Interview with my friend

Today I want to share the amazing story of one of my friends and her family’s journey through debt! She prefers her name to be kept private. This post is long, but well worth the read!!!

1. How did your journey getting out of debt get started? 

We had taken an excellent financial seminar at church and did alot of thinking but not much action about 13 years ago or so, several years went by and our staggering debt was killing us so about 7 or 8 years ago we looked at options between bankruptcy and consolidation (credit counseling).  I saw an ad on tv and called and set up the consolidation because we felt that was a better option since bankruptcy makes your creditors not get what you owe them.  So we had a plan of paying $500 a month to the counseling service for our credit card debt and we did that faithfully until it was paid off.  Right when we made the last payment on our consolidation, they announced at our church that they were doing Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, so we signed up and went through the program and we set our sights on getting out of the rest of our debt that we did not consolidate. We learned so much from Dave and it changed the way we looked at money!

 

2. How much debt did your family have (if you don't mind sharing)

We had $13,000 in credit cards, plus our van, medical bills, house and student loans

 

3. What did you do to get the snowball rolling?

The main thing was the credit counseling, then when that was done (and we continued to make minimum payments on everything else during that time, only through the grace of God) we took the money from that and paid off our van first, and then tackled one thing at a time until now we just have our student loans and house left.  Plus we traded in our van after we paid it off and got a newer vehicle that was not 16 years old.

 

4. Tell me about your car.

We bought our car in 2009, and it is a 2008 for 17,000.  Our monthly payments are $315.  We got a 6 year note and each month we scratch together whatever else we can to add to it.  For a while we did $400 every month, then we moved up to $500 every month, now for the last year we've been paying $600 most months, and we are down to $1995 to go.  This month we scraped every penny together and paid $850.  Occasionally my husband will get a small bonus at work of a few hundred dollars and we always put that on it too.  When it's paid off it will have been less than 3 1/2 years and we will put that $315 in a savings account for a new car someday later so that we can pay all or part cash on our next vehicle.

 

5. Your dream was to travel. You've been able to take several amazing trips and paid cash for them. Tell us about your trips.

Well, when you owe more every month than you make, fun is either cheap or free so that definitely means NO TRIPS!  So, for the first 16 years of our marriage we didn't get to go anywhere.  When we started enjoying some of our own money instead of owing it to everyone else, we began saving up for some dream trips.  We rolled change, sold baked goods and dinners, put back $20 a week in a jar, all kinds of small savings plans to go on a nice trip.  My dream had always been to take my daughter to the ocean and make sandcastles with her.  Well, even though she was 15 by the time we could afford to take her to Florida, we finally took all of that savings plus our tax refund and flew to Florida.  We went to Sea World and Universal and she obliged me with sand castle making even though by then she thought it was lame!  We took a small trip to Branson using the same techniques.  We wanted to see the Grand Canyon and our daughter wanted to see Las Vegas so we combined that trip and took a road trip across the country to see those things and the Hoover Dam.  Then the next year we used the same techniques to go to a family reunion in Colorado, then we drove up to Yellowstone National Park, (amazing!) and then to Mount Rushmore on the way home to Oklahoma.  I never dreamed that I would finally have enough control of my money to be able to do all of that, but now that we control it instead of it controlling us, we can do things that we want to do.

 

6. What inspired you to use coupons? When did you start?

My friend Sherrill inspired me to use coupons.  She was posting her great deals on Facebook and another friend Marla was posting stuff too and they told me about Money Saving Queen.  I studied her website and coupons 101 and told my friend about it.  She went to see her at a seminar and we just took off from there.  I started in September of last year. 

7. You were keeping a journal of your savings. Are you still doing that? Do you have a total savings to date on the coupons?

I have not kept up with the journal in the past few months but I know that the first three months I saved $1,500 with the techniques of couponing and combining them with sale items.  I am doing an analysis for the whole year this year to compare with last year when I do my taxes. 

8. Share how God has blessed you along the way!

Well, first of all, we began tithing sometimes about 15 years ago and then God spoke to me and asked me to give Him my all, so for about 7 or 8 years maybe we've been tithing faithfully without missing.  Alot of great things have changed during that time.  The consolidation.  During that period my husband lost his job abruptly and even with a drastic pay cut for our household, God was faithful and we made all of our payments including the $500 consolidation payment every month during that time.  One particularly stressful day I had paid everything except our electric bill.  It was $99.28 (the lowest electric bill we've ever had) but I could not pay it and didn't have any resources left to pool from.  Right after my husband lost his job; a week later his car died, our washer broke, our lawn mower quit, our dishwasher went out, all one right after the other.  It was an awful time.  But God made a way.  I remember that I took that electric bill and threw it on the floor and said God, I just can't do this, it's too hard!  You will have to take care of this for me.  I sat on the couch and about 10 minutes later a daycare child was at the door.  I opened it, said good morning and the dad walked in with a hundred dollar bill in his hand.  He gave it to me and said, I know that you are struggling and things are hard and I just thought this might help you out a little bit.  We love you and we wanted to help.  I just reached out and shut the door and fell apart.  Almost to the penny God took care of that for me.  (and later I did say thank you to him and sorry for shutting the door in your face  he he)  There are so many ways God showed up in this.  Things like that continued to happen over and over again.  After my husband got a job, things continued to improve for us, even though he had taken a huge cut in pay, we were making our bills better than before.  We would take a bill (such as the van) hold it up together and ask God to help us conquer it, and time and time again He did it!  When God showed me coupons, I knew that He spoke to me about it.  So I began to study and look for coupons and I know that God placed extra good coupons in my path as I showed up and put out an effort and continued to tithe, He continued to meet me where I was and bless my efforts.  I am so grateful for God's provision every day!