How Jen Paid Off $78,000 in 2 Years

Published May 10, 2024, 7:00 AM

When paying off debt, it feels like a forever process of trying to decrease its amount, but when you look back, time just flew by like a wind! Jen shares her story of paying off her debt of $78,000 in just 2 years. Together with Jill, they celebrate and talk about the mindset shifts Jen needed to work on to pay off debt.

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Episode four oh five is episode two sixteen, How Jen paid off seventy eight thousand dollars in two years.

Welcome to the Brugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts Jen and Jill.

Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. I'm Jen, I'm Jill, and today is the episode closest to my birthday, and so it is my episode rerun.

Hey yay.

We will do Jills in a few months when it is the episode closest to her birthday as a birthday gift. But today we are re airing my story about paying off seventy eight thousand dollars of debt in two years. And this is one a couple of years ago where Jill interviewed me and it was episode two sixteen.

Wow, that was a long time ago. Yeah, it was. It was how long ago that we recorded it? The same amount as how long your debt payoff was? I said that in a confusing way. Yeah, but wow, that's true. That's that's wild. Wow. Okay, yeah, that's okayun Yeah, that is I'm excited. This was a fun thing for us to do. We realized that we hadn't ever shared our stories before, and since now it's been two years that you've heard a bit more of the origin story in the background story. Yeah, we're gonna read air gens.

When you're in it, it feels like forever, and then when you're out of it, I mean multiple years can go by between even telling the story and retelling it that you don't even realize it. Yeah, So that's the story of my Like, my story is not a bunch of meal plans, sell your car, do this, do that, But it was more of a lot of mindset shifts. And we actually got a complaint after we aired the episode that there weren't enough tangible tips, and so I just emailed the lady back and I was like, we have two hundred and fifteen other episodes for that, but no, I didn't. But it is more of these mindset shifts. Like I, before we paid off started paying off debt, I thought it was too big to do. I thought seventy eight thousand dollars was too much. I could never pay it off. And then once we got started, it took two years and it has been what six seven years since we became debt free, which is to me is insane every time I think about it. And so it's I hope you take away from this in addition to everything else that we talk about that that nothing is too big. Nothing is too big.

We pulled you all in our friend letter on whether or not you all are paying off debt and kind of half and half because most of the questions or responses in the poll or what amount of debt are you paying off? But a good majority of you are saying you are debt free, well.

About thirty percent of people are who answered are just completely debt free, thirty thirty point four or five percent, which is awesome. And then a lot of you are paying off between like ten thousand plus dollars of debt. So yeah, that's I mean, we were over. We were over fifty thousand, which was the highest amount on me on the poll. So if you answered that, then you were in good company. And maybe you too. One day we'll start a personal finance.

It's all good whether you are still paying off debt. Hopefully this can be an encouragement to you or if you are currently debt free and listening that this is a helpful reminder kind of what you have accomplished and where you can go from here now, because we can lose sight of our story, our accomplishments, we forget to celebrate. So for whatever reason, you find yourselves here, Glad you're here.

But first, before we get into the stories, this episode has brought to you by our wroth Iras. Ever since we became debt free in twenty seventeen, we have maxed out our wrath Irays and I didn't know if we were going to max them out in twenty twenty three, Travis took a pay cut and I wasn't sure. But thanks to the six week wroth Ira challenge that we hosted earlier this year, you thought was for you, but it was actually for me. I did max out both of our twenty twenty three wroth Iras. The funny thing though, I almost contributed to my traditional ira, which wouldn't have been a big different. It wouldn't have been a big deal, but I wanted to put them in our wroth Iras. And this is just another way my old four oh one K rollovers making things confusing. If you're confused by your old four oh one K and you want to roll it over but it's just confusing, then head to Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash capitalize. That's the service we used to roll over a four oh one K. It's what we tell everyone else to use. It's free and they will help you find your old four oh one K or any workplace retirement plan that you've left the workplace from and roll it over into a traditional IRA that you control, which is super important. So frugal friendspodcast dot com slash capitalize and start contributing to your IRA. Yes, do it, and rollovers don't count towards your annual maximum.

