Hi, my name is Lydia Senn.
I am a work at home mom.
I am a virtual assistant, and I also have a podcast and a YouTube channel
where I teach people how to save money.
My parents were not wealthy by Western standards, but we did not lack for things.
And if they struggled, it wasn't something that as a child I knew about
now that I'm an adult, my parents have been a little bit more forthright with
me about how there were times where it was tense and they did struggle
because money wasn't openly discussed.
It was kind of this mystery to me and something that I kind of
had to figure out as an adult.
How do you manage money?
What is a credit score?
We felt that freedom of being out of school, we moved to a city and we took
advantage of those city opportunities.
We went to concerts, we went to movies.
We went to vacations that we put on credit cards.
My husband took out student loans.
We had $36,000 in debt.
And about half of that was student loan debt.
We felt like we had the rest of our lives to pay off this debt.
We'll get to it.
When we get to it, I was fortunate to have enough scholarship money to pay.
My way through school, but when you marry a person, their debt becomes your debt.
I was a journalist at the time I was working at a newspaper in north
Georgia and I loved my job, but I realized how much daycare was
going to cost when our child came.
And I realized when all of a said and done , when we paid off all of our
debt for the month, when we paid all of her expenses, I would only be bringing
home about a hundred dollars a week.
And so I just started thinking about, okay, well, what do I
need to do to move us forward?
So that we don't have to live here forever so that we can send this
kid to college so that maybe I can have some career flexibility.
And I also knew that right now, while I'm pregnant, we can't put extra money
towards debt because we're going to have to pay this enormous hospital bill.
So that was kind of practice for me of, can I save this
massive amount of money in the next five months.
And so I did, we just did everything we could during that five months to
save up as much money as we could.
We moved to a lower cost of living area, which I know is
not an option for most people.
And while I was at home, I started working as a virtual assistant and in
five months time, we saved up $8,000.
After our baby was born.
We were motivated at that point.
We can tackle this 36,000.
I decided to pursue some freelance opportunities.
And so I just kind of made a list of all the skills that I had.
And I'm a decent writer.
I'm a good communicator.
How can I turn this into a few extra dollars a week?
And so I started writing for political campaigns.
I started writing for small businesses that needed copy on their website,
whatever I could find, I took it.
It's important for ourselves to give ourselves a break.
So vacations are amazing.
I think more people should go on them, if you can.
You can do something called a sinking fund.
So the first thing that I would do is pick a couple of places that you want
to go and just do a cost estimate.
So how much is it going to cost to get there?
How much are we going to spend on food and activities, total that up?
And then you take that number.
You figure out, okay.
We want to go in six months, six months is 12 paychecks.
So we divide this number by 12, and we're going to put that much money
into a fund to pay for this vacation.
So it gives you plenty of time to save, plenty of time to plan, and plenty
of time to just get excited and give you something to look forward to.
And you can use sinking funds for anything.
If you need to save for an appliance, a holiday, a birthday,
a car, and it's motivational because you watch that number grow.
So one of the most rewarding parts of this journey for us has been the fact
that we're able to set our kids up to not have to deal with some of the same
things that we've had to deal with.
One of the things that I like to tell people when I'm in a podcast
or a video is I'm so proud of you.
I see how hard you're working.
I know how hard this has been for you.
And I know that you're going to do great things because of the choices that
you're making now that you know more.
We sometimes want to quantify how much we love our children,
by how much he hands them.
And we don't show our children, our parents, anyone, our love
by how much we spend on them.
And you show it by the quality of time that we give them and a
happy whole healthy parents is worth more than any amount of
money that you could spend on them.
So give them, you take care of yourself, speak kindly to yourself.
And drink more water.