Stress & Baby Steps #2

The Quiet Weight of Debt I Didn’t Know I Was Carrying 💭💸

I don’t think I ever truly knew how much stress I was carrying while living with two major loans:

• An SSS loan

• A personal loan close to six digits 😮

Just writing that still feels heavy. I lived with that debt for more than a decade, and somehow, I convinced myself it didn’t affect me.

I kept telling myself I was fine. That I was chill about it. “I can pay it off if I really want to,” I’d say. It became background noise—something so familiar that I stopped questioning it. Like it was just part of adult life. 🤷‍♀️

But debt doesn’t always announce itself as stress. Sometimes, it sits quietly in the corners of your mind. It shows up in subtle ways—hesitation, tension, overthinking—things you brush off because they feel normal. 🧠

My SSS loan took around three months to fully pay off (I actually need to look that up because I can’t remember the exact timeline anymore). My second-highest loan, aside from my mortgage, took me a full year. A year of consistency, discipline, and living on a tight budget. 📆💪

And then one day, I made the final payment.

There was no big celebration. No dramatic moment. Just a quiet, internal sigh of relief. 😌 A simple thought: “Thank you. I don’t have to carry this anymore.”

             ✅Check out related post Debt snowball... my 2nd debt

That’s when I realized something important.

I hadn’t noticed how much stress those loans were adding to my life until they were gone. The constant mental weight. The low-level anxiety I had normalized. The way it subtly affected my peace of mind. 😴 I thought I was handling it well—but I was really just used to it.

Who would have thought that something I brushed off for years was quietly affecting my emotional well-being?

Paying off those loans didn’t just free up my finances—it freed my mind. It taught me that just because we can live with something doesn’t mean it isn’t costing us. And just because stress feels familiar doesn’t mean it should be ignored. 💡

If you’re carrying debt right now and telling yourself you’re “okay,” maybe pause and check in with yourself. Relief doesn’t always come with fireworks—but when it arrives, you’ll feel it. 🌱

That is it for now. Thanks for reading all the way 🙏💛