Wow. Mm hmmm. So I never had a four oh one K, so I never could do this, but I totally would have.

Right in fact, right both travel and I both did this. So if you are interested in more debt payoff stories, then you are gonna love this summer. I'm not even I'm We have a ton of debt payoff episodes from the past, you can look them up, but actually I want to highlight that every other episode this summer is going to be a debt payoff story. And if you want to get a leg up, you can head to our YouTube channel and listen to our debt free stories over there.

But we are going to.

Be playing those on the podcast where you're going to be sharing updates from our listeners and who contributed, and so you are not going to want to miss out this summer because we're gonna have ten debt payoff stories coming at you.

Very exciting. All right, should we get to it. Let's do it, Jen, Before we get into the story of your journey out of debt, let's back up and walk us through your journey into debt.

Yeah. So I grew up in a family where we actually never had debt. We just lived paycheck to paycheck and that was kind of enough. Never saved, never went on vacations, kind of never had enough money when an emergency came up. It was always like a scramble. My mom used to say, we don't have bad credit, we have slow credit. I mean, it just takes us some time to pay our bills, but we do. So that was what I grew up thinking about debt. And so when I got to college, I was like, I'm smarter than my parents because I'm seventeen and I graduated a year early. So I am going to get a credit card and be smarter about money. And thank god, that card was only a five hundred dollars limit because I actually had to wait until I was eighteen obviously to get the card, but I did wait that whole first year of college. But I thought I was smart, so that I so I was going to have good credit. And what it really did was it set me up to kind of have a revolving credit on that card throughout college. And I went to grad school and I got another credit card because they offered a free free companion flight on it, and I was like, Oh, I'll take my friend in New York City because that's wise. I can afford that right and ended up actually putting more debt on that card than I could pay off. So that was like my first foray into debt. But my biggest debt was the student loans for my graduate program. I got. My undergrad was completely paid for by scholarships, but when I went to grad school for acupuncture and oriental medicine, that was completely out of pocket. And it was a private school, so there wasn't like any other options for there, and so that was fifty thousand dollars and it ballooned up to fifty four thousand dollars by the time I got serious about paying it off, and then I had a car that I got right out of college that also gave me I think it was about ten thousand dollars, but I tried to pay as much of that off before I got married, so I think that added it to like part of it. But so I spend a lot of time ignoring that debt because as a community acupuncturist. So we worked on a model that was like kind of pay what you can afford. And I love that. I love serving people who with things that they may not be able to usually afford, but like serving them in that way, just kind of reaching more people. Like low cost, high volume sort of thing. That's always been my jam, not necessarily nonprofit work, but just like in a kind of a low price, high volume business type of thing. But it didn't pay well because of that, and so I had more debt than I made in a whole year. And what started this whole thing for me in paying it off was that when I got engaged to Travis, he brought twenty four thousand dollars of student loans and was like, I want to pay this off immediately as soon as we get married, and I was like, I was not not into that. But so that's how the journey into seventy eight thousand dollars of debt came into play. And honestly, the two credit cards by that point weren't even factored in. Because this is a great story. I somebody hit my car in a Starbucks parking lot and I came out and I didn't know about it. I came out and saw it and there was a note on the car, but it was just like a dent in the back bumper, like it was totally drivable, and their insurance paid for it obviously, And instead of using that money to get my car fixed, I used to pay off the credit cards. Wow, those were.

Happy Starbucks accidents.

Right, And I just drove around with a debt in my bumper four years.

Maybe I should go to Starbucks more.

Yeah, make sure the parking lot is small, though. So that was our journey into debt.

I don't think that I realized that it was comprised of more than student loan debt. That is knowledge for me today.

Part of the I mean, the car loan was just like maybe four thousand of it by the time we got strained.

Yeah, right, But I think it is interesting to recognize that sometimes our debts and our journey into debt and our comfort level with debt does have to do with more than just the decision we made for higher education and some of what we might do around that lifestyle. When you are going to school full time, a lot of times it does mean that it's then also paired with credit card debt because we still want to live life and maybe even maintain a lifestyle that we can't afford. So that's it's good to look at that reality. Even if you're able to pay it off or you're just floating a little bit of a balance, like you're still interacting with debt and utilizing it to maintain a lifestyle.

