Elizabeth Ayoola

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This episode was produced by Tess Viglin and Anna Helhofsky.

Hilary Georgie helped with editing.

Nick Karismi mixed our audio.

And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for their help.

You know what, Sean?

I find that that reboot tends to happen towards the beginning of the year, after the holidays, after I've just done too much.

And I'm Elizabeth Ayola.

On this episode, we're going to answer a listener's question about whether to keep making student loan payments while in grad school or put that cash towards a new house.

Hi there.

I am in a way subconsciously.

So I don't do it as a challenge.

Like I know there's lots of challenges on social media, but I think I know when I'm spending too much and I go, Hey girl, we got to cut back the spending.

No, no, no.

It's just whenever I need to cut my spending down.

As you're talking, Sean, I'm thinking around money values and even maybe like money trauma that you have and how a no spend challenge can be counterproductive to helping those things.

You know, so if you fundamentally have an issue with your spending and it's rooted to, I don't know, maybe you didn't have enough things when you were growing up.

I was talking to someone the other day and she was like part of her trauma around buying or eating out is that when she was younger, they didn't have enough money to get all the foods that she wanted to eat.

So now that she's an adult, she just wants to buy any food she wants and she wants to

when she wants to eat it.