Diane GardnerFounder, Adept Business Solutions · Profit First Professional

Paying off Debt- Hala Taha from Young and Profiting (YAP) talk about the first steps. #yapwithhala

18 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:07

In this short interview, Hala Taha (Young and Profiting) discusses practical steps for paying down debt. She first recommends using a behavioral‑conditioning approach inspired by B.F. Skinner: sort debts by balance, pay off the smallest ones first to create early wins and reinforce the habit of eliminating debt. She cautions that this method alone may not be optimal, especially when high‑interest or high‑consequence debts are present. She then advises prioritizing debts by the highest interest rates to avoid costly interest accumulation. Finally, she introduces a “consequence” dimension—considering the potential legal, relational, or life‑impact outcomes of each debt (e.g., lawsuits, loss of friendships). The recommended sequence is: achieve a few quick wins, then tackle debts with the highest interest and highest consequence, followed by high‑consequence but lower‑interest debts, and finally the remaining balances.

Chapters

Debt is a big problem for people. Yeah. And I know, uh, you give some advice in terms of how to pay down your debt, what not to do, what to do. What's your thoughts about that?
A common technique we talked about was, is based upon B.F. Skinner's work is this concept of paying off your lowest debts first to form the neural wiring to continue a behavior. And that's absolutely a smart idea in the beginning. So if you have a lot of debt, sort your debt out by the the amounts due. And if you can wipe out some early debts, that's a beautiful thing because you'll believe truly that you can wipe out debt. But if you continue that pattern, you may not be optimizing. And if you have very expensive debt, high interest rate debt, that can crush you. There's another form of debt I've never heard anyone talk about. It's called consequence. What's the consequence to your life? Will a lawsuit come about? Will you lose a friend over this? So consider that. Start off with a couple early wins, but then very quickly sort out your debt by the highest interest rate and the highest consequence. When you have high consequence, high interest, tackle that. When you have high consequence but lower interest, that still is extremely important and often it's disregarded. Actually do that next and then target the rest of the stuff.