Yeah.

And then the part about this is something I've been hearing a lot from people with student loan debt, is the increase on it, like they've stopped going to school, but the interest is accruing, and you know, you might have graduated with like, like you said, fifty thousand dollars of debt, but then by not taking it super seriously, it balloon to fifty four and that is a like stab in the heart to realize that reality.

Yeah, I mean, so it was, and I don't think I think debt is neutral. I don't think there's good debt or bad debt. I think it is all in how you use it. And because I had a car loan that I had to pay, and the Federal Student Loan Agency allowed me to pay less than interest every month on my student loan, it didn't force me to focus on my student loan, even though it was higher interest than my car loan. So having that extra debt prevented me from paying off my student loans. So it does have to do with like, if you're in debt one place, it kind of can snowball to debt other places, and then that just like compounds on itself to make it harder to pay off the first debt, like kind of essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul almost but in debt.

So Travis knew exactly how much your husband, how much debt he had, and was very convinced he wanted to pay it off quickly. You weren't as convinced. So what was that moment when you realized, Oh, here's how much we have and I want it gone.

This is a pretty pivotal moment because I'd always said, like, oh when I get married, then I'll pay off my debt because I really can't do it on my own income, which is my own limiting belief for sure. And I look back now and I see I was never more positioned than I am now to pay off debt. So I was waiting, and then the time came when we were engaged and Travis said he wanted to pay off his debt, and I was like, actually, I'd like to live a little bit, like I've been on the edge of paycheck to paycheck for so long. I'd really like to enjoy this new income and not live under a rock. Is literally how I put it.

I could see you saying that it's either I pay off debt or I live under.

A I'm living extra. I am definitely the person who lives in extremes for better for worse. It's my own like thing that I deal with. But yeah, like I didn't have the concept of the radical middle there, like that you could pay off debt and still have the things that you value. That never occurred to me. So what Travis did was he and he didn't even know he was doing this, I guess, but he just like he tried to get to like my deeper yes, like, what is it that makes other things easier to say no to because the yes is deeper? And for me, it was foster care. So like I have been I have had a heart for foster care for over a decade now, I guess it was definitely before I met Travis, I was working in a group home, and because I didn't want to volunteer at a group foster home, because I wanted more responsibility and more access to the lives of kids in care. So like, I just decided to work there on the weekends and so that that took up every weekend of my life, and I wanted to I knew that that wasn't sustainable, but I wasn't ready to foster myself. So I really want to be able to do that. But with that comes a lot of responsibility, like a lot of visits and doctor's appointments and kids acting out in trauma and stuff like that. And so I knew having a full time job and being beholden to debt payments would make being accessible more difficult. And so he opened my eyes to how much easier could it be for you to fulfill your dream in life if we were debt free, So that was my deeper yes, and obviously it didn't work one hundred percent of the time, but it was the catalyst that I needed to change my perspective on debt. And I since learned that you don't have to like put your life on pause to pay off debt. You can do it and do it, you know, in a balanced way. But yeah, that was really the moment. And I knew my number already gave me anxiety. It gave me an insane anxiety to look at my debt number, so I knew how much it was hanging over my head. Tried to ignore it. But when Travis really inspired me to like, look at our entire lives and he made it about my dreams, not just his, that was when I got on board.

Isn't that so true for so many of us? Though? This need to have it connected to something, and it can't just be arbitrary.

You know.

You hear some people who say, Okay, there's this number and it was overwhelming, so I knew I had to do something about it. But oftentimes that's not enough. Just seeing a really big number on a piece of paper or on your computer isn't alway is enough to say, let me make drastic changes in my lifestyle to get this gone. Yes, it's anxiety producing. You knew your number, You knew it was a lot, but it still took more to connect it to that thing, to tether it to something, to anchor it to something for an actual reason, not just because I just don't want to see this number on this computer screen anymore. And so you said, it's a big number, seventy eight thousand dollars of debt. And now we've heard so many people's stories of six figures and nearly half a million, like it's you know, it's not a race to the bottom. Everybody has their own story. But that is a lot. Most people would not be able to pay that off in a matter of months or even a year or a few years. How did you stay on track? How did you stay motivated to get this large sum of money tackled?

