Posted on: July 30, 2025

Conquering Your Debt Mountain

Written by:

Brian Wheeler

There is a mountain on the horizon.

Seeing those misty outlines in the distance might awaken something in your gut, just as it did for many of our favorite heroes. Bilbo sets off to Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, to find gold and fight a dragon. Jeremiah Johnson steps off a riverboat, on the banks of the Missouri, to build a life of liberty in the Rocky Mountain range. William Wallace works his way up and down the Scottish Highlands to expand his resistance against a king working to keep the Scottish clans enslaved. Mountains are symbolic of challenges, transformation, triumph, and even divine connection.

Is there a mountain in your financial life?

You may have a mountain hiding in the shadows of your home that you are getting sick of. Debt. The average household in the US has over $19k in credit card debt alone (source ). Sounds like not everyone is telling the truth when they say, “I use a credit card, but I pay it off every month.” Debt is a problem that almost every family in our society today has to learn how to overcome. Re-gaining control over your monthly income, steering where your money is spent, and building wealth starts with winning the debt battle. Fighting for control here is a fight worth the effort. There are two logical and simple methods that many have used to guide this process. The first is called “The Snowball Method”, and the second is called “The Avalanche Method”. In this article, you will find details on how both methods function, along with some strategic input on how they compare. We hope these simple frameworks will help you begin to gain back freedom, margin, and eventually wealth for your family tree… because whether the solution be a snowball or an avalanche, one thing is implicitly true: we Americans have a mountain of debt.

But first, why focus time and energy to become debt-free?

The reason to reduce and eliminate debt is simple. There can be a lot of noise in culture about low interest rates or affordability when it comes to using debt. The bottom line is that it takes money to make money. If a family’s income is getting sent off each month to pay multiple lines of debt for cars, vacations, etc, then that money is not being used to build wealth. Whether your asset of choice is real estate, stocks, small businesses, ETFs, or mutual funds, you have to have money to invest in those things each and every month to build family-tree changing wealth. So the interest rate cost of debt is not really the main concern here.

The concern is opportunity cost.

Investing consistently, over a long period of time, into things that gain value and/or spin off an income stream is what produces wealth. Having your monthly income pre-spent on debt payments is costing you the ability to invest in wealth building assets.

The opportunity cost of debt can cost you your legacy.

Steps for Debt Snowball Method

Have your monthly budget handy. To start this process, everyone needs a budget so they know how much money they can use to tackle the debt. It is likely you will need to reduce your spending in order to get rid of the debt quickly. It is worth it!
List your debts, smallest to largest (regardless of interest rate) on a pad you will keep with you or a spreadsheet.
Continue to make the minimum payments on all the debt except the smallest one.
Throw as much of the extra budget money each month at the smallest debt until it is gone. This can happen fast!
Repeat over and over until even the biggest debts are gone.
Start buying assets and building wealth!

Steps for Debt Avalanche Method

Same starting point here… Have your monthly budget handy. To start this process, everyone needs a budget so they know how much money they can use to tackle the debt. It is likely you will need to reduce your spending in order to get rid of the debt quickly. It is worth it!
List your debts starting with the highest interest rate first, then down to the lowest interest rate.
Continue to make the minimum payments on all the debt except the most expensive interest rate debt.
Use the extra budget money you freed up to tackle the highest rate debt as fast as possible. This might take a while, depending on the balance.
Take what you were paying on your high-rate debt and add that to the payment of the next highest rate debt until that one is gone too.
Repeat over and over until all the debt is gone.
Start buying assets and building wealth!

“Motivation is the key to becoming debt free. Not math”
– Dave Ramsey

What we recommend and why

We have talked to many thousands of families who have won or set out to win the debt battle. Make no mistake, achieving the goal of being debt free is going to be a battle. Mike Tyson once said of Evander Hollyfield’s fight plan: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Due to this sentiment, we recommend the Snowball Method.

Having your plan laid out is the right first step, but there will be adversity. Working the Snowball Method gives you wins early and more often. It helps you gain behavioural momentum. The reps, the discipline, and crossing the items off your list is what will build that habit muscle.

As Dave Ramsey says: “Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge. What to do isn’t the problem; doing it is.”

The Debt Snowball is the behavioral remedy to a behavioral problem. You can turn the ship around quickly with this, and get back on track if you get ‘punched in the mouth’ along the way.

Final Thought

You are in a war to free your family in every way possible. Morale is the heart result of the behaviour you choose to enact. As Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “An army’s effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience, and morale… and morale is worth more than any of the other factors combined.”

Use the Snowball Method to keep the morale high in your home. Getting wins early and often will help you conquer mountains. We here at SmartPro encourage you to act decisively, with urgency, and gain back freedom for your family by winning the debt battle.

Start hiking. You have what it takes.

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