A wise person once told me there is power in stories. Here’s mine.
It all started at age 21, when I got married to my long-distance boyfriend and moved to Florida to start a life with him. But, let me back up a little bit to give you some background. I grew up with a dad who worked with finances in businesses and a mom who was a high school math teacher. I was told as a child that I had no excuse to make poor grades in math because I had 2 excellent tutors at home. If I was struggling, they wanted me to ask for help. My parents had credit cards they used to make purchases and earned points and airline miles. They paid them off every month and didn’t carry any other debt besides a mortgage. My parents always paid cash for used cars when it was time for an upgrade. I was blessed to have grandparents and parents who saved money for me to go to college. What they saved plus my scholarships covered all of my college costs, so I didn’t have any student loans. My dad always warned me against getting a credit card in college as he didn’t want me to start poor money habits when I didn’t have an income to speak of. I followed his wise advice. After college, I felt like I was finally an adult and should start making adult decisions. To me, that meant getting a dog and purchasing a newer vehicle that would comfortably transport said dog. I didn’t think a rowdy golden retriever in the back seat of my Ford Taurus was safe, it was time for an SUV. I didn’t have any money saved to purchase a nice SUV and my Taurus wasn’t worth much. My dad agreed to co-sign a loan for me to be able to purchase the SUV so I could begin building credit, which he felt I would need as an adult. I got a $10,000 loan for the SUV and paid extra every month so I could pay it off as quickly as possible.
Now, back to my new marriage. I married a wonderful man who is 7 years older than me and a little more life experience. He did not have the assistance of parents or grandparents with college costs and he grew up in a family where car debt was normal. All of that to say, when we got married, I had $5,000 left on my SUV loan. He had $90,000 in student loan debt and a $30,000 car loan. On top of that, I insisted on purchasing a home right away, because after all, that is what you do as a married adult, right? With my new husband’s incredible credit score, he was able to secure a nice $200,000 loan for a house. Did I mention I moved across the country after I married him? I didn’t have a job yet in my new city. I was fresh out of my Master’s degree and searching frantically for a job…because we were drowning. Everything was stressful. Every paycheck went straight out the door to pay all of our bills just so we could keep our heads above water. Luckily, neither of us were in the habit of or had the mindset to get credit cards to lift some of the pressure. I know that is some people’s go-to, but I am grateful we didn’t go down that road. After all, if debt was the problem, how would more debt help? That’s how I see it anyway.
I got a job within 2 months of being married (2 LONG months!) This job required me to drive 50 miles each way to work, so I had a lot of time on the road to think. I remembered my grandparents had a book in their library (yes, they had a library) called “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey. I looked him up and found out he had a radio show. I started listening during my commutes and learned a lot. I heard inspirational stories from people who had gotten out of loads of debt and I wanted to be just like them. I shared what I learned with my husband and he was completely on board. The only problem was, we had NO IDEA what we were doing or how to start. I kept listening for more direction. Dave talks about the debt snowball method where you list your debts smallest to largest and pay minimum payments on all debts except the smallest one and pay as much as you can on the smallest debt to get it knocked out first. I’ll be honest, that first year listening to Dave on the radio is a blur. I don’t remember what exactly we did to pay off $13,000 in debt, but that’s what we paid off in the first 12 months. We had $117,000 to go. At this rate, it was going to take FOREVER!
As a sidenote, I don’t remember what we did to actually scrape together that money, but I do remember the stress and the sacrifices that were made. As a newly married couple in a great big house that both of our furniture combined did not fill up, we had to practice some serious delay in gratification. I remember crying because our toilet paper wasn’t soft enough. We had a Christmas tree from the Dollar General and an old collection of ornaments from my childhood. Let me tell you, it was lackluster. I couldn’t wait to get a nice big Christmas tree with matching ornaments and Christmas decorations for the whole house, but those first few Christmases, were not very cheery as far as décor goes in our home. I felt especially bad because Christmas was my husband’s favorite holiday and he wanted to go all out for Christmas, but had the patience to wait for it. (He grew up in Germany where apparently that’s where they have REAL Christmas. I don’t know from experience, but that’s what he tells me. Florida Christmas with it’s 75 degree weather, is a far cry from what Christmas is SUPPOSED to be and when all you can do is decorate like crazy to make the inside of your home feel like Christmas, except you can’t do that because it costs money and you are trying to pay off a mountain of debt, well you get my point, it was lousy).