So we didn't have big incomes. We by the end of it, we were making up to eighty eight thousand dollars gross, but we did. We started. I was making maybe thirty five at my acupuncture job, and the I guess the foster home was maybe bringing an eight or ten extra a year. So like forty five in a good year is what I was making gross. And Travis was unemployed when we started. So we literally started our debt free journey forty five thousand dollars, which is less, I mean, gosh, almost half of what our total debt was. Like it on paper, it looked like stupid, but we worked on it together and so I can confidently say, like everyone says, everyone says, the budget is what does it for them, And it wasn't the budget for me. I have never been a great budgeter. I still don't budget often. For me. It was about the accountability, having the accountability between Travis and I and wanting to do this for him and him wanting to do it for me made this journey sustainable. And that's exactly why we've created our community, our private community, is to give people a place to do that, because that's really what did it for me. And when we had that, then we were motivated to create the budget, to stick to the budget, to have the budget meetings, and we were motivated to have open communication about our expenses without judgment, with grace, all of these things, and it came down to having a community, and not just in my home, but outside of my home too, because I realized a lot of my friends just wanted to spend money. They were not trying to get their finances together like we were. And I had to find new friends for a season, which thankfully became lifelong friends, and I'm still friends with some of the people. I had to kind of unfollow or mute on social media for a few years. But yeah, I had to kind of I had to shift the community outside of my home too, to be one where people were more conscious about their money and okay, doing free things. And so it was really the people around me that had a huge impact in my motivation to stick with it. And then the second thing, second thing that was most important. A year intwo our debt payoff, we were making good progress. We had went down from thinking it was going to take us five years to knowing that we were going to do it in two. And we were a year in. We knew we had a year left, and I was miserable, Like I was miserable, I was hopeless. I was like, I don't know how how I'm going to do this for another year. And I know now that some of that could have been avoided by having a more focused life plan, I think, and kind of a little bit more of a balance between the goal and the life, the immediate goal and the long term goal. But I started writing about what I was learning, what I had learned for the past year. I started teaching, trying to teach other people the lessons that I had learned in a difficult way, and that shifted the journey for me. When I stopped dwelling on what the journey was taking from me and started focusing on how I could give back as a result of this journey, everything changed and the last year was like nonexistent to me, Like I didn't even realize it was happening. I was just doing it and then we were done. So those were the two biggest motivators for me.

Yeah, it's so interesting. It's almost as if you're describing in order to get you motivated to begin, you needed a deeper why and purpose, and in order for the motivation to keep going, you needed another why and purpose attached to it. Again, I think that's really similar for a lot of people. But something that stands out to me about you. One of the things I really admire and I think drew me to you. When we first met, I met you in the midst of your debt payoff journey towards the tail end. Is your authenticity and transparency in this process, not without protection you're not sharing anything that you don't want to be sharing, but even to be able to talk about your salaries, what you did make, what you then were making by the end of it, and how you journeyed through this, some of the ways that you would have done your debt payoff journey in a more balanced way. I think all of this it's so relatable. I think sometimes we can talk really cryptically about our debt payoff journeys and we don't really know what's available to us because it always seems like everybody else's story is there's something unique about it, and so I couldn't do it. But like, your story is very I would imagine there's a lot of people in debt who are in better off positions than you were in right, who are making more money and maybe have less debt. Like, there's so many things about what you're describing that so relatable in a lot of ways, and I just so appreciate you talking through also what was really difficult, but then some really tangible tips in that that when it is difficult, go deeper, connect to deeper reasons of why is this? Why is this so heavy on me? Why do I feel like I can't bear another year? What could shift here? And because there is freedom and permission to shift it? Your debt payoff journey did take a toll on you. I mean to start out with forty five, making forty five thousand dollars in a good year and paying off seventy eight thousand dollars in two years, Like I am a little bit like, how the heck did that happen? And maybe you could have taken a little bit longer to do that and not have gotten shingles.

