I'm Renee Benes and I'm a mom of three.
A few years ago, my family and I decided to downsize our 3,400 square foot
home and take control of our finances.
We now live a simpler, happier life, and I'm showing others
how they can do the same.
My parents had a big influence on the way I view money.
I had a dad who, every other weekend, we would go do fun things.
And I had a mom who very much was an impulse shopper.
So I had that sense that I always needed to be buying something.
But thankfully I knew in my younger years to stay away from credit cards.
I was sometimes working three jobs,
but I was constantly spending.
When I was at the very young age of 20, I met my husband,
Tom, and his daughter, Destiny.
We got married and soon after we moved in to a townhouse.
In 2010, we welcomed our first daughter into the world.
And in 2011, our son came in right after.
We started to live by that belief,
like, we need more space.
We have a growing family.
So we decided to look for something a little bit bigger.
It wound up being one of those things where we kept upping the price range.
And that's when we found our big house.
It was 3,400 finished square feet and it seemed like it had everything we needed.
I don't think I can stress enough how little thought went
into the purchase of this house.
We didn't consider any additional costs.
Our estimated monthly payment was close to $1,900 a month and in the
townhouse it had been more like $1,200.
Our taxes also went up about a thousand dollars a year.
It was also in need of upkeep.
The additional cost of housing expenses was
easily around $500 a month or more.
I also had student loans that I was working on paying off.
I would do a monthly budget, but I would budget only our needed expenses.
We weren't putting any money in savings.
I began to realize that the lifestyle that we were living wasn't really
aligned with the things that I wanted.
So in 2015, still less than two years after we moved in, I was
saying, "let's sell the house."
They say when it rains, it pours.
My son wound up in the hospital and it left us with all of this medical debt.
So I started using my credit card like crazy.
During that time, the credit card debt went from about $5,000 to $12,000.
Because we got to this deep pit of financial despair,
it was just this overwhelming fire that was lit within us
to start paying off debt.
Thankfully in those two years, we had already gained
a lot of equity in our home.
So we were able to sell it with a profit to be able to put in a
down payment toward our next home.
Finally, in May 2016, we went from 3,400 square feet to 1,300 finished.
Our taxes went down by a thousand dollars a year.
We weren't spending that cost on lawn care and home upkeep
that we had once been spending.
We reduced our grocery budget by about $500 a month.
Eliminated clothing costs by about $200 a month or more.
Doing that allowed me to build a more intentional budget and really
begin to see how much excess we were previously living with.
And as we went through the process of paying off our debt, from June to
December of 2016, we paid off $6,000.
We increased my husband's 401k contributions from what was
probably around 3% to 10%.
And then from March 2017 to March 2018, we were able to knock out that
final $10,000 of credit card debt.
The benefits of paying off that debt and simplifying our lives gave
us everything we really wanted.
Now we provide for our kids more.
Destiny, our oldest, has now grown up.
There've been times where her car goes out and as a parent, it's
so nice to be able to say, "You don't have to stress about this.
We'll figure it out."
My biggest recommendations for people when it comes to downsizing is to really
dive into why you want to downsize
and then do your research.
There are absolutely ways that you can start to simplify without downsizing.
Look at what you're spending consistently every month.
What of that can you eliminate?
Because if you can start to eliminate those things, then you start
to get money consistently back.
Another tip is really knowing what you want for your life in the bigger picture.
And I think when you connect your finances to those bigger goals, it
makes it so much easier to simplify your life so that you can accelerate
toward where you really want to go.