Thread by @OneGSisneros

How we got out $45,000 of debt in one year.

It wasn’t sexy.

(thread)

You have to want it.

We were tired of not having enough money at the end of the month. Exhausted really.

We owned two small businesses and we were grossing $90,000 a year!

If we lost even one of our clients, we would have been in real trouble.

Have a strong driving reason to get out of debt this way.

• we wanted to give more
• we wanted to make the world a better place

We couldn't do that in debt.

First things first.

We bought (and read) The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

You can get it at your local library for free.

We wrote out our plan AND DID NOT DEVIATE.

This was the fuel to our plan. It's extreme. But it works.

We decided to stop spending money for an entire year.

ZERO.
No Christmas presents.
No books.
No candy bars.
No restaurants, not even fast food.

Just the very basic necessities. Food. Utilities. Car. Mortgage. etc.

So many people told us, “We almost never go out and we don’t spend that much.”

Rigggght.

You don’t know how much you spend until you cut yourself off completely.

Easy to say, harder to do.

We were used to going out on a date once a week.

Generally, a nice restaurant and a movie…because “we deserved it.”

This was one of the hardest things for us to give up.

BUT.

During our "no spending year" we gave ourselves one night out a week…to a coffee shop.

No mocha.
No specialty drink.
No delicious baked snacks.

Black coffee (cream & sugar for my wife). That was it.

We were determined.

The first month was brutal. B R U T A L.

But we saved $1,000 as a small emergency fund!

By month two we were ready to get down to business.

Our goal was to attack the smallest debts first.

Dave Ramsey calls this the debt snowball.

Once the smallest debt was paid off, we applied that payment to the next smallest debt.

At 6 months we were left with our car and 2 big credit cards balances.

At this point it seemed like debt had literally melted off.

We were determined to “find” money and started having garage sales and selling things.

We owned two small businesses, so I started aggressively looking for new clients. Something I’d never done before.

With every new client, we were paying down even more debt.

For Christmas we gave love notes and baked goods to friends and family.

My wife gave art and I gave digital photographs.

To this day, it was one of our more memorable Christmases.

It took us a year and two months to pay off everything but our mortgage.

There aren't many feelings greater than this.

(If you know, you know)

Guess how we celebrated?

We cooked homemade pizza and opened a bottle of wine.

No big dinner.
No massive spending.
Even the bottle of wine was under $25.

In conclusion, this is what we learned:

• You have to want it BAD
• You have to have a driving reason - For us it was so we could give more
• Have a plan
• Not spending money is HARD for a few months - Then it becomes a game - FUN
• Celebrate every small debt you pay off

• Work as a team. You both have to be on board.
• Sell the crap you're not using.
• Find more money / Create another stream of income (THIS IS A HACK)
• Be consistent (THIS IS ALSO A HACK)
• Don’t deviate from the plan. No cheat days (DAMN. THIS IS ALSO A HACK!)

We’ve never gone back into debt.

Actually, 2 years later we sold our home and our two businesses and moved to Guatemala.

We live in a beautiful, humble, minimalistic home.

We've given our lives to serve the poor.

My DM’s are open if you have questions or if I can help in any way.

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