Oh yeah, the shingles story. Yeah, And we bought a house in those two years, So there were there were a lot of we could have taken a little extra time. For sure, I think we glamorize and I did I glamorize these stories of I paid off this much debt in this timeframe. It's so much, it's so fast, and we hear the same stories. There are ratios to a certain limit of if you make above this amount, you will pay off your debt in this many to this many months. You can almost calculate it and I never have. But to me now, numbers and timeframes are arbitrary because I've heard so many of them so many different times. What interests me is the story of the journey, Like how is the journey unique? And there are so many things that are the same, and we do talk about those on the podcast. You know, get on a meal plan, make a budget, increase your income. There are so many things that are the same, but like looking for those unique things, and I think that's what Like, in twenty eighteen, I left acupuncture and started writing full time and finance and I was an SEO writer, which means I was literally just like writing outlines that were very educational and writing those right, really informational articles to this website that really wanted me to be a journalist, a financial journalist, and I learned. I learned storytelling, like and it was it was really great because I heard so many stories, I heard so many people say the same thing, and to hear the thing like the one thing that made it different was always so refreshing and the thing I tried to hold onto. And that's why I want to share so many of the unique things about my story so that more people can see different sides of paying off debt, so more people can see themselves paying off debt through these stories, and it's why we try to tell unique stories here on the show from unique and diverse perspectives.

I think the thing that's standing out to me in your story is how you found joy and purpose through it to help you keep going. And then the learnings of what you would have done differently, how you might have given yourself more permission to way out living life alongside paying down debt that maybe it could have taken a little bit longer. But I am also curious to hear what your thoughts are on how your life has shifted since debt payoff. It certainly sounds like a lot shifted in the midst of debt payoff. What have you seen since that time?

I have been able to do like so many more things, so much more freely, and refollow those people on social media because I can do all the things they're doing now, And then they're coming to me talking about how much debt they have and the like the burden it's putting on them, and I'm like, well, I have a podcast, you should listen to it. So yeah, I mean I'm able to like go on vacations, which I could never do as a child, Like again, no debt, so like no vacations at all when I was a kid. Like we had our son and didn't worry about if there was going to be complications like with the pregnancy or with the labor, because we knew, like we can handle like medical bills. We're prepared for this, and like, thank god we didn't. But like that that's a huge ease for somebody who's like pregnant and hormonal. There are we just I can visually say it. We just bought another house. We bought a second home, and so we are going instead of buying an investment property, we bought another house to live in, and we'll use our current house as an investment property. So these are things I would have never known were possible because my family and the families I grew up around never did this stuff. They were like shopping was a hobby and people were spending all of their money. And I had a friend who in the housing crisis, her family was like living on rama and essentially because they bought this huge house at the height and couldn't get rid of it, and they were living in this beautiful house by the beach, like living on you know, essentially Ramen. So like these were the people I was around. I didn't know it was possible for somebody without a ton of money to like get into rental real estate or to have a six figure investment portfolio to take trips just because it's a good idea, not because like you're desperate or anything. So it's changed my perspective and life. And that's a gift that I'm going to give to my son that more is possible and you don't have to be super rich to achieve it or quote unquote rich, but anything is possible.

