When one woman was saddled with $26,000 of debt, she went back to the basics to get rid of it. She started coloring.
Amy Jones found herself with debt on five credit cards that she had been avoiding for a long time, so she decided to use a Sharpie and some pens to find the motivation to pay it off, she explained in a Quartz article.
READ MORE: American households have the highest credit card debt since recession
Jones said she doodled a series of swirls that created a unique design, but she couldn’t fill in each swirl with a color until she had paid off $100 of her debt.
In the end, she filled in 264 swirls and became debt free.
“Coloring in those swirls month after month helped me feel like I was doing something,” she wrote. “It helped me see that I was making progress toward my goal of zeroing out my credit cards. I joke that it’s the most expensive piece of art I own, because of how much money it represents to me.”
Jones has turned her strategy for charting progress by coloring into a business, where she sells ready-to-color pictures. She suggests using these to chart goals, like weight loss, fitness or meditation, and countdowns, like pregnancy and weddings.
To see what her original drawing looks like and some other creative progress maps, check out the gallery below:
Related links:
Why your credit card bill makes you more depressed than your mortgage
No loans: How to graduate from college debt free
Shelby Slade is a writer for Deseret News National. Email: sslade@deseretdigital.com, Twitter: shelbygslade.