My 5-Step Escape Plan to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck and Get Out of Debt in 18-24 Months

0:00Every time I turn on a TikTok or Instagram, I'm a little upset. I debated doing today's episode about this because I am what you call a quote unquote influencer. But one of the main reasons why I went back to school is because I want to make sure that I have my credentials and education in place. As you all know, I have my bachelor's in finance and accounting, my MBA, my master's in finance and church management. And I'm getting my DBA with the emphasis on finance and investing at one of the greatest schools in the world, Regent University. I did that because I do not want to be an influencer. I did that because every time I turn on TikTok, everyone's talking about how to make $100,000 in a day, million dollars in a year. And we're selling this lifestyle that I believe is not really real. I know it. I would never use my platform to attack anybody. That's not what I built this for. I built this to help my people get the financial freedom.

1:03But one thing I have learned is that while I will not attack people, I do need to attack certain messages that are out there. Because at the end of the day, they're still my brothers and sisters in Christ. And I love all my people. But y'all, here, I want to make sure that you're getting the truth here. I want to make sure that you're seeing wealth, but also you're learning to practical side of things. So today, I'm going to do something different. I have PowerPoints. We've never done this before. But I want to turn them on Professor Head. Because you know, I'm a professor at Virginia Union University where I teach consumer economics. And I've been traveling around teaching some stuff from a practical standpoint. And I thought I'll bring a classroom to you all on today. So today, I need y'all to bear with me. If you're listening to this on podcasts and audio form only, I want to highly encourage you to come over so you can see the PowerPoints is going to come up. If it looks a little funky today, hey, I apologize to you, but I really want to go to it. I want to start off our conversation today with real numbers. And they're going to come up on the screen. Real numbers.

2:04This is actually what's happening in America today. And I really talk about this inside of my brand new book, Stop Living Page at the Page Chat. That is now out at your local book stores and especially on Amazon. You can go to AnthonyOnO.com for a slash book. If you really want to change your financial situation within the next 12 to 18 to max 24 months. But here are the real numbers. These are not just AnthonyOnO numbers. These are actually numbers that come from CNBC, SurveyMonkey Quarterly, Money Survey that they did back in July of this year, 2026. The big one I want you to see right now is 63% of Americans are living Page Chat to Page Chat. 41% of them earn between $100 to $250,000 a year. The number is not on here, but nearly 48% of people who make above $250,000 are still living Page Chat to Page Chat. What are these real numbers showing us? It's showing us that the majority of people who are online talking about, I made a million dollars,

3:07we got to go deeper. You made a million dollars. What was your expenses? You made a million dollars. What was your margin? What did you actually get to keep of that? A lot of people don't want to do that. This is why I tell everybody, like, yo, listen, I'm just now getting to the point to where my margin a year is a million. But just because when I made a million dollars, doesn't mean that I kept a million. 61% of individuals have the lay their life milestones. 32% of them put off retirement while watch this, 22% of them put off buying a home. And if you look at the big step at the bottom, $2,200 is the median and the bank for black households versus $10,000 for our white friends. Can I be real with you? Ed, you can come back to me.

4:08Huh. $10,000 is not even a lot of money. Watch this. That was $2,200 and $10,000 in the bank account, not in their savings, not in their margin, not in their investment. That's their total. They are one financial disaster away from a huge situation happening in their lives. This is what I've learned and we're going to keep the slides up for a little bit. We've become experts at making money. But watch this. We've become amateurs at keeping it. I said it. We've become experts at making money. We know how to get up every single day and go to work and bust our butts, but we've become amateurs at keeping it. We don't know how to have margin. We don't know, you know, how do we live below our means? And I want to break down how do we get there? But I want to start a conversation off by introducing you all

5:09to one of our community members, Marcus. Now this is not Marcus because he asked me not to share his picture, but he did say I can share his numbers. He's 34 years old or he was 34 years old when he first started working with me, a professional, even has a side hustle and he wants to really invest. But I want you to look at the math here. He has $6,000 in monthly take-home pay. $64, $100 is what he's spending every single month. He has only $1,200 in savings. But he also has $8,000 in credit card debt, $8,000 in $18,000 in car loan, $22,000 in student loans. What do you see here that is wrong? What does his margin say? His margin says he has a negative of $400. Now let's be real. Marcus earns good, he earns good money. He got good money. But every single month he is falling behind because if he falls behind negative $400 this month, next month in September, he, well, in October,

