Money expert who RETIRED at age 36 reveals her top two hacks for paying off credit card debt faster

• Rachel Covert, 37, from Massachusetts, works part-time as a money coach
• She went viral after sharing her hacks for paying down credit card debt
• Covert advised ditching your credit cards and start making multiple payments  

A financial expert who retired at the age of 36 has lifted the lid on her simple yet effective hacks for paying off credit card debt quickly. 

Rachel Covert, 37, from Massachusetts, quit her corporate job last year and now works as a part-time money coach, teaching professionals how to build wealth through automation and investing. 

The former fashion brand vice president is known as @rachel_talksmoney on TikTok, where she shares helps people ‘get their financial s**t together.’

Covert went viral after sharing her top tip for paying down debt faster, saying it’s so effective ‘credit companies definitely don’t want you to know’ about it. 

‘Credit card debt is really frustrating and really hard to pay off and one of the reasons is that it accrues daily,’ she explained. ‘So that means every single day, the money that you owe them is growing.

‘And it’s not just a little bit of interest on what you’ve paid for with the credit card, effectively the things you’ve borrowed, it’s also all of the interest that you already owe them. So it grows really fast and it can be very hard to pay it off.’

Covert’s first piece of advice is to stop using your credit cards once and for all. 

‘Number one, take your credit cards out of your wallet, delete them from your phone, remove them from Apple Pay, and completely stop using your credit cards,’ she said.

The money coach’s second tip is to ‘start making credit card payments multiple times a month.’

‘You don’t have to pay the full balance multiple times a month,’ she noted. ‘But take the amount that you set aside to pay towards your credit card, let’s say it’s $200, instead of paying one time a month at $200, break it up into four payments of $50 and start making payments every single Friday towards your credit card debt.

‘The reason that this works is that every time you reduce the amount that you owe them, you are recruiting less and less and less interest,’ she said. 

‘So if you’re struggling to pay off your credit card debt, this is one of those little things that can make a huge difference across the lifetime of the loan.’ 

Covert’s video has been viewed more than 400,000 times and has received nearly 1,500 comments.  

‘I have been going this for past 2 yrs and it does cut down interest,’ one fan wrote.

‘Getting rid of your credit cards sounds dumb but it freakin works!’ another agreed.

‘Love this! Great tip. Keep them coming!!’ someone else added. 

Covert elaborated on her multiple payment hack in a more recent video, saying most people wrongly assume that credit card interest is only getting charged once a month.  

‘That is not the case. Credit card debt is calculated daily,’ she explained. ‘They take the debt that you already owed them from the previous days of having a credit card balance and add it to the principal when they’re calculating your debt daily. This is called compound interest. Your credit card debt is growing every day.

‘You definitely need to make at least the minimum payment every month, [but] you should be striving to make far more than the minimum payment,’ she advised. 

‘And if you can make that across two, three, or four payments in any given month, you’re helping yourself combat that credit card debt by just reducing the amount of interest that you’re gaining every single day.’

However, she noted that there is one caveat to her hack.    

‘I personally do not believe in paying off your credit card debt until you have at least a small emergency fund,’ she said. ‘That’s because what tends to happen is that if you’re using your credit card as your emergency fund, you will pay off a little bit of debt and then you’ll just put it right back on the credit card, and you’re back to square one.

‘So by having a few thousand dollars in a savings account like a high-yield savings account that protects you from having to use your credit card and getting further behind on your credit card debt again.’