Well, I think it's a gift to the larger community too. I mean, yes, absolutely, as you teach your son, But it's a gift to me. It's a gift to the frugal friends community. It's a gift to all the people that you interact with because of your transparency and honesty and encouragement of people. I mean, I remember I have a vivid memory of watching you and Travis. I joined virtually before even the pandemic and all that virtual stuff happened, but you all paid off your debt live on Facebook Live and celebrated, and it was a little weird to me to be so out in the open about finances, but yet unashamedly, unapologetically, and there was a celebration with you, and there was an encouragement and motivation for me of I could do that too, like you and your journey has been a gift to me, and my journey to understand what's possible, and the things that you have built in skill set and understanding through the debt payoff journey is what has afforded all of these other things. Right, it's not just about oh, I paid off debts now, obviously my life is better. It's better because of the journey, because of what you learned and gained along the way that you're now able to implement on the other side of the pendulum. It's great to get out of debt. And then you just translate all that over into the next step. What do you want to do next with your finances, which for you it's income, property trips, sharing and encouraging others, raising your son well, not living in fear and anxiety for financial concerns, like there's so much here and the way that you're choosing to give back out of that and along the way, not just oh, I've arrived, so now let me tell you about it, like you've been honest throughout the whole thing of this was really tough. Yep, still in the middle of that, and it's it's real. It's what drew me to you. I think it's one of the reasons that our podcast is where our podcast is. So you keep doing it, Jen, Yeah.

I mean, I think I've just written so many articles that are so surface level and so like I've written the same article so many times to be able to tell a story that's unique and relatable. And I've I mean, when we started Frugal Friends, it's like when we decided to like take a chance on it, which neither of us was like super keen on. But I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm I'm gonna make it so different from everything else that's out there that is pretty much investing centric. It's for people who already have a handle on their finances. It's for people who have already paid off debt or don't care about paying off debt. I want something so different, and we created something that helps people. Yeah, no matter where you are, but like definitely of average income, dream bigger and have bigger financial goals because that's I think more important than trying to pay off debt, is to like expand your thinking of what's possible. Because I had to pay off my debt to get there, but the greatest gift, like I could still have debt, and now that we have this new investment property, I definitely do. But like knowing what is possible, knowing assets, liabilities like unlimited income, stuff like that, like building a business. It's it's stuff that I wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't started at the very bottom. And all the podcasts out there were already for the big thinkers. But yeah, like we were just talking to Angie and RJ from Rich by Intention and how they started with their you know, negotiating bills, like just negotiating bills to lower their expenses. They took those skills and negotiated raises and new jobs promotions, but they wouldn't have even thought about it or had the skills to do it without starting like quote unquote at the bottom, and like that's where I want to be for people at the bottom. Yeah, yeah, I started from the bottom, and now we're still here.

Speaking of things that are not at the bottom. They all the way on the top. Is the bill of the week.

That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Fust bills, bffalo bills, Bill Clinton, This is the bill of the week.

So I will share my bill of the week. But since this is a like a duo episode, I do want to share somebody else's too, So I guess I will go first and no one will be surprised by my bill. Jill could tell you my bill.

Oh my gosh, it's.

It's Bill.

From Wait, Wait, don't tell me.

And the narrator of Anchorman and famed news castor in Chicago Anchorman in Chicago. I think, yeah, that is my bill of the week always, because I my dream is to one day have Bill Curtis do my voicemail message. I'm just I'm always too nervous to call in to wait wait don't tell me, but I do listen to it all the time. I love his bill puns. Anchorman is one of my favorite movies still to this day. Like I'm still stuck in like I'm a college frat boy. I guess I yeah, so that is forever. Weren't always my bill of the week, So let's hear from somebody else's.

Hi freakal friends.

This is Becca.

I'm from Rogers, Arkansas, and I'm just going to give you my.

Bill of the week.

So this month was actually supposed to be a no spend challenge for my fiance and I and we were doing really good until our sweet dog Rufus decided to eat rocks the other.

Day, so we took him to the vet and it ended.

Up being an incredibly expensive seven hundred and fifty dollars bill, but we are grateful that a vet was able to help him and he passed all of the rocks.

So unfortunately we hadn't given to our savings a little bit rather than increasing our savings this month, but we are so grateful that Rufus is okay and are happy to pay this bill. Love you guys, Thank thank you so much for all of your advice and just fun times on the podcast.

Thanks oh Wow, Becca and Ruth. Thanks congratulations Rufus Like eating rocks and you made it past them. Yeah you, Rufus, you went through something and this one's for you too.