After working hard for those 12 months, listening to the radio show, I started to feel like we were missing something. These people on Dave’s show were paying off just as much debt as we had with the same amount of income as us in only 2-3 years. We were not even close to hitting that timeline at our pace. What did they have that we didn’t have? I noticed the majority of them say they attended a Financial Peace University class and that kick-started their journey for them. The class was going to cost money to take, money we didn’t have to spare. But it had the potential to offer us information we didn’t have and could save us that plus more in interest payments over time. That’s how I proposed to my husband that we take the class. I will remind you that he was 100% on board with getting out of debt, but that did not mean he started listening to the radio show and gaining daily inspiration and education on how to do it. He actually started to get quite annoyed with me coming home and talking about it all the time. He must have thought “this chick has gone off the deep end and literally can’t stop talking about this.” I’m sure there was some shame mixed in there as well. He shared multiple times that he felt guilty for bringing so much debt into the marriage. I tried my best to reassure him that it didn’t matter where it originated. We are one and it is “our” debt now. We were going to tackle it together. But again, my constant conversation and consumption with it must have felt like nagging to him.
I’m lucky my husband loves me enough to want to make me happy, even if it means feeding my addiction to Dave Ramsey. He agreed to take the course with me. He wasn’t excited about it and made that very clear. He would attend to make me happy, but he didn’t have to like it. The class met once a week for 9 weeks. We met others from all different situations and backgrounds. We watched inspirational videos and gained so much knowledge. The best part is, we got all the information at the same time so we stayed on the same page. The first few classes focused on budgeting – the foundation to a good financial plan. We sat down and printed off our bank transactions from the month before. We added up a total of over $2,000 that we spent between Wal-Mart and Target. I mean, that’s where we bought our groceries but what in the world else did we buy? We didn’t know then and I still don’t know. And we were supposedly living so tightly that I was using rough toilet paper and had a dollar store Christmas tree. That was our wake up call. We had to get our spending under control. My husband decided we should only spend $100 on groceries. I’m ashamed to say I might have laughed. That seemed unrealistic. We had to come into agreement on every budgeting category on our paper budget form for the class. It was a process, and not a fun one, but we wouldn’t be where we are now if we hadn’t started there.
The craziest stuff happened once we were on a budget and learning all the other great information from the class. Doors started opening for us in unexpected ways. I found a job closer to home with an 18% pay raise. My husband found a job doing something he loved with a 25% pay raise. A lady in our neighborhood asked if we would be interested in hosting international students studying in the US for $840 every 4 weeks. We had 2 extra bedrooms, so we signed up for 2 of them for double the payout! I had the idea to board dogs in our home (we have 3 already, what’s a few more?) My husband wasn’t as excited about that idea but I promised we would stop as soon as we got out of debt (I kept that promise). He knew it would help speed up the process so he agreed. That brought in another $1000-$2500 per month, depending on if any holidays fell in that month. The international students, dog boarding, our new jobs, and our new budget helped us adjust our debt payments significantly and before we knew it, we were paying $5,000 per month towards our debt. We had no life. We didn’t go out to eat at restaurants. We didn’t go on vacation. We worked all the time! We both picked up second jobs and barely saw each other, but we were determined!
28 months after we took Financial Peace University, I gave birth to our beautiful first-born daughter. We stopped boarding dogs and hosting students several months before she was born, but we had enough money in the bank to pay off the final student loan. We were following what Dave Ramsey says by putting the debt snowball attack on hold while pregnant due to the unknown expenses that can come up. Thankfully, our daughter was born healthy and we both came home with no complications. As soon as we got the hospital bill, we paid it off and made our final student loan payment. Words cannot describe the joy and relief that came with hitting that “submit” button online for that final payment. We were free. That gave me the freedom to stay home with my daughter for her first year in this world. Money was no longer a stressful thing. We got a beautiful Christmas tree and ornaments, but we didn’t splurge on them. We didn’t splurge on anything. Our habits changed, our mindset shifted, we had new priorities. I’m in love with the new people we have become and am grateful for the journey we took together.
You can do it too! When you are in the beginning, middle, and end of it, it sucks. It’s not fun! There is nothing fun about making monthly $5,000 payments to student loans. It’s tough to say “no” when your friends invite you out to eat and you don’t feel like cooking. It’s difficult to tell your parents you can’t visit them while they live abroad and everyone else in the family is visiting them overseas. Those are real sacrifices, but I wouldn’t change a thing. You have to tell yourself during this process “this is temporary, this is not forever, one day soon I will be able to go out and be with friends.” You have to constantly talk to yourself and remind yourself of WHY you are doing this. My why was I didn’t want to be stressed about money anymore, ever again. My husband’s why was he wants to be able to retire one day and knew he couldn’t adequately save for retirement when all of our money was going out in debt payments every month. We have both accomplished our why – I’m not stressed and he is stashing away money every month for retirement. Win Win!
