‘Costco Hot Dogs’ Was Her Code Name for Paying Off Debt Behind Her Husband’s Back

Early in Rebecca Christiansen’s debt project, she might label a payment toward her family’s balance Costco hot dogs. The label was camouflage, so her husband wouldn’t notice what she was up to.²³

The Utah mother of four, who runs the social media account Stealth Mode Savings, says she paid off the family’s remaining $58,000 in debt without telling him, posting her progress online as she went. Good Morning America reported that she worked on it for about five months.¹ PEOPLE and BYU’s Daily Universe both say the balance was fully cleared.²³

She didn’t do it alone, or even mostly alone. Her online community, which she calls the Debt Destroyers, contributed more than $40,000 of the total, by her account.¹² Her story shows how small daily payments, open accountability and a lot of generous strangers added up to a debt-free family.

Where the debt came from

Christiansen, 31, is a former preschool teacher and a BYU theatre education graduate.²³ She told ABC the debt followed a failed business venture and unexpected unemployment.¹

PEOPLE reported that the biggest piece came from a boutique she bought during the COVID-19 pandemic, which lost money. The family also went about a year without steady income and leaned on credit cards, and they bought a travel trailer for a temporary move to Florida.²

The $58,000 was what was left. According to the Daily Universe, the family owed more than $100,000 in 2020 and had already paid much of it down before this effort began.³

How the follower formula worked

At first she funded the payments herself. ABC and PEOPLE describe a simple rule: $5 toward the debt for every 20 new followers.¹² The Daily Universe, describing her Instagram account, reported a different formula: 1/8 of a penny per new follower plus 1/10 of a penny per engagement, a unit of money the U.S. Mint has never gotten around to making.³

On some days the engagement math came out to more than she could afford, so she capped those payments.²³ Things got tighter halfway through the series, when her husband’s job situation changed unexpectedly.²

“One of the motivations for sharing my finances and being overly open about them was to hold myself accountable,” Christiansen told ABC.¹

ABC and PEOPLE put the payoff at about five months. The Daily Universe counted 116 days.¹²³

The reveal

Her husband eventually found out. ABC reported he became emotional while checking their accounts and realized several debts had been paid off.¹

“The fact that I was able to do it before he was able to get to it, he just cried and was so thankful for everything,” she told ABC.¹

Her following has since grown to more than 1.5 million, according to PEOPLE, or 1.7 million across platforms, according to the Daily Universe. PEOPLE says she left teaching to create content full-time, which now brings in meaningful income.²³ She is continuing with a series on helping others pay off debt, secretly paying off strangers’ debts and paying off her car with the same system.³

What readers can borrow, and what to skip

Most people paying down debt won’t have a crowd of strangers chipping in, and Christiansen’s payoff leaned heavily on hers. The habits are the portable part.

• Pay small and often. “A payment does not have to be large to matter,” she told PEOPLE. “Even a few dollars is movement in the right direction, and those small choices can build both momentum and confidence over time.”²
• Keep it in front of you. She told ABC that a daily payment “keeps your finances at the front of your mind and you become so much more intentional with your finances.”¹
• Know your numbers. She recommends analyzing expenses and income and being honest about money coming in and going out.²³
• Thank the people who help. She advises thanking supporters clearly and often.²³

The secrecy is the part she doesn’t recommend. “It is probably not the best marriage advice of my life, but it started as a joke,” she told the Daily Universe.³