6:13he's going to be negative. So it adds on to that. Then the following month he's going to add on to it. So when I sat down with him, I realized that Marcus wanted real estate. He wanted to become a business owner. He wanted to invest more. He wanted to have flexibility and legacy. But when I sat down and I said, bro, that's what you want. But this is what you have. You have negative cash flow. You're drowning in consumer debt. You have no savings. You have completely no margin. And you have no written sequence. And one of the things I talk about within my book, I start living paycheck to paycheck, that the right financial move during the wrong time can still hurt you. He was like, man, I want to invest in, I'm going to invest in the crypto. I'm going to invest in the Bitcoin. I'm going to buy this ETF and this index fund. I said, bro, the right financial move during the wrong phase of your life can hurt you and your future.

7:17And I told him, I said, hey, bro, I need you to work my escape plan. Before I even wrote the book, I've been practicing and teaching this method, this, this ideology to people within my community. And I'm going to break down what's inside of my book that will help you tremendously change your financial situation within a max 18 to 24 months. What Mark is, when he went through this, this is one of our case studies, he got, well, and that's bad grammar. He changed his entire financial situation within a matter of 15 and a half months. And I'm going to break it down for you. Here's exactly what's inside my book, the escape plan. This is the right order to build financial freedom. As you can see here, there's five main things, control your cash flow and eliminate your consumer debt, build your safety net, build real wealth and build legacy. As you can see, there's a real nice, beautiful home. And the reason why I decided to put a beautiful home there is because I really want you to picture this as you're building a home for your last name.

8:21You all are used to me wearing my eight, but I realized that my last name is the business, O'Neill. Anthony is not going to be passed down, but O'Neill will be passed down through my sons. Whenever I'm blessed to have one, the O'Neill is a business. The O'Neill is a home that is going to be in pack with regenerations to come. And I want to make sure that from a metaphor of a home that I'm building a beautiful home that my family, the O'Neill family can live in when it comes to our finances. And phase one is all about building the right foundation. Phase two is reinforcing the structure that we built the foundation on. Phase three is protecting what we're building and having stability phase four. It's about how do we grow this thing and have ownership? And in phase five is generational wealth. But the key thing here is you do not have to do everything today. You just got to get to the next move.

9:23This is different for you all. I need you to dial in. I need you to listen to me correctly. And you know what? I'm going to figure out how we can get you these PowerPoint slides so you all can have them for yourself. All right. But I'm going to go with phase one. This is one of my book. I really teach you how to control your cash flow. Now I want you to keep in mind that this is going to be very quick. And my book stop live and page at a paycheck. I literally spin before you invest a single dollar, build a business or chase any goal. There's one thing that has to be true first. You have to be consumer debt free. Most people try to build wealth before they even know where their money is actually going. They have no budget. They have no plan. It can aid to have no strategy. Just consumer debt, powering up in the background while life keeps moving forward. That's why I built in the black, the app that gives you a daily money coach in your pocket. It walks you through my five phase escape plan.

10:24Build you a zero based budget and tells you exactly. Watch this exactly what to do with your money every single day. Not every month, not every week, every single day when you wake up. See, this isn't just theory. It's the same process that has helped over 100,000 families get out of debt. Real people like yourself are paying off thousands of dollars using this app. One got it step at a time. All you got to do is go to anthonyonil.com. Forrest-app right now. Take a two minute quiz and please be honest and get your personalized plan. Fix your foundation first. Then go build whatever's next. Go to anthonyonil.com. Forrest-app. And let's give that to today's show. Maybe two or three chapters on each phase. Maybe four. But you can't skip over this stuff. As you phase one, it's cash flow. Income minus spending equals margin.

11:26So we're going to use Marcus throughout the rest of these slides. So Marcus had $6,000. But he had $6,400 in expenses. Minus that, he has $400. So I went through his budget and I said, Marcus, let's go through it. We took out subscriptions. You see there, we saved $100. We reduced eating out. He was spending about $250 a month on eating out. Well, actually, you're spending a little bit more, but we reduced that down to $250. We took away $250. We put back $250 in his budget. We renegotiated his phone and insurance. He was paying close to about $140 a month on his cell phone. He went to Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile. And he's only paying $40 a month. Mint Mobile is using the same cell phone towers as his big name brands. He goes out of the country. He spends at extra $10 just to go out to the country to get his unlimited data.

