Hi everyone! Today I have a debt-free story from Brittany. She is a wife, and mother of 4. She’s been married to her husband, Marcus for 5 years. In 5 short years of marriage, they have been through it all. From changing jobs to increase income, to getting caught up on bills, and paying off debt. But as Brittany says, “we will never let our struggles define us or our lives.” Enjoy her story and check out her blog at Love Bears All Things.1. What kind of debt do you have? How much is it? How long have you been paying it off and when will you be debt-free?
We have $56,000 in debt. It’s a combination of a car loan, medical bills, credit cards, and a personal loan. This does not include our home. We plan to be completely debt-free except our home by May of 2019 and to pay our home off by 2026. Our plan is to get out of our car and into something we pay cash for and putting all of our taxes toward debt as well as paying about $2000 + any extra money we make through selling things or picking up extra shifts a month toward our debt.
2. Why did you decide to pay off your debt?
We decided to pay off our debt after there was a 4 month period in 2016 where my husband still went to work everyday but wasn’t bringing home enough money. He was a foreman and made most of his money off of the jobs he did. His wage covered our medical insurance through his company and maybe an extra $400, if he worked 60-70 hour weeks. The company had several things going on from trying to switch products to equipment breaking down so jobs that were being completed were few and far between.
This meant no paychecks or paychecks barely able to cover groceries for our family. We lived at the top of our means so when we got behind we really got behind. We had 1 month of bare minimum expenses saved that we blew through in the first month. After that we were living off of credit cards took out a personal loan and still weren’t able to pay our bills.
In October of 2016 he found a job that would pay our bills so he turned in his notice and started over career wise. This was very hard for him. He had been with his company for 4 years and we always thought he would be there for his entire career. But there was no way we could dig ourselves out of the hole we were in with that job. So he made a change and we started January 2017 three months behind on everything but our utilities. And I was on maternity leave with our 4th child.
We decided over the last year that we never wanted to be in that situation ever again. We want to be able to work any job for any pay and not lose everything. Never did we ever dream that you could still go to work everyday and not have a paycheck or enough of one to pay your bills. But it happened and we didn’t know if we would survive it.
We worked 7 days a week for the last year between the two of us. He worked his 4 days and I babysat Monday – Friday and worked weekends as a nurse. It was hard, maybe the hardest thing we have ever done. We are current on everything as of 3/31/18. And begin our debt pay off in April.
3. What strategies are you using to pay off your debt? What was the craziest thing you did to get out of debt?
In January his schedule changed to where I could no longer work weekends. But we found a way to still make it work and not pay for childcare so that we can pay off debt instead of pay childcare. I switched from working weekends and babysitting to working two nights a week. This is about as crazy as it gets.
Where we live daycare is about $1300 a month for one child and we have 4. So that’s not really an option. When we had our 3rd child I went to part time/ PRN work. But I was only working 4 days a month at the most. I am a LPN and he now drives a truck where he is out of town 2 days at a time totaling 4 days a week.
So now our schedules are crazy! We are home Saturdays and Sunday mornings together, but the rest of the time, we are working. So we are together one full day a week and we get two half days together. I am up for 24 hours two days a week, sometimes more. As crazy as it is we figure we can do anything for a year. We are using the debt snowball method from Dave Ramsey to pay off our debt. We also plan to get out of our car and pay cash for something just to get us through the next year or two. This will reduce our debt by $26,000.
4. How has your family been impacted by your financial journey?
We have been impacted in so many ways. We have realized what we really value. While I still struggle with wanting to decorate our home and continue work on our fixer upper, I discovered that none of that matters if I don’t get to share it with my husband.
We have always been very close. We’re best friends and choose to spend all of our time together. Now that we have had to sacrifice our time more than ever, there are a lot of days where I would give anything to be back in a tiny little apartment with him home every night. And if our credit wasn’t totally shot, and we knew we would be able to find a safe place for us to rent, we would sell our forever home in a heart beat. We still might but right now that’s not an option with our credit.
And now that we are caught up, our mortgage is manageable on just my husband’s income. It’s the other debt that I am working to pay off that’s killing us. We have totally changed our mindset when it comes to money. I no longer view things we buy as whether or not we can afford the payment. I look at how many hours I would have to be away from family to afford it and how long it will take us to save the money. It’s made me a much more hesitant spender.
5. What’s the hardest part about getting out of debt?
The hardest part is sacrificing our time and changing our habits. We have been working toward having the nice house and the nice car and the nice things our entire lives. And we still struggle with those desires. I do especially with things like decorating and fixing up our house. I spend most of my time at home with the kids so it’s hard for me to not focus on all of the projects that we had planned to do.
My husband struggles with getting rid of our car. We bought it brand new and he sees himself as our provider so to have to give that up is hard for him. I think it makes him feel that he’s failed even though he has not. If it weren’t for his willingness to work, we would have lost everything.
6. What are your goals once you’re debt-free?
Our goals are to save more money than we spend, work less and spend more of our time together. We plan to travel and hopefully complete our family with our 5th child in a few years. We will never finance anything ever again.
7. How do you think your life will change by being debt-free?
Being debt-free will take such a burden off of our shoulders I don’t know that I can fully comprehend it. To not have to worry about bills except our mortgage and utilities will free up our time so much. We can take off work if needed. We will be able to save for things like cars and vacations and we will be able to save for our kids’ college without stressing over making all of our monthly payments.
Our main struggle with saving money has always been the amount of money needed to go out each month. To not have that will be such a relief years come to my eyes just thinking about it.
We learned the hard way that we are not only spending our money but our time. We learned that just because you can make that payment today doesn’t mean you’ll be able to next month and that debt really is just a way to buy things you can’t afford. If you could truly afford it you would save the money and just buy it.