Yes. Oh, I love hearing the stories of unexpected large bills that are able to be paid and not stressed about because of the intentionality with finances. Well done that you could sustain your rockeating dog, Rufus's weird addiction. And thanks for all the love. We're we're happy for the fun times here too, and celebrating with you that Rufus is still with us. Hopefully he doesn't have a taste for non edible things anymore. And well done with your finances. If you all listening, want to submit your bill of the week, if you've got a pet that enjoys eating things that shouldn't be eaten, or you have you know someone named Bill in your life who is really just crushing it in some way or something related to.

Because Jill doesn't believe that anybody feels the same way for him that I do.

Maybe you're just the shest you know.

Nobody else says that because you're the.

Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. Leave us your bill. We're moving on. It's time for the lightning round. The lightning round.

All right, we will both answer this just like a traditional lightning round, but I'll let you ask it since you're you're leading the episode today.

Oh yes, this is Goldie. This question in here for us. It's a good one. I don't people don't ask each other this question. So here you go. Hot take in this lightning round. Is there anything you would be willing to take on debt to have or buy?

I think you know my answer because I have just done it for a house. Because it is an asset, it will be slightly cash flowing. So here's the honest truth. You're never gonna hear me on bigger pockets. I'm not I'm not the person like it's not me. Real estate investing not for me. Tried it, did it, didn't enjoy it. So that's my hot take, and I'm you know, it's I know people who love it, and I tried it once and I was like, Nope, not for me. But we did buy a second property because originally we wanted to get a place for my mom because she rents, and we wanted to just get something that she could live in and pay us rent and we could control her rent. But that didn't happen because prices in our area are so unreasonably high that we literally couldn't find anything that she could live in and we could afford to have her live in it. So but we did get a house, and we will rent out our current home and we will Our hope is to either eliminate our mortgage altogether, so not make any profit. Just either eliminate the mortgage or just cover the two mortgage payments, and we'll use it for the tax benefits annually and in twenty years or something when we sell something, use the appreciation, because the appreciation in Saint Petersburg is higher than average stock market returns. So it was a wise financial decision. It was not the ideal real estate you know, thing you look for, but our market is weird and we did it, and I'm not here for it. Yeah again, So yeah, there you go.

You learned through it for sure, and this will benefit you all in many ways, the owning of these two places. I'm excited for you. This is a big celebration. Really, you just signed yesterday.

I know, and I don't want to. I know, I don't want to deter anyone from investing in real estate because I think it is a super viable way to diversify your income and has a lot of income and investment and tax benefits. It really does, but it is really something like it is a process, and try it once. You don't have to love it, but you don't know until you try. I didn't know that. I didn't love it until I tried, and I don't regret it yet, but I don't want to. I would never steer anyone away from renting or from rental real estate or anything. So I think even if we continue to do real estate, we would consider doing like syndications, which is like way higher level. So yeah, that caveat.

How about you, Jill, Well, I know that you love being super vulnerable on this lightning round, so I'm gonna do that for you. Jen, I think you know the obvious answer is likewise housing. Most of us have a mortgage. It's a decent aim to pay off your mortgage early, but I don't mind having that. It's an asset. I have to live somewhere pay less on my mortgage than I wouldn't a rent. So yes, that's obvious. Something else and I will So I'll process this out loud with you feel free to give me your feedback, and I'll be a little bit vulnerable here. We have been cash flowing renovations on our current house, which has been awesome. It's one of the things that our debt pay off has opened up the door for us to do. I'm beginning to realize, however, that cash flowing things is only so good in a time limited way, similar with debt. Like as you say, debt is neutral, we could use it in a way that is beneficial. And so something that Eric and I have just started to begun thinking about is, Okay, we wanted to cash flow renovations, get them out of, get them done, and then just live in our home and go hard at savings and investing and all of that. Well, now we are nearly two years into being in our home having cash flowed renovations, and it's causing me pause to say, cash flowing is awesome, But when does that stop? Like, when does it stop when you're just going hard at Yes, I don't have debt, but am I still making a wise financial decision with the money that I have to keep throwing large chunks of money at these massive renovations. And so it's making both of us consider would it be more beneficial for us to take a small loan with a low interest rate and invest the money that we're now spending on all of these other areas so that we're not continually pushing off. We don't make a ton of money, right, and so we're going to do best in retirement if we start early in putting money towards retirement. And we are doing that, but we are doing it in really small ways wall cash flowing renovations, because again we're not independently wealthy. But it's starting to make me think, hmm, is it worth considering. I've not done it yet. I'm not saying that I don't know what that decision will be, but to this question, like would you consider it? Sometimes I do wonder what be better to take out a low interest loan to be able to put money into investments, because I don't think it's wise to cash flow large sums of money for years. Yeah, and so's that's where my mind's at.

