The first time I started seeing real progress with my debt payoff, I was flying high. I had paid off one credit card completely. I was making extra payments on the next. My emergency savings—tiny as it was—had hit $600, and I felt like I was finally, finally in control. I wasn’t rich, but I was steady. And after years of chaos, that felt huge.
Then, of course, life happened.
My laptop died. Not a dramatic death—just a slow, painful fade into unresponsiveness until one day it refused to turn on at all. Normally, I’d have used a credit card and worried about it later. But this time, I was committed to staying on track. No new debt. I wanted to be a different person, someone who handled setbacks without spiraling.
But I’m going to be real: I had a moment. I sat on my floor and cried, not because of the laptop, but because I was so tired of always fighting to stay afloat. I was just starting to feel like I was getting somewhere, and now I had to take $500 out of my emergency fund—which had taken me months to build—to replace something I literally needed for work. It felt unfair. And it brought up an old fear I didn’t even know was still lurking: What if I’m never really going to be okay? What if the other shoe is always going to drop?
But once I gave myself space to feel it, I also remembered why I’d been building that fund in the first place. The whole point of having an emergency cushion was so that one crisis didn’t send me back into debt. And even though it sucked to drain most of it, I reminded myself: this was a setback, not a failure. The fact that I didn’t have to reach for a credit card meant that my plan was working—not broken.
So I bought the laptop. I let the savings balance drop. And I gave myself two weeks to reset before going back into rebuild mode. That was something new for me—giving myself time. I didn’t punish myself by cutting every joy out of my life to “make up for it.” I didn’t panic. I didn’t say screw it and start spending recklessly. I just slowed down, reworked my plan, and kept moving.
The truth is, setbacks are part of the process. They’re not proof that you’re bad with money. They’re proof that life doesn’t stop happening just because you finally got your budget in order. And the more I accepted that, the less power those setbacks had over me emotionally. I stopped seeing them as a sign that I was doomed to fail and started seeing them as proof that I was doing something new—handling problems without debt.
What helped me the most was treating that moment with kindness instead of shame. I reminded myself that building a financial foundation is like healing from anything else. You’re going to get tested. You’re going to backslide a little. But it doesn’t erase your progress. I didn’t “ruin” my emergency fund—I used it. For its actual purpose.
And the craziest part? Three months later, I had it fully built back up to $600. Then $700. Then $1,000. I felt even stronger the second time because I knew I could recover. I had already proven it to myself once.
So if you’re in that place right now—where it feels like life just threw a wrench in your progress—breathe. Take the hit. Adjust your plan. Then keep going. You are not starting from zero. You are starting from experience.
And that’s a much more powerful place to be.