My debt snowball took 14 months longer than Dave Ramsey says it should

I started the debt snowball method in January 2023 with $28k in credit card debt, thinking I'd be done in 24 months like the calculators said. But my car threw a rod in July which cost $4,200 to fix, then my hours got cut at work for 3 months straight. Has anyone else had their timeline completely blown up by life events that the standard advice just ignores?

2 comments

2 Comments

evah401d agoMost Upvoted

$4,200 for a car repair is brutal - did you pause the snowball completely or just lower your payments for those three months?

hannah_price791d ago

Are you sure about that, though? I mean, $4,200 is a lot of money, but pausing the snowball completely seems risky to me. If you stop making payments on your smallest debt for three months, you lose all that momentum you built up. It's like starting over from scratch, and that can be really discouraging. Lowering the payments but still sending something, even if it's just $25, keeps the habit alive and the balance moving down. That way, when the repair is paid off, you're not staring at a pile of interest that grew while you weren't looking.