How a simple, automatic paycheck split helped a mom of 2 tackle $40,000 worth of credit card debt

Ariana, from "Get Smart With Money" on Netflix, is not pictured. MoMo Productions/Getty Images

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• Netflix's new documentary "Get Smart With Money" features Ariana, a mom of 2 with $45,000 in credit card debt.
• Ariana was paired with financial expert Tiffany Aliche, AKA The Budgetnista, to find solutions.
• Aliche had Ariana split her paycheck automatically into 5 separate accounts. It helped her pay off $40,000 in a year.

Last week, Netflix released a documentary called "Get Smart With Money" that follows four "mentees" as they gain financial literacy.

Four financial experts each choose a mentee to receive financial coaching for a year. One mentee, Ariana, is a mom of two who has $45,000 in credit card debt and over $100,000 in student loans. 

"I'm an emotional spender," says Ariana in the documentary. "I am currently buried in a mountain of debt." Her husband offered to use his income to cover their family's expenses so she could focus on debt repayment, but, she says, "It just didn't happen. I tried."

Ariana even consolidated her debt from eight credit cards to one personal loan to make it easier to pay off. "But then it freed up all my credit cards, and they wound up getting maxed out again," she says in the documentary.

She gets paired wth Tiffany Aliche, AKA The Budgetnista, author of the New York Times bestselling book "Get Good With Money," who helps her nearly wipe out her debt.

Aliche's first solution was to automatically split Ariana's paycheck into 5 accounts

In the documentary, Ariana shares that she makes $5,700 per month and spends about $5,300 per month. "The good news is, there's actually some savings there," says Aliche. 

To help her curb emotional spending, Aliche encourages Ariana to make one simple change — to split her paycheck into five separate accounts:

1. Family bills
2. Personal bills
3. Spending account
4. Emergency savings, used strictly for emergencies
5. Dream savings, to support Ariana's dream of traveling with her husband

Ariana is instructed to keep only a debit card attached to her spending account, and to start using that in lieu of a credit card. "Automation is the new discipline," says Aliche.

After 3 months, Ariana paid off $10,000 in credit card debt

In the documentary, the cameras check in on each of the financial mentees once every three months. After three months, Ariana had successfully paid off $10,000.

She says, "The separate accounts have really, really helped me so far because I don't have to think about anything. The minute my check gets released, it goes into these different funnels, and I only carry the card that is associated with my spending account."

While Ariana achieved a huge milestone in her debt-payoff journey, she was still feeling ashamed about how much debt she had gotten herself in.

She says, "It makes me feel like a bad partner, like a bad mom, that my past decisions are affecting my family. If I didn't have these huge debt payments, there would just be a lot more flexibility. My husband probably wouldn't have to work overtime every week."

After 6 months, her car broke down

In the beginning of the documentary, Ariana explains that her biggest fear is her car breaking down. Like many Americans, she says, she couldn't afford to fix it in the event of an emergency, and she also couldn't afford to make monthly car payments if she had to get a new one. At the six-month mark, her worst fear came true: her car broke down. 

Thankfully, Ariana's husband is a mechanic who was able to fix the car for her. All she had to pay was $1,200 for parts, which she was able to take care of because she had an emergency fund set up from the automatic paycheck split. "Your worst fear came true, but you handled it," Aliche tells her, celebrating this milestone.

After 9 months, her credit card balances were down to $16,000

Using the automatic paycheck split to separate her money, Ariana was able to pay off $19,000 in credit card debt, with $26,000 left to go. During a meeting with Aliche, Ariana shares that she got a raise at work.

Aliche tells her, "When you look after your money, literally more money will come to you because you're looking after the money that you have. You're getting on the other side of what I like to call post-traumatic broke syndrome."

The documentary shows Ariana shopping at Target, this time using her debit card only. "Credit card debt is cancerous," warns Aliche, as she encourages Ariana to wean herself off of them completely and only spend from her debit card. 

"I paid off everything with an interest rate of 10% or higher," says Ariana. Next, she says, she plans to use the same method to tackle her six-figure student loan debt.

After a year, Ariana had just $5,000 in credit card debt left

At the one-year mark, according to the documentary, Ariana only had $5,000 in credit card debt left. 

She says, "The mindset shift around giving myself grace and being patient with myself, setting up my money in a way that gave me space to do the things that mattered to me, while also paying off the debt, it's been life-changing."