The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Feel Overwhelmed & Uncertain About Money, Listen to This
Mon, 12 May 2025
If you’re feeling overwhelmed about money, this episode is for you. Whether you want to pay off debt, increase your income, or have more money in the bank, this episode is a must-listen. For the first time on the podcast, Mel is sharing, in detail, the step-by-step approach she took to get out of $800,000 in debt, create financial freedom, and get good with money.Mel is also joined today by Lewis Howes, two-time New York Times bestselling author and host of the hit podcast The School of Greatness.Before he reached the success he has today,Lewis was broke, living on his sister’s couch, with no college degree. He shares the specific steps he took to start over, learn new skills, and the mindset and success habits he used to make and save money.Together, Mel and Lewis share the exact formulas they used to turn their lives around.Whether you’re trying to pay down debt, create an emergency fund, start a side hustle, or just have more money in the bank, you’re going to learn the things you should be doing right now to change your financial future.By the end of this episode, you will have the simple tools you need to start getting good with money. You’ll know that change is possible. And that you are worthy of financial peace and ease. You CAN get good with money. Starting today. For more resources, click here for the podcast episode page. If you liked this episode, and want to hear more about improving your financial life, listen to this episode next: 5 Rules of Money: How to Make It, Save It, & Be Smarter About ItConnect with Mel: Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them TheoryWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Sign up for Mel’s personal letter Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-freeDisclaimer
Chapter 1: Who are Mel Robbins and Lewis Howes and what is this episode about?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Have you noticed how expensive basic things have become? I mean, egg prices, they've doubled and that's not even for organic. It's absurd. Don't even get me started on the price of rent, insurance, co-pays, student loans. I mean, there's lots of people going on and on about what's actually causing this.
But today I want you and I to talk about what do you do about it? What do you do when you feel overwhelmed by the cost of living or overwhelmed by paying your bills or overwhelmed by managing your money? Like every time you log into your bank account, you're feeling panicked. Well, I want you to hear me when I tell you this. You're not alone.
Chapter 2: What financial struggles did Mel Robbins face and how did she overcome $800,000 in debt?
One in three working adults lives paycheck to paycheck right now. And I know exactly how that feels. The pressure, it is crushing. And you start to feel like nothing is ever going to change. When I was 41 years old, my husband and I, we were $800,000 in debt. I mean, we could barely buy gas or groceries. And I believe for a period of time,
that that would be my life forever, that I would never get control of my money. And if I could go back in time and talk to the 41-year-old version of myself, you know what I would tell her? I would say, Mel, I know this is scary, but you can figure this out. And even though you've been bad with money in the past, Mel, because that's how you get $800,000 in debt, because you're bad with money,
Tell you what, step by step, you can get good with it. And that's what our guest today is also going to tell you. Because just like me, he's been there. 14 years ago, he was broke, sleeping on his sister's couch. But today, he is proof that a complete financial transformation is possible for you too. You can get out of debt. You can turn things around and you can change your financial future.
And yes, you can get good with money. And today, he is going to give you simple steps and habits to follow so that three months from now, things will look and feel very different than it does today. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited for our conversation today. I'm excited that you're here.
It is always an honor to spend time with you, to be together. If you're a new listener, ooh, you've picked a winner. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. And because you made time to hit play and to listen to this particular episode... I know you're the type of person who values your time. And what's that saying? Time is money. You want to make more money. You want to get good with money.
And not only do you want to get good with money, you want to transform your financial future. I'll tell you what, you're in the right place. And if you chose to listen to this because someone shared this episode with you, I just think that's so cool because it means you have people in your life who not only care about you, they want you to make money.
They want you to have a fantastic financial future. And look, You're not going to be rich by the end of this episode, but you're going to leave with something more valuable. You're going to get the building blocks and the simple tools that will create a different financial future for you.
And you're also going to learn the step-by-step approach from two people who had to completely rebuild their financial life from the ground up. So if you've been bad with money, today you're going to learn how to start getting good with money. And you don't need to be embarrassed by where you are because I'm going to tell you where I've been. And it's probably way worse than where you are today.
See, I used to be like a walking financial red flag. If you were a credit card company, I would not have given Mel Robbins a credit card. If I were a bank, I would not have given Mel Robbins a mortgage. If I were a bill that was being delivered to Mel Robbins' house, I would not have expected to have been paid.
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Chapter 3: What was Lewis Howes' financial situation when he was broke and living on his sister’s couch?
I think a lot of people think it needs to be hard and stressful to make money, and it needs to be complicated. And it doesn't need to be complicated. You just need to learn the tools and have the courage to be curious to understand more.
I love that. And the other thing that is applicable here is that if you're listening and you're in the middle of reinvention, because something has happened in your life, or you're in a decade where you feel like you don't know who you are or what your purpose is, and you're just feeling overwhelmed and lost, you could actually find purpose by saying, I'm going to learn how to be good with money.
