Erika Dison secretly raised $67,676.60 in 45 days to pay off her family’s debt without her husband knowing

NEED TO KNOW

For 45 days, Erika Dison kept a secret from her husband, Cody — one so big that when she finally sat him down to reveal it, she had to put everything down on paper first.

“I had to write it out because I knew that if I didn’t write it down I would miss parts and I didn’t want to forget anything,” Erika tells Cody in a TikTok video capturing the moment.

“Are you pregnant?” he asks, to which she says no. “Are you leaving me because you got like a letter here,” he continues.

“No, it’s just a letter, I’m not serving you,” she replies.

“Cody, I don’t even know how to start this but I just need you to let me talk because I’ve been carrying something around inside of me for 45 days…and I don’t think I’ve ever kept a secret from you this big,” she begins.

Over the next 21 minutes, Erika eventually reveals that she’d been quietly working to pay off every dollar of the couple’s $67,676.60 in debt — with thousands of strangers on TikTok and Facebook ultimately helping her do it.

“My goal was never 45 days!” the 31-year-old mom from central Arkansas tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I was originally planning to be debt free by December 31, 2027.”

Erika hadn’t set out to surprise her husband. She simply wanted to change her family’s financial future.

The couple’s $67,676.60 in debt consisted of the remaining balance on their mortgage, Cody’s truck loan and a business loan Erika had taken out to expand her home-based sourdough bakery, Rosie. The loan allowed her to purchase a commercial bread oven, mixer and dough refrigerator.

“I didn’t feel like we had that much debt, honestly,” she says. “Like I said, it was just the remainder of our mortgage, his truck loan and my business loan.”

Still, seeing the total in one place was daunting.

“That number was overwhelming to look at,” Erika says, “Especially because I knew we didn’t have some giant inheritance or massive windfall waiting for us.”

The family wasn’t living extravagantly. Erika’s car was paid off, neither she nor Cody, a welding teacher, also 31, had student loans, and they didn’t carry revolving credit card debt.

But Erika had a bigger vision for what their life could look like. She had long imagined raising their three children, ages 7, 3 and 7 months, on a small farm, where they could care for animals and learn where their food came from.

“I knew my babies weren’t going to be babies forever, and I wanted to do everything in my power to give them the lives I had always dreamed of for them,” she says.

That dream was part of what pushed her to start attacking the debt. Inspired by creators Stealth Mode Savings and Amber Accountability, Erika decided to take on the challenge herself — without telling Cody.

She created new TikTok and Facebook accounts @ShhhhWerePayingItOff and blocked “everyone I could think of” so her husband wouldn’t stumble across them. Then she bought a little red notebook and began tracking the challenge day by day.

Every follower, like, comment, share and save on her videos corresponded to a dollar amount she would personally put toward the debt. She called it a “self-funded micropayment.”

With an accounting background and a self-described love of numbers, Erika recorded each day’s numbers, balances and percentages paid.

“Social media LOVES consistency, repetition and familiarity, and I think that’s why my videos got pushed out a lot,” she says.

At first, the challenge was entirely self-funded. Erika directed every dollar her bakery earned after taxes toward the debt — from weekly preorders and farmers markets to events, her Little Pink Bread Shed and the four stores that carried her bread.

Then, about a week into the challenge, followers started asking if they could buy Rosie’s starter and the recipes she used in her bakery to help out. Erika opened a Shopify store and soon added merchandise and ways for followers to contribute directly through Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and GoFundMe.

“That was crazy to me,” she says. “Like, you’ve never even met me. What do you mean you want to send me money?”

As Erika continued documenting the challenge, her following on hew secret grew and her videos began racking up thousands of views.

Along the way, the strangers following her journey gave themselves a name: the “Mountain Movers,” inspired by a biblical passage that had motivated Erika to take on the challenge.

“They were picking up one handful of dirt here, a shovel full there, a full-on dump truck load over there,” she says. “It was absolutely crazy to be witnessing the goodness of God and all of these perfect strangers helping me. A nobody from the middle of Arkansas.”

As the support grew, Erika launched “Bake It Forward,” allowing followers to sponsor loaves of bread, cookies or brownies that she would make and distribute locally to people experiencing food insecurity. The purchases also generated income she could put toward the debt.

“They’re helping me serve my community while helping me pay off my debt,” she says.

All the while, Cody remained completely in the dark.

He continued paying the family’s normal bills while Erika handled the challenge. She found small ways to cut expenses without making him suspicious. When he wanted to pick up dinner, she would say she already had something planned. She also started “shopping” the refrigerator, freezer and pantry before grocery trips and planned meals around what they already had.

She kept their children out of it, too, especially making sure their oldest was out of the room when she recorded videos.

“My kids are loud mouths, so I didn’t tell them anything!” she says.

Rather than waiting until the end of each month to make payments, Erika sent money toward the balances constantly, both to watch the numbers fall and reduce the interest she would owe.

But as the balance dropped, the pressure of keeping the secret grew. The hardest day came on Day 35: Cody’s birthday.

“I wanted to tell him so bad and the pressure of it all was starting to get to me to the point that I was giving myself heart palpitations,” she says.

The workload was also becoming intense as Erika juggled homeschooling, caring for three children, running the household and baking more than usual.

Still, she kept going. Then, on Day 45, she had raised enough to cover the remaining balance on the mortgage, bringing the total she had tackled to $67,676.60.

About $40,000 came through GoFundMe, Cash App, PayPal and Venmo, while roughly $10,000 came from Rosie, recipe sales and Mountain Mover merchandise. The rest came from the family’s checking account and bakery income during the 45-day challenge.

There was no inheritance, bonus or unexpected windfall. Erika says she didn’t make any money from TikTok itself, either.

“Not a dime,” she says.

After 45 days of keeping the biggest secret of her life from Cody, she finally had one last thing to do: tell him.

“I just couldn’t wait another second to tell my best friend literally life changing news,” she says.

After the children went to bed, Erika sat with Cody at the kitchen counter, turned on the camera and handed him a letter explaining what she had been doing.

“I was a ball of nerves, so I figured a letter would be the best way to do it so I didn’t forget anything!” she says.

Cody was used to Erika occasionally turning a camera on him after years of her making content. But this time, he had no idea what was coming.

The video of his reaction was later accidentally posted to Erika’s main TikTok account, exposing the challenge to her 378,000 followers whom she had worked so hard to keep separate from it. She says the video surpassed 1 million views within 24 hours and reached nearly 12 million views in five days.

“A few of them are very irritated at how long of a letter I wrote, or his reaction,” she says of the comments. “But at the end of the day, they aren’t the ones trying to summarize the crazy roller coaster that happened in 45 days.”

“So many others have been so caring and excited for us!” she adds.

For Erika, the end of the challenge also means finally being able to look beyond what her family owes and start thinking about what they can build.

The family has only taken one vacation they completely paid for themselves, a trip to Disney World for their 10th wedding anniversary and their children’s birthday presents.

“I’d love to take them back now that our daughter is old enough for bippity boppity boutique and we have our baby boy!” she says. “But we also can start talking about building our forever home and use the equity in our home to pay for it and have cows, and chickens and goats and pigs and all of the animals!”

And while Erika initially set out to change her own family’s financial future, the community that formed around her has given the challenge a life of its own.

The Mountain Movers are now helping other families tackle their own financial mountains — something Erika never expected when she started quietly tracking her progress in a little red notebook.

“This experience has been incredible and the plan is to keep helping other families we have to figure out a method that protects both the giver and receiver, but we will get it figured out, and the Mountain Movers aren’t going ANYWHERE,” she says.