HACK 121 Reward Yourself

Once you’ve determined smaller benchmarks for paying off your debt, set rewards for yourself. A few ideas:

• After six months of making debt payments above your minimum amounts, you can go to the movies—and it doesn’t even need to be a cheaper matinee show.
• Celebrate one year of your debt payoff journey by planning a hike with friends.
• Every time you pay a total of $1,000 toward your debt, you can get a manicure at your favorite salon.

Don’t pick rewards as you go, because you’ll start creating arbitrary goals for the sake of rewarding yourself. Plan ahead and write down your benchmarks and your rewards for achieving those goals. Share them with your accountability partner, who’s likely to be just as excited as you are as you near your goals and corresponding rewards.