Yes.
But if we go back in time... Mm-hmm. Because I think your story is very relatable. You have no money. You're sleeping on your sister's couch. How old are you at this point?
23 and a half to 24.
So could you put us at the scene and tell us what was happening? And then once you put us there, I'd love to know how would you have described your relationship with money or what the person looked like?
Yeah. I mean, I, I was sleeping on my sister's... I pursued the dream to make the NFL. I never made it, but I played in the Arena Football League. And in the Arena Football League, I was making $250 a week. And I was living in a free apartment with another teammate that they put us up on the team. And we had food stamps to pay for food during the week. So this is in Huntsville, Alabama, 2007.
And... Again, $250 a week you can't live on. So it was, they paid for our rent and they gave us food stamps and about a thousand bucks a month. And I didn't care at the time because I was getting to live my dream. Most people, I talked to my nephews and nieces and their friends in their early and late twenties. They don't know their purpose.
They don't know how to manage their emotions, how to regulate emotions, how to navigate their nervous system. They don't know how to navigate when someone's ghosting them. They're just in chaos mode emotionally. And they don't understand why am I here? What's my purpose? let alone understand money. They don't have the energy to even think about money.
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Chapter 4: How did Lewis Howes start rebuilding his financial life and career?
I could live off very little. And yeah, my rent was covered.
You can buy a lot of ramen with $250 a week.
Oh.
I got injured. I had to have a surgery. I had a bone taken out of my hip, put it in my wrist, and I was in a cast for six months. So during that time, it was a lot of stress because I was thinking about, oh, I can't play football again. I don't have a college degree. I'm in all this debt. I don't have any savings.
I can't walk still because they took a bone out of my hip and I had 15 staples in there. I couldn't use my arms. So I was just feeling like the grief and sadness that my dream was over. I had no backup plan, no college degree, no money. You know, I'm a grown man in my young 20s, but I feel like a child because I'm sleeping on my sister's couch.
She's providing, she's taking care of me, she's feeding me. You don't feel worthy if you can't take care of yourself. If you don't feel like you can appreciate your own value or believe in yourself that you're capable of creating or generating, you have shame and guilt associated with that. And that energy made me feel worse. I had to first learn how to grieve the loss of my dream.
So you're like 23 years old with your hand permanently in a high five for six months. You can't walk. You have no money. You are no longer on the team.
Nothing.
And it makes sense that you would not feel motivated to get a job or to feel like you had any sense of purpose. And I think that this moment of the story is... a lot of people can relate to whether or not you were going for a dream or not, the sense of, I'm just existing right now.
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Chapter 5: What mindset and habits helped Lewis Howes transform his financial future?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, wow.
Dude, everything. You were all in. We were all in because the first location, Little Pizza Joint, did well. And so, you know, we... Let's scale this thing. Oh, let's scale this thing. We listened to all the freaking entrepreneurs out there going like, don't give away equity, like go all in on yourself. Because what could go wrong in the restaurant business? Every day. Yeah.
So looking back, I can laugh. But of course, what ended up happening is 2007, 2008, there was a huge recession and the housing market collapsed, which meant the house, even though we owned a house, because we had secured the business with the house and home equity lines and credit cards, the house was not worth anything because of the amount of debt leveraged against it.
So you couldn't sell it?
Oh, no, because we would have owed money. Yeah, yeah. And so we were just that, that feeling of being paralyzed and I lost my job. And I remember feeling so ashamed and, you know, I had made the vision boards. I had had a vision for my life and nowhere on any of the collages that I created about my dream life was an image of alcoholism, bankruptcy, a million dollars in debt, like none of that.
And so when you said paralyzed, I remember because there's an excruciating level of stress that you never forget when you cannot pay your bills.
And you're living in that fear and stress and anxiety.
And I had this whole line, Louis, because I knew that I would go into the grocery store knowing that the checking account was in the red.
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Chapter 6: What simple steps can listeners take today to improve their relationship with money?
I was taking the bus. I was taking like the cheapest middle seat of the back of like Southwest, wherever I could go. I was staying on friends' couches. I was afraid to spend at that time also. I would stash it, but I wouldn't spend it because I didn't want to go back to the couch and be broke again. And there's a season for everything. You don't want to blow it all when you get it, right?
But over this time, this is probably a five-year window. I started to make good money. I started to save money. I started doing online courses and hosting events and just doing anything that was right in front of me to make money. And I think that's the right thing that people should do.
Of course. And I think it's also important to hear, you're talking about a five-year period. Five-year period. And you're also talking about, okay, first I took the bus. I'm sleeping on people's couches. I'm saving, saving, saving, saving. And five years of just putting in the reps and doing, pushing this forward, you're now in a different place. And what happens?