12:27Some of you all need to go to Mint Mobile. He reduces miscellaneous spending. He has some extra stuff in there that he was spending money on. And then he added temporary income of about $300. His total improvement was $1,000. Now, let's go back over to the math. After he had $6,000, right? Coming in, now he only has $5,400 with mandatory expenses, which means now he has a margin of $600. Wait a minute, Anthony, if he got $6,000 back, wouldn't that be more? Well, no, don't forget, he was already negative $400. So if you're negative $400, take a thousand off, that's $600. Here's the truth. We cannot build wealth if we do not have any kind of margin. So within the next seven days, this why I need you to do. I need you to download the last 90 days of your bank and credit card statements. Number two, I need you to total up every dollar that comes in.

13:29I need you to list every single thing. Then number three, I need you to categorize every dollar that went out. Then number four, I need you to calculate your true monthly margin. Take a screenshot of this. I need you to do this within the next seven days. The next day's episode is a little different, but I really wanted to just turn on my teaching head and give you the proper information that you need. Here's phase two. You all know this. You got to eliminate your summary debt. I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I talk about this very heavy in my book and this is why I built my whole platform one, which is using a debt snowball. You're going to line up all your debt from smallest balance all the way up to the larger. So you can see there, medical bill at $900 all the way down to his student loans at $22,000. Now, I really want to give you a good, clean example of this. Now his minimum payment on his medical bill was $50 a month, but don't forget, we found

14:29$600 in margin. So now what we're going to do for the debt snowball to get out of debt quickly, we're going to take that $600, put it on that $600, put it on top of the $50 of the minimum payment. Now he's paying $650 towards the medical bill of $900. Once he does that, listen, we going to the next one. Now I'm going to take the $600 extra in his margin. We're going to take the $50 that he just freed up from his medical bill, put that on top of his credit card number one, which is $100. Now he's paying $750 a month to the $3400 credit card one balance. He's still making a minimum payments on everything else, but now he's taking that extra margin, the extra room, and he's putting that onto the next one. That's what we call the debt snowball method. Watch this. Now we got $750 free. Now credit card two requires $140 a month.

15:34Now we're paying $890 a month on a $4600 balance. The LC was happening here, we're gaining momentum, we're getting out quicker. First and true, the payment doesn't disappear when the debt disappears. What does it do? It just gets promoted to the next one until you are consumer debt free. Now I'm going to take some screenshots of this or save this, but these are the things that you need to do when it gets to getting out of debt. You need to cut some things, sell some things, earn some more money. I'm not going to spend too much time on that, but you got to be so focused for a season, not forever, but for a season that you can change your life. Aren't you seeking time to wake up on the first of the month waiting for that chat to come just to go pay someone else? And then by the sixth of the month, you're already broke. Aren't you seeking time to get your paycheck on Friday? And then by the next Friday, you're already broke and you're trying to scrambling to the

16:34next Friday until you get paid? The only way you're going to change your financial situation is if you change the decisions that you're making today about your finances. You may have to cut some things out for a season. You may have to sell some of your purse's ladies, sell some of your shoes, brothers, for a season. You may need to go out there and drive for Uber and drive for DoorDash or get a side gig for a season until you can change the rest of your season forever. This is important. Here, phase three. Here is phase three. You got to build your safety net. Remember that your starter buffer is one month. One month of your take home pay. Period. Period. One month, markets made $6,000.

17:36We put away $6,000 inside of Ohio savings account. If you're looking for a real good savings account, go to anthonylnil.com for a staff savings. I put the top three or four on there for this week, I believe, because I'm always removing some things when the rates drop because I only want you all to get the best. But now a full emergency fund at $6,000 will be $18,000 to $36,000. I told him, I told him, hey, bro, bear minimum, $18,000. If you really want to have that security, go ahead and put $36,000 in there. He's there today. He's consumer debt free. He has $36,000 sitting inside of his account. I told him, bro, don't worry about anything else going inside of Ohio savings account because I need you to go with a phase four. That's where we start to build wealth. I want to pause right there. They come back to me so they can see me on the screen. Phase one, phase two, and phase three are done in that order.

