s step three. I can actually wiggle. I’ve created the room and wiggling is actually funding the goals. So I used to try to wiggle before I had the room and that was just overspending with a fancy name and just looked better. I was overspending with credit card repayment. So what I was actually doing was I was focusing just on my spending money and fixed expenses and honing in on those and reducing those. And then at the end of the month I’d have leftovers. And what I was doing at the time was I’d picked a percentage and it fluctuated over the whole period, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s say it was 70 30, I’d put 70% towards my dera payment and 30% towards my other future-based financial goals. I was clear that while I was just paying off debt, that was not motivating for me. I wanted to do both. So I set up through my employer investing things that ended up being about 30%. And then everything that I had left over from my end of the, that I was managing and dealing with on a monthly basis, everything else of that would go towards debt repayment because that 30% was already going towards investing.

Mindy:
Oh, I love that. Okay. That was going to be a question was were you investing while you were paying off your debt? There’s no right answer here. There’s no wrong answer here. Do you pay off your debt first or do you invest and pay down debt at the same time? If you choose to invest while you’re paying down your debt, of course your debt repayment is going to take longer, but you’re also starting to invest earlier. And there’s that phrase, time in the market is better than time in the market. So it doesn’t matter what the market is at right now, you want to start investing because in my opinion and past performance is not indicative of future gain. The market’s going to go up, it’s also going to go down, but it’s going to over time go up into the right. So continuing to starting to invest as soon as possible is going to give you more time in the market, more time for your money to grow. So I love that you were doing both of those. However, to those watching who are like, I could never start investing without paying off all my debt. Great, then pay off all your debt first. You have to be able to sleep at night.

Marisa:
And a big reason why I chose to was one, I had employer matching. It was like, okay, I might as well take advantage of this free money. Yeah, she was, I’m going to max out my employer matching. And a part of it for me as well was building the habit and getting to know and experience myself as somebody who was investing. That was something that for me personally, I just felt like I wasn’t fully adulting because I was missing out on that. And I had such fomo that I was like, okay, I’m just going to invest a little bit and focus on debt repayment. And again, that was motivating and had me stay on track, which for me is the ultimate goal.

Mindy:
So you said something that I thought was very interesting. You said, I hadn’t seen if it was actually realistic, your repayment method a few minutes ago. I have frequently equated debt pay down to weight loss. Everybody knows what they’re supposed to do. Stop eating junk food, stop spending so much money on stupid stuff that you can’t afford and work out, stick to a budget so everybody knows what you’re supposed to do. But it’s also completely unrealistic to expect yourself to go from eating out all the time and eating all the good foods like pizza and hamburgers and chicken nuggets and all the things that tastes good and drinking beer and blah, blah, blah, to going to a life of just salads. And it’s not fun to do that either. So being realistic with your self, with your motivation, with your ability to stick to something is going to be key to having it actually work. So let’s talk about this big change. You went from paycheck to paycheck to paying off debt. Are you now debt free?

Marisa:
I was when I started my business and managing business finances and investments in my business and larger sums of money than I’d even made in a month, or sorry, in a year was a different adventure. And so now I have business debt that happens to be on credit cards and would still say that as far as the habits and what I built goes consumer debt-free.

Mindy:
When you started this debt-free journey, what was the most significant change You had to make

Marisa:
Something that I didn’t expect, which was getting that my self-worth and my net worth had been tied together. And that doesn’t work. So honestly, the biggest change that I had to make was believing in myself and untangling all of those beliefs that I had about myself and about money and about my ability to manage money and what my net worth says about me or the morality around money. Just all of that mindset work that I wasn’t expecting. That

Mindy:
Can be a challenge. And I mean, it is a huge mindset shift and I think you really need to be committed to the actual debt payoff process. And sometimes that means crying in a hallway in Las Vegas. Where am I going to sleep?

Marisa:
Yeah. I like to say that working on the numbers alone wasn’t enough for me. And working on mindset alone wasn’t enough for me. No matter how positively I was thinking. I still would not recommend anyone and I could not manage my finances out of one bank account. And while splitting my accounts was awesome and helpful, if I still believed that I was never going to be out of debt and was unworthy of having money, I never was going to. So when I tied those together and actually worked on the self-worth and the net worth at the same time, that’s when things really kicked off and I got momentum. Okay, so now

Mindy:
I have to ask the question. How many different bank accounts do you have?

Marisa:
Ooh. Okay. So my ideal beautiful favorite system is two checking accounts. And then of course, feel free to customize beyond, but one checking account where you get paid into, and that’s where all of your bills are set up to autopay out of than a second account for spending money. And that’s the card you carry with you day to day out and about. And then of course, your other accounts for goals. So whether that’s debt repayment or having little buckets in an ally bank account or coho if you’re in Canada, like little buckets for goals or little savings accounts here and there for other things that you’re saving up for, go for it, whatever. But those two accounts is key. So then when you get paid, when I’d get paid, all I would need to do was, okay, what did I get paid? What do I need for my bills for this period? What do I want to put towards my goals? And then the rest I would just send to spending money. And then all I had to do was open up one account and see what I could safely spend without accidentally overspending into what I needed for my bills. And that helped my neuros spicy brain so much being able to see the numbers.