Yeah, so there are a few things to consider in that. Definitely would never advise taking out a low interest loan to invest that money in the stock market, which is which if it was just going into your house, would kind of be what that is, it would just have it would go through like an intermediary first, because I'm coming at this from the perspective that your primary home is not an investment. It's an asset. It's growing, but you will always need someplace to live. So your primary home where you live is not an investment unless it cash flows. And what you're trying to do part of your renovation is an airbnb that will cash flow. So if you can do the math and figure out how much you'd be paying in interest every month on this small loan compared to what you could be making monthly on the airbnb, and the number and there's profit in the airbnb versus the cost of the loan, then it does make financial It makes numerical sense to finish up the renovations with a loan, as you know, obviously as low the interest you can get so that you can start cash flowing the airbnb, because that numerically makes more sense. If you were just wanting to get finished with renovations and there was no cash flow component to it, and you're like, how should I cash flow renovations and invest, it would be a slowing down of renovations to balance with investing. That would be the solution. And so your situation is unique to a lot of homeowners, but it would just be doing the math on that, on what the loan is going to cost you versus what you're going to make from the airbnb, and if it's more, then the loan makes numerical sense. M thanks, absolutely, Well, here we are two years after that.

Anything you want to add to your story, any think you think you missed or how has your story developed since then?

Yeah, so we did just buy. I mean we are nearing the end of the renovation on that second property, and it has been a lot of low lows. I haven't seen a ton of high highs. I don't think I was pregnant with Atlas when we recorded this, right, and obviously we did the first year of that renovation to most of it, I was either pregnant or had a new So I still think real estate is a good way to diversify your investments, but you have to be very passionate about it, like it is not just a oh, I should do this because somebody said it's a good investment. Just like buying a house, you can love owning your own home, and real estate not be a good investment for you. So that but other than that, my views on debt have not changed. I still think I think debt is neutral.

Yeah, so now you're two years into your renovation and investment and that's I don't know, forget if we said it in this episode or just other episodes. That, Yeah, reaching one financial goal isn't necessarily nirvana. You move on to other things and they pose their own challenges. But going through the process of becoming debt free can definitely build some of the muscles and resilience that will be necessary for some of the future goals. Things you can take with you learn from Refine.

Paying off debt is a fantastic financial goal. It is fantastic. It's just not the only one, and it may not be the best one for everyone in every season, but it is fantastic and so glad that we did it.

I'm so glad that all of you are listening and have listened, And I'm also glad for people who leave really kind reviews like this one that came from listener two one five perfect blend of practical and mindset five stars. I've listened to almost the entire backlog, and there's a fantastic mix of practical tips and strategies along with mindset questions to help you get to the root of your decisions and the kind of life you want. They're friendly and fun to listen to. Thanks listener to one five.

Thank you listener to one five. I am host too, and I appreciate you.

Oh well, thanks for listening again. If you want to leave us a review, please go ahead and do that wherever we're listening to this podcast, sign up for the friend letter. All of these things help us and if you want more from us, there's just there's ways to do it.

Tune in this summer debt free stories, and the book is going to be available for pre order soon. So yeah. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Siriani.

I'm hungry.

Oh, I'm hungry too. Yeah, we're gonna use me half so we're probably gonna yeah.

But we got sushi sushi on the credit card.

This is definitely an after show.

The moment.

We are in the middle of editing the book and it's long days and this is our real ward.

So we're gonna work hard, eat hard, work hard, eat hard.

That's that's your takeaway for the day.

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