we're gonna talk about how you can pay off your debt and how you can do it
really quickly and in this video I'm gonna take you to an interview I did
with one of our students who paid off $22,000 in less than nine months and I
love hearing stories like this and so I just wanted to bring her on and chat a
little bit about what she did how she did it if there's anything unique and
special that kind of happened that allowed her to pay off so much that so
quickly so if that sounds good you just stay tuned and we're going to get
started in just a second
all right guys I'm excited to have Shannon Brown on the
line today and she has a really cool story I found out about and so I just
want to bring her on have her share her story and how she paid off 22,000 bucks
in nine months which is really really fast I'm always impressed by these like
super achievers who can do really really great things and I want to see how they
did it and and all that so that's why I brought her on so without further ado
Shannon thank you for coming on and sharing a little bit with us today
yeah thank you so much for letting me share my story
no it's my pleasure
22,000 and nine months I mean I feel like that takes some love of superpower
what was the big thing that really amplified it for you
you know what it was around that time that you know I never even thought that you know
living debt-free was I thing a possibility you know but I just it was everywhere all of
a sudden every blog post I saw books you know discussions with friends um and so
I was you know obviously it was God you know calling calling us that was what we
were supposed to do at that time so um he had his hand in the whole the whole
story in the whole nine months so everything that happened um it was
absolutely miraculous you know there'd be you know a bigger income tax refund
than we thought there'd be and you know an opportunity
for me to make more money from the blog or I'm also an architect so I got a job
doing that from home for a short time and it was just crazy stuff happened
that there was no way you know I didn't go out looking for it just came to us
you know I hear that okay so that happened for us like I it was one of
those things where we took the steps forward to whatever we did our part and
then we watched all these miraculous things just like come in like wind on
our back to help us get it paid off really fast and I hear stories like that
all the time so I'm really excited yeah I'm really glad you said that because
there really is something to it and and I love when God shows up and you know
it's like this was not a coincidence so yeah because we had that too so I
completely get that so oh go ahead what you're saying is we took that step
when we said you know this is what we're supposed to do and we have no idea how
we're gonna do it yeah and so we thought it would take us years very you know
frugal living and you know we still look very very frugally as it still but and
we set out and we actually put a like an automatic payment extra toward our loan
and we said we don't know where this we did $39 the first month and we said we
don't know where this is gonna come from and sure enough it was always there and
then we were able to of course increase that amount it seemed like every month
there'd be something else all right so through the process
were there any mistakes or any things that you wish you would have done
differently you know in that nine-month process
oh gosh it's okay if there's not
I'm just curious yeah there's nothing that I can think of
you know offhand that I would change it went really really well and I think just
taking that first step was the key yeah just to start and not be afraid to make
that goal even though it seemed like an impossible goal yeah and it just really
didn't work out yeah it is there's something about taking the first step
and yeah because there are so many people I think who just don't take that
first step and they never see what's possible you know because it is an act
of faith I mean to some extent just to decide I'm going to do this you know so
yeah I completely agree I mean the reason I asked the question is because I
think there's a lot of people who you know in our case I was completely on
board and I had to get my wife on board and kind of sell it to her a little bit
and so and one of the things that I did helped I think but I could have done a
lot better was been a bit more supportive of her because she was making
much more of a sacrifice than I was because I was already used to living
below my means a bit and she was used to living way above and so she was the one
who had to make a major change and in anyway so that was one thing that if I
were answering the question would be one thing I would probably do a little bit
differently to probably be a little bit softer and possibly be a little bit less
rigid and more I don't just be willing to make more
sacrifices to accommodate her and her pace I guess did you have any issues
like that and well you know what my husband it got on board really fast
after I said this is what I really think we should do you know and I just kind of
gave him the space to think about it and within a couple of weeks he was on board
now that's a question that I get a lot for my readers about you know how do I
get my sweat spouse on board and yeah so I know that's a big issue for a lot of
couples and we you know living on one income we had a lot of experience
a lot of mistakes leading up to that point where we started to try to pay off
debt and that's really when we started learning what the right way to do it you
know the right way to yeah budget I had tried to keep a budget for so long
every month I tried every month we'd go over and it wasn't until we finally just
made like some small changes like learning about the zero-sum budget and
using a couple unlike apps we used Mint at the time so it would automatically
kind of categorize and let us see and up-to-date you know every day every week
um so a couple things like that that yeah we definitely made a lot of
mistakes before yeah yeah well that's great that's great to hear that it just
was a smooth nine months it just kind of went I mean yeah so in after that so
once you got out of debt was it how did it being out of debt compared to how you
envisioned being out of debt
I've done a few interviews about our story and I get
this question well I get the question a lot of you know what changed for you or
what did you different after you finally made that last payment and honestly we
haven't changed our lifestyle that much because of um you know the goal of
living mostly on one income and you know after being debt-free there's a lot of
you know goals there's a lot of next steps like we now we're saving well
first as soon as we paid off our debt we started saving for an emergency fund and
then once we got that done now we're saving for a house so no you know
there's just there's always something and of course with the kids growing and
we just kind of keep using that momentum I guess of the feeling of success that
okay we did this so we can take the next step
yeah take the next step yeah and I I just love how it builds like a snowball
because once that debts paid off you free up all this extra income to move
towards those goals so much faster you know and that's just one of my favorite
things this is watching that thing to speed up faster and faster towards those
other goals you know and the other thing is similar to that
is during our debt payoff I increased my income from home and so then I have that
a little bit of extra to contribute to our next goals so it's not like that
suddenly went away or that I you know quit doing it I've learned so much about
you know building my business and everything that I can use as we continue
on in our journey yeah that's awesome all right so one more question and then
I'll I'll let you get back to things but um so if you have a you know one of your
good friends comes up to you and you know basically says I hear what you did
you you paid off your debt what an awesome thing to do what advice would
you give them if they were asking for advice what would you say
oh gosh I could probably go on talking about it all day long you know probably the first
piece of advice I would say is just and get an idea and find out where you
actually are and I know for us and then a lot of my readers they don't even know
how much they owe how much they're spending every month or where the
money's going yeah so if you can get a picture of that and just get a grasp of
okay you know it's maybe not as big as you think it is it's maybe not as
impossible as you think it is that is a really good first step and then like for
us just taking that first step of committing to paying extra like even a
tiny bit can really take months or even years off of your debt pay off so
feeling like oh you know I don't have any extra I can't make a difference I
might as well not even try like when you really look at the numbers like if you
do we did a snowball calculator we saw okay just this little bit is in a take
off I can't remember exactly how much it was several months and got us there so
much closer okay well what if we do a little bit more and a little bit more
and it was really just inspiring to see that so that helps get us going
that's awesome well I appreciate you taking time to get on the call and
sharing your story and everything with us so thank you very very much
oh thank you so much for having me
it's my pleasure
all right I hope you found this helpful and if you
did I would love it if you could leave us a thumbs up down below and on this
channel just as a reminder what we do here is we give you practical tips and
strategies to put more money in your pocket and then we also kind of explore
some of the timeless biblical principles and how to manage that money so that
sounds good to you as well you can hit that subscribe button so you can hear
from us as we create new stuff but that is all for today so have a wonderful
rest of your day and I'll see you in the next video