Mindy:
So let’s talk about your neuros spicy brain for a minute. Yeah. How does A DHD and autism and just neurodivergence in general factor into all of this

Marisa:
So heavily? I mean, it is a really interesting question for me because hard to, on some level, it’s even hard to determine because it’s all I’ve ever known. It’s not like how does having a broken arm impact your finances? It’s like my brain is how I perceive and look at everything. So all I can go off of is the experiences I’ve heard from neurotypical people, but impulse spending is a big part of it. That sense of, I think everyone under the sun can resonate with, oh, I saw that thing. I really want it. And there’s a whole other level when it comes to neurodivergence of intrusive compulsive need to spend or buy that thing or having, we experienced time blindness of not knowing how much time has passed. Same for money blindness. In my experience in working with my clients of if I can’t see visually what’s going on and I don’t actually have a tangible idea of what’s going on, it’s out of sight, out of mind.

Marisa:
It might as well be quicksand or yeah, it’s just having a sense of permanence around what’s actually happening. What are my bills this month? So how much do I have for spending that? Mental math just does not compute in the moment. Forgetting to return things, forgetting to, if autopay is not your best friend as a neuros spicy human, I request you try it because remembering to pay that bill, remembering that you’re behind on that bill, which account do I need to pay that bill out of? Just all of the little executive functioning things that go into managing finances. It’s a lot.

Mindy:
Yeah, it can be. And I think that if you have neurodivergence, I’m trying to, I’m not neurodivergent, so I’m trying to use the right words. Please correct me if I’m not it, but if you have neurodivergence, this is not anything to be ashamed of. This is a fact, and you need to embrace this fact and work within the limitations that it places on you. Or

Marisa:
I said the

Mindy:
Differences. Because if you’re going to forget to pay a bill, that is also a fact. You’re going to forget to pay a bill, and that’s going to affect your credit score primarily. We have an American audience. Do they have credit scores in Canada?

Marisa:
Oh yeah. We even use two of the same credit bureaus. Yay.

Mindy:
Okay. So that’s going to affect your credit score in a negative way. Why? If you know you’re, and you don’t want to have an negatively affected credit score and you have bills that come up all the time, go to your bank, go to your bank’s website, figure out how autopay works. Just sit down every day, sit down and do one bill until they’re all on autopay. So you don’t have to think about this that isn’t placing restrictions on yourself. That’s actually freeing, because I’m sure that when you remember that, you forgot that bill. Oh, crud, what is that going to do to my credit score? How much do I owe in late fees? It gives you more anxiety. Take that away and put it on auto pay. I love that. Marissa, what advice would you give someone looking to pursue financial independence?

Marisa:
My suggestion would be to find someone who’s done what you are out to do and hone in and try what they’re up to. Find that book that really resonates and read it twice. Read it cover to cover, read it twice, implement what they suggest and see if that floats your goat. And yes, I said goat, but give it a shot. Hone in on something and run with it. Because something that I hear time and time again from people getting started is that experience of, I know I’m trying to build a puzzle, but I’m pulling puzzle pieces from all these different places and I don’t even know what the puzzle looks like that I’m trying to build. So whether it’s Mindy, whether it’s me, whether it’s whoever, whether it’s Ramit, SIE, finding that person that you resonate with their story and what they’ve done, and just hone in on that for a little bit and try it to see if it works for you and if it doesn’t, try something else. But I think we have a habit of hopping from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. And waiting for something to just kind of magically work or fix the problem, versus actually diving in on something and doing the work to have it work.

Mindy:
Doing the work is a very important part of that statement that you just made. So I’m just going to underline it twice because doing the work is the most important. And if you have a blogger that you have stumbled across and you all of a sudden decide, I don’t really like what they’re saying, there’s another blogger. I talk to people all the time, podcasters, YouTubers, bloggers, and they’re like, oh, is this space filled? Is it oversaturated? Nope. There’s a voice for everyone. Or maybe there’s not. Maybe there’s a need for not. Maybe there is a need for someone who understands the neurodivergent mind. I don’t because I’m not neurodivergent, so I can’t speak to the experiences that a neurodivergent content creator can. My voice isn’t going to resonate with everybody, and that’s okay. I just want the content out there in the form that someone can understand it. So I love that there are so many voices out there saying similar, sometimes very different things. And find the person that speaks your language and listen to them. I love that. I love that so much. Marissa, this was so much fun. Thank you for your time today. It is always good to talk to you. Where can people find you online?

Marisa:
Yeah, so on basically any platform you can find me at Financial Badassery, it’s usually financial badassery or my website is the same. And just to throw out there, I actually happen to work with mostly American clients right now. So if you’re in the States, don’t let that stop you from reaching out as well.

Mindy:
Oh, I love that. Yeah. I didn’t realize that you worked with American clients too. That’s been fantastic. Yeah, definitely check her out. She is everywhere. I Googled financial badassery and found a ton of links. They all leaked to her.

Marisa:
That’s me. And tons of free resources as well in there.

Mindy:
Up the wazoo resources everywhere up. That’s awesome. Alright, if you like this video, please click the thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to this channel for more inspiring fire stories. Marissa’s, this is Mindy Jensen signing off.