18:40Often time, everybody wants to be in phase four where they're making more money. But here's what I learned. I think this is why I'm probably not the sexiest or the most attractive financial guy out there on the internet. I'm not going to teach you how to make a million dollars when you're $30,000 in debt. I'm not going to tell you to go buy a G wagon so you can write it up 100% when your company only makes $100,000 a year. I'm not going to teach you to go fly on the private jet. You're not going to see pictures of me on a fly on a private jet and join my mastermind and I can get you there. No, no. I'm going to teach you the foundations. I'm going to teach you how to get their freedom, which it may be a little longer to get there. And it may not be the most attractive thing and honestly, it may be boring. But the truth of the fact is I don't know about you all. I actually prefer the smoker than actually the oven.

19:46No, this, nah. I'm going to say that again. I prefer putting my meat inside the smoker than putting it, putting it inside the microwave. You have the microwave, it could be done in 15 minutes. But it's going to taste like it was done in 15 minutes. But when you put inside that smoker and let it cook for two hours, the juice is still there, the flavor is still there. It looks good when it's pulled out. So for me, I want to teach you all, yes, this may not be the quickest path to get there, but I promise you when you get there, you will stay there. You will stay there. You can go back to the side. Listen. This is where we build wealth.

20:49And inside of my new book, stop living paycheck to paycheck, a lot of you all, for an example, have a 401k at your job. But unfortunately, a lot of you don't know what to do with that 401k. So inside of my book, stop living paycheck to paycheck here in phase four, which some of you all honestly need to skip to that now because I do believe while you're getting out of consumer debt, if your company is providing a 401k match that you should be investing up to that match. So if they're matching 3%, you should be investing up to 3%. So you can get that free money. But you don't just put 3% in and leave it. You need to go inside of the 401k portal and tell your money how you want it invested. I don't have enough time to go through it on today's episode, but go get the book. Because I literally walk you through, hey, here are the different levels of investing. Go inside your portal and do this.

21:49Phase four, you've already eliminated consumer debt. You already have a fully-funny emergency fund. And you should be investing 12 to 15% of your money consistently on top of the 10% of tide in generosity. Now phase four is also about expanding into businesses, real estate, and additional assets. This is why I said a lot of people want to jump to this one because it's like, oh my God, it seems attractive. I'm a business owner. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm buying this. But yeah, it's not attractive if you have this money being made for you, but you really don't see it growing and evolving because your debt is eating it all up. This is why phase one through three is so important. This is why you got to get the play in the manuscript to get the phase four. Have to.

22:50Commit me at... I've never seen a basketball team. I've never seen a football team. I've never seen a business succeed when championships and make it to millionaire status without a plan in place. The reason why I believe a lot of people are struggling financially is because we're just guessing and just hoping with our finances, but we don't have a plan and or a strategy. On the next episode or probably with the next few episodes, I'm going to teach you how to have a vision for your money and what does that look like? I'm going to really start bringing some a lot more educational content. Let me know if you all like these PowerPoints, situations inside of today's comments because I believe that it is important. But if you don't have a plan, if you don't have a strategy that you're following, you will never get to financial success.

23:53One of the episodes I'm going to do here, I'm going to break down plan first, habits next, goes next, hit the vision. I'm going to really break down what does that look like when it comes to our finances? Because I believe my community, you are looking for the step by step plan. You are looking for what does the average person need to do. And I'm done and I'm sick and tired of logging online and I'm seeing all these hype stuff, a bunch of fluff stuff, a bunch of crap stuff. And I'm like, yo, I cannot fall into that and I can't let my community fall into it. Let's talk about phase five. Here's the last phase. Build a legacy. I know some of you all are watching me right now. You don't have children. I don't have children, but I'm still working on building a legacy because one thing is true.

