Breaking Chains: Our Debt Free Journey

Jamie and I celebrated becoming debt free in front of millions of viewers on August 26, 2019. We broke the chains of financial bondage and loudly proclaimed our victory for all to hear. We had finally found the way to financial peace! Our journey is far from over, but we are well on our way to meeting our financial goals now that we've dumped debt. That is the end of the story. We thought we would take you to the beginning so you can see what led us into slavery to our lenders. Although we walked slowly into the pit together we took different paths to get there and viewed the ever increasing muddy trail through very different colored glasses. We are polar opposites in so many ways and thought it would be helpful to tell you both sides of the story. Our hope is to spread hope and we pray that you read this before you ever get stuck under the type of burden we found ourselves under. Please don't be as stupid as we were. Here is our story.

Macy:

I’ve always been a natural saver. When I was five I remember my parents explaining how I would now get a weekly allowance, and that it was a privilege that would be taken away for bad behavior. I was obviously thrilled at the prospect of having my own money. My parents never had to teach me how to save money for things I wanted but they did teach me to always set aside a portion to give to the church. The amount I chose was up to me but this instilled a habit to always give a portion of what I’ve been given. Even before I had ever heard Dave Ramsey I had created my own budget and envelope system. I know, right….such a nerd! I had a little box that I kept my money in and I even kept a ledger of my weekly deposits. There was a spending envelope, and then several different savings envelopes for things that I really wanted. Money never burned a hole in my wallet. I liked to hold on to it and put a lot of thought into how I would spend it. I probably got this trait from my Mother who always seemed to have a stash of candy from Halloween even though it was now Easter. She is a natural saver in all area’s of her life. Handling my own money made me appreciate the things I bought that took a long time to save for. I bought a really nice digital camera, an Xbox 360 and a MacBook Pro. Sometimes a grandparent knew I was saving and would give me a chunk of change to help it go more quickly, but most of the money was saved by me. My grandparents would pay me for taking care of their flower beds, cleaning debris after hurricanes, cleaning the house, and picking up nails out of the yard when they replaced their roof. The nail project was one of my favorites because I got to use this really cool magnet to find the nails and got paid five to ten cents per nail depending on the size. The negative side to being a saver is that you can get so caught up in saving that it becomes hard to actually spend money and enjoy life sometimes. I needed permission from a budget to make me feel okay about spending my money.

When I started to date Jamie in college I quickly found out that he was a huge Dave Ramsey fan. I didn’t really know much about Dave other than occasionally hearing him on the radio as our family went to the mid-week service at our church. Because he had read Dave’s book, listened to his show, and even owned his board game I assumed that he was great with money. After all, he successfully ran a lawn business and even had his own employees as a sixteen year old. We didn't really talk a lot about money while we dated and kept all of our finances separate until we got married. Looking back though I don't think I realized that he wasn't a saver like I was. I stayed skinny during college because I hated the cafeteria food, and couldn't bring myself to spend money on groceries or fast food when the awful food I usually ate had been paid for already. Since my tuition was graciously paid for I worked hard to earn money for things like my car insurance, gas, and our tiny nest egg since I quickly knew that this was the guy I was going to marry! I spent a semester in the United Kingdom and still regret not spending more money and experiencing more things during those four months because I was trying to hold on to most of my money. It was a smart decision, but I probably could have cut myself a little more slack than I had.

We merged our lives and bank accounts together in June of 2015 right after graduation. My nest egg of a few thousand dollars was spent way quicker than I anticipated. My Dad had handled the finances in my parent's relationship and I guess that I always kind of figured that all husbands take care of the money. I didn't really question how our money was spent because I married a Dave Ramsey guru who was going to always do the financially correct thing...right? This first year of marriage was a huge eye-opener as it is for every couple. Money started to brew contention in my attitude towards Jamie. I didn't want to fully handle the finances because that seemed like too much for me, and I just thought he would be better at it. I always asked before buying something, but he would buy things all the time without consulting me. Whenever I wondered how we were doing financially I would ask him about it and he would just say we were fine. There was no form, spreadsheet, or written budget to show me which made me feel lost. He said we were fine, but it didn't feel fine because there was nothing concrete, and I felt like we were flying by the seat of our pants. If I nagged him he would create a quick budget but it would soon fall apart just a few weeks later.

A year and a half into our marriage we decided it was time to buy a house. There wasn't a whole lot of stock behind our "why" in that decision. Renting, in our mind, was a huge waste of money and we were always around people much older than us who were moving into bigger and better homes. Deep down, we felt the need to keep up with our peers and since we are telling the truth here I think we thought it would simply make us happy. At the time we had ZERO savings! That didn't matter of course because we would simply borrow the money for the down payment and while we were at it we would sign up for a thirty year mortgage since our monthly payment would be lower. Everything was totally under control! (please tell me you can sense the heavy sarcasm in that last sentence) Jamie assured me that we would pay back the personal loan for the down payment in just a few months when in reality it took about a year and a half. When you move into a home and have zero in savings emergencies will soon follow. The house was in bad shape and needed a lot of cleaning and renovating. Since we didn't have any savings we had to use a credit card just to get by. It wasn't a big deal...again we would surely have it paid off in just a few months.

