Episode 433: Paying Off $14K in Debt & Finding Financial Clarity w/ Journeyer Lori-Sara Gauthier
Journey To Launch
Jamila Souffrant
5 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on the Journey to Launch podcast, I’m joined by Lori-Sara Gauthier, a public health worker based in Toronto who is in the thick of transforming her finances and her mindset. Lori-Sara recently paid off $14,000 in consumer debt, is working on eliminating her student loans, and is intentionally charting a path toward financial freedom.
Lori-Sara opens up about her spending habits, emotional triggers behind money decisions, and the moment she realized something had to change. Through self-awareness, therapy, and learning about the FIRE movement, she’s rewriting her money story and embracing the power of small, consistent actions.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Lori-Sara fell into and climbed out of $14K of credit card debt
- The emotional connection between childhood scarcity and adult overspending
- What she’s doing now: building an emergency fund, tackling student loans, and investing for the future
- Why she threw a party to celebrate being debt-free, and how running helped her stay on track
- Her evolving thoughts on FI, public service pensions, and leaving room for future flexibility
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
- Clever Girl Finance by Bola Sokunbi
- You Need a Budget by Jesse Mecham
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everything enables shopping, everything around you. |
| 0:07.0 | So going out and observing my environment while I run gives me a lot of perspective. |
| 0:12.0 | It's like, okay, there are bigger things out there. |
| 0:14.6 | The birds, the flowers, it's just very grounding, even if I live in a city. |
| 0:21.4 | Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host, Jamila Sufran. |
| 0:26.2 | As a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you, get out of debt, save, invest, and build real well. |
| 0:36.0 | Join her on the Journey to Launch to Financial Freedom in five, four, three, two, one. |
| 0:48.3 | You want the episode show notes for this episode. |
| 0:51.2 | Go to Journey tolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. |
| 0:57.2 | In the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned, and so much more. |
| 1:04.6 | Also, whether you are an OG journeyer or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free Jumpstart guide to help you on your financial |
| 1:12.7 | freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to stages to go through to reach |
| 1:17.3 | financial freedom, resources, and so much more. You can go to journey tolaunch.com slash |
| 1:23.3 | jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode. |
| 1:29.7 | Hey, hey, journeyers. Welcome to the journey to launch podcast. Today, I have my favorite |
| 1:34.7 | type of guest in an interview, which is someone who is an actual journey or a real life person. |
| 1:39.9 | I mean, everyone's a real life person, but someone who is actually on the journey in the thick |
| 1:44.5 | of it, but making strides. And I love doing these interviews because I just feel like they're, |
| 1:49.3 | hopefully, to you as the audience, as journey is inspirational and can show you that you don't |
| 1:55.1 | have to have it all figured out to make progress. So today on the podcast, we have Lori Gautier. |
| 2:00.3 | She is a 30-year-old living currently in Toronto, but has roots in Guinea and Senegal in Madagascar, which she'll talk about a bit. And currently is a public servant who has a powerful financial transformation journey. She currently works in public help for the Ontario government. She's recently |
| 2:19.0 | paid off $14,000 in consumer debt. She's tackling her suited loans. And she is here to share more |
... |
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