So then I started to reevaluate. Do I really want to be making this type of money? Like, do I want to go online and just teach people about how to optimize their LinkedIn profile for the 10,000th time? Yeah. It wasn't my calling anymore. Got it. It was right for the time, but not for the next season. Okay. So I started to evaluate and I was like, what are the things I really enjoy about this?
What are the things that I'm loving the most? What would I like to do? What would be amazing to be able to make money doing something with my time? Yeah. And everything went back to, I really love just like connecting with people who are doing inspiring things on LinkedIn and asking them questions. Everything they're teaching me taught me how to build my business now.
And everyone was asking me like, Lewis, how did you build this business so fast? I mean, five years for me was fast for what I was doing, I guess, but I thought I could have been faster. They were like, how did you build this? And I go, I honestly just like asked the most successful people that I knew that I could find. And they just did what they told me. That was it.
And I go, oh, maybe people would want to hear these things. Huh. Okay. How can I interview people and make money with it? I don't know, but I'm hearing this thing called podcasting coming out. This was 2011, 2012. And I was like, maybe you can make money in this one day. And so I had two friends who had a podcast and I called them. This was early stages.
Like you were like a- There was like a thousand people in the world podcasting.
A pioneer.
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Chapter 7: What skills should listeners develop to increase their income and financial confidence?
And that's what you kept telling yourself as part of your story.
And it's too hard for me to figure this out. And it's too hard for me to get out of debt.
There's no way to get out. I think a lot of people think it needs to be hard and stressful to make money. And it needs to be complicated. And it doesn't need to be complicated. You just need to learn the tools and have the courage to be curious to understand more. And when you don't understand something, it seems extremely complicated. Yeah.
But right when you start to figure it out, right when you start to be able to pedal and stay in alignment on that bicycle, you're like, this is so easy. It's effortless. Most people are unwilling to get on the bicycle and fall a few times because they just don't understand it. This foreign object over here, how am I supposed to sit on these two wheels and go down the street without killing myself?
It seems so foreign and scary until we do it. It seems like, why was I ever afraid of this in the first place?
Are there commonly agreed to steps that after 12 years of interviewing so many financial experts on the School of Greatness that help you manifest money, success, and happiness, Lewis?
One of the common themes that some of the wealthiest people in the world all have told me through the School of Greatness show. is that the more they give, the more they're generous with their money, the more they make, the more they earn, the more comes to them. And when you have no money, it's hard to think, oh, let me just give my money away.
Let me be generous with it because you don't have much. But they all tell me that that's the place when you need to learn and develop this habit. Not when you have a lot to give, but when you have a little to give. It's not how much you give to people. It's that you're giving something.
Okay.
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Chapter 8: How can generosity and giving help transform your financial situation even when you have little?
And one by one, people started replying, say, yeah, I'll call you. I'll take you out to breakfast. They're buying me lunch just to tell me their story. And I'm not asking for advice, but they're giving me all the advice they have through their storytelling. And so if you don't have money, you can be generous with your time.
You can be generous with your energy, with your questions, and you can have a generous attitude. You can be of service in some other way. You can show up to support at your local church. You can just call a friend and say, hey, I know you're struggling right now. Can I take you out? Can we go for a walk? Can I FaceTime you?
Well, I love that because when you are really struggling, you tend to close yourself off to the world. And so I love this advice because energetically, you can feel like you're spinning. Yeah. that am I doing anything to actually drive this forward? And you did that by just taking the action.
It's like me opening up these bills and just being like, can't pay that today, but I can call the company and explain what's going on. You know, I don't have a job today, but I can call a friend and start networking about what's going on. And I just kept telling myself, I'm going to get myself out of this. I don't know how.
And these consistent actions that you took, that I took, it was the consistency and the courageous conversations that gave me more confidence. Whoever's listening or watching right now, if anything has resonated with you in any way, the best way you can develop a relationship A mindset of generosity is to share this with one or two friends in your life.
Share this with your sister, your girlfriend. Share this with your mom, your brother, your spouse. And say, hey, listen, I know things haven't been maybe horrible around money, but I'd love to improve our relationship with money together.
Mm-hmm.
I'd love to start asking questions and having conversations and feeling more safe around money with you. It doesn't mean we've had a bad relationship with money together, but I want to increase our ability to feel stronger around money so we can both create more abundance in our life financially. Is that something you're open to?
If so, share with me your biggest takeaway from this episode with Lewis and Mel, and let's talk about it. Just starting here and having a conversation with one or two friends or family members is a huge step forward. Oh, I love that. Text one or two friends, go to your WhatsApp group chat and say, hey guys, I heard a great episode around money. I would love your biggest takeaway from this episode.
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