24:54If you have children, your children going to inherit your habits before they inherit your assets. So if you're not developing good, healthy habits, you're never going to really pass down anything healthy to your children. I'm going to do episodes on all of this in phase four. It is exactly a will and a trust. I'm going to bring all my trust attorney. Turn life insurance. A lot of you all have seen my ad with ethos on IULs. And IULs, yes, I'm sorry to all my day, Ramsey fans who keep attacking me and saying, oh, my God, day Ramsey would have never taught this. I'm not with the guy. I haven't been with the guy for almost six years. Go listen to him. But that's what you want to do. And if you're listening to me over here, I'm going to teach you what I believe, what I've learned. And IUL is a good tax shelter policy. But Anthony O'Neill still believes that term life insurance is the best insurance policy ever because you're getting more for your money.

25:57But wealth is about strategy. So yes, I do believe term life insurance is a part of you wealth strategy. And I do believe for some people, depending on your income status, an IUL policy will help. So we're going to talk about that. We're even going to break down. Why do I need to be updated my beneficiaries? And if you have a trust, why should your trust be on all your beneficiaries and not an actual human being? What is a financial power of attorney? How is that current in today? The legacy binder. List up accounts and passwords. I just recently did this and I'll talk about it in my book why it's important. Let me tell you why this is important. Then I got to go. You can come at me at one of the reasons why having your things in order.

27:02Because you never know what life is going to eat you with. And I mean this. I do not know when God is going to bring me home. And one of the hardest things, but one of the most mature things I've ever done was get my state in order. I may wake up one day and be in a coma. I don't know. I may wake up one day and not be able to go back to sleep. God brought me home. The hardest thing was honestly acknowledging that. The most mature thing was get him prepared for that. And even inside of my legacy binder, I have my passwords to all of my accounts, everything, Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, bank accounts, policy accounts, anything, my computer,

28:08my iPhone. So that way if my family needs to get access to stuff, they can get access to the money to the resources immediately. My dad has power of attorney and my little brother John gives has power of attorney over my situation if something was that happened to me. The reason why I didn't give it to my mother is because my mothers are going to be emotional. I think everyone is going to be emotional when I'm gone. But my mothers are going to be a little bit emotional. I'm speaking about my mothers. I'm not saying women, right? But I know my mothers is, I know my mothers. I have to, a biological mom and an amazing stepmother. And I trust my father and my brother to do what I put inside of my will and my trust. I trust that they will go into their accounts and do the things that they need to do without emotions attached to it, specifically talking about my family. You see, freedom is not just for me.

29:12I didn't write Stop Living Page at the Page Act so that I can just have another book. No, I wrote Stop Living Page at the Page Act because freedom is not just you. Freedom is about what are you passing down to your loved ones. Freedom is about passing down not just wealth but legacy but wisdom, access, real estate. But then also watch this. This is the mature side of things. Also allowing them the freedom to miss you when God brings you home. You don't want them stressed. You don't want them worried about how we're going to pay for this. How are we going to bury him or her? Like what are we going to do in the mirror? You want them to have the freedom to celebrate your life. You want them to have the freedom to enjoy what you left and why they celebrate you in heaven. That's what Stop Living Page Act could pay checkers about.

30:13I ain't trying to get you rich. I'm going to get you free. You can be free on $50,000 a year or $150,000 a year or a million a year. At the same time, without the right plan, without the right strategy, you can be in bondage on $50,000 a year, $75,000 a year, $150,000 a year or a million a year if you don't have the right plan. So if you want the right plan, get the book. Go get it on Amazon, go to AnthonyOnil.com for a slash book. Go to your local bookstore because we're going to really be doing this thing. Let me know how you like today's episode. I know it's a little bit shorter and I know it's different. I want to try it out and see if you all like it. Give me some constructive criticism. Do you want the PowerPoints? We may be full screen. Do you want to be able to see me in the PowerPoints? Or do you not even care about seeing me?

31:13A, bro, just put the PowerPoint stuff so we can follow you even better. I really want to start making sure that I'm providing a good amount of value to you. And I just, I don't like what I'm seeing on social media right now. And again, I'm never going to disrespect somebody, never going to attack the human being, my brother or sister, but I am going to teach my thoughts on subjects that others are teaching on that will be different while not knocking them. I was going to be some most podcast and she said something to me that really stood out. She said, I can say I like apples without saying I do not like oranges. So we're going to talk about it. You always were boy, Anthony and me. Let me know in the comments what you think, what you like and I'll see you in the next episode.