Jamie had a job as an associate pastor and there isn't much of a ladder to climb in that "career". That isn't the point of ministry work anyway. This fact made me think of the future and how I guess our life and our finances were just going to stay like this forever. I remember asking Jamie how we would ever retire or if we ever would even have that ability. As I cried in the shower I asked him if we would end up being eighty year old door greeters at Wal-mart. He didn't really have an answer. We had NO plan whatsoever. I felt hopeless.

It was now January of 2018 and bitterly cold in the Mahoning Valley where we lived and we were eager for our tax return to come in. Our basement was unfinished and not very useful so we wanted to work on that next when the money came in. Jamie got home from work one night and told me that he wanted to use the money to finally start getting out of debt. I wasn't very excited with the prospect, but I knew it was the right decision. He ordered Financial Peace University and we started working through it every night as we ate dinner. I was onboard immediately, and we felt like we finally had some hope! We had spent a lot of money on Amazon during the Christmas season, and made good use of their amazing return policy to quickly save our baby emergency fund of a thousand dollars. Our water heater went out on us shortly after this, but we were able to use some of our emergency fund to get a dented water heater as a replacement. Jamie was listening to Dave's podcast while installing the new heater and realized that he wasn't doing what he wanted to do in life and he was missing out on his calling. I encouraged him to find a different job, and he mentioned that Ramsey Solutions was actually hiring. He was surprised when I told him to submit an application. At the time I didn't realize that it was not a remote job, and meant that we would have to move to Nashville. When I did make the connection I was actually at peace even though it would require a huge move and having to start over in a new place. There was no reason for me to have so much peace about this huge change but I guess that was just one of the ways the Lord made his blessing clear to us.

The interview process took four months and we had a realtor on standby in the event that Jamie was offered the position. All of the interviews thus far were conducted via phone or video chat, but in April we were invited to down for a final, in-person interview. He was given a job offer which he gladly accepted. As we looked at apartments in the Nashville area it was intimidating to realize that our rent for a two bedroom apartment was going to cost more than our current mortgage on a four bedroom house. In May we went on the Disney cruise that was thankfully fully paid for and put our house on the market as soon as we got back. We didn't even have enough money to move and had to accept yet another personal loan. It was sickening to add to our pile of debt, but the move was necessary and so we did what we had to do. Jamie started working and I was busy settling into our new life. Our grocery budget was forty dollars per week which also included things like toiletries and household goods. I applied for a few jobs to try and bolster our income. Jamie began driving for Lyft and Uber on Friday evenings and all day on Saturday. It was a very lonely time, but we knew this is what needed to be done, for a while at least. A few months later our house finally sold and we were able to start making progress on our debt snowball. I got accepted as a Shipt shopper and started delivering groceries about a week after I found out we were expecting a baby! It was really hard to stick to the slim grocery budget as a pregnant lady who has a new food craving every ten seconds, but I survived. I worked with Shipt until I entered my third trimester and knew my body needed a rest. Thankfully we had almost completely paid off our debts by then and a few weeks after I stopped working we were able to pay everything off after receiving our tax return.

It was so nice to be able to spend more time together as just the two of us before we welcomed our little girl into the world! We can now move on to new goals since we aren't bound to our debts every month. Our budget gives us freedom to spend without feeling guilty. For the first time in our marriage we are building our savings account and we are investing in our retirement. I no longer have to worry about having to get a job when I'm old because I'll be taken care of because we've invested in a future that will bless us and allow us to be a blessing to others. Our life is forever changed since we decided to just do the dang thing. The choice to dump debt isn't easy. It may take you years of being uncomfortable, lonely, and tired but when you look back you'll see that it was a very small part of your life and a small price to pay for financial freedom!

Jamie:

When I was a kid money was pretty hard to come by, or so it seems looking back now and hearing stories from that time. I remember my Dad making the big deal about the cost of certain things and I remember becoming distinctly familiar with the brand “Great Value”. I obviously have incredible memories from when I was this age, lots of camping trips, family get-togethers and of course the endless time you spend with your cousins when you’re that young. Money, to me was a means to an end; typically a very short end. I am definitely not a saver by nature. My efforts at saving money were always very specific and usually very short-lived. My siblings and I received an allowance in exchange for chores done around the house, paid out bi-weekly. You can bet that my money hardly ever lasted more than a week. My sister always seemed to have more money than I did, she didn’t seem to feel the burning hole that I felt whenever Mom or Dad would hand me that crisp ten dollar bill. It was always so hard for me to know I had the ability to purchase something and then not do it. The thrill of the buy was intoxicating, and frankly, it still is.

As I got a little older I began to understand cost a little more, I had a better sense of the difference between one dollar and five dollars. Of course, I always understood the basic mathematical difference, but the value of items began to become a thing I paid attention to or at least had the ability to do so. When I was thirteen or fourteen I had my first ‘job’ working for a man in our church. He would pick me up every morning at around seven or eight and we’d work till four or five in the evening building his new garage. I don’t remember how long this lasted, but it was probably the better part of the summer. I do, however, remember how much I got paid: two dollars per hour. Now, that seems like chump change, even to a thirteen year old. Well, if you add up eight hours a day times five days a week and you’re paid eighty to ninety dollars every Friday I was rich beyond my wildest dreams! The funny thing about this looking back now is I didn’t know what to spend my money on. I’d never had that much money before. I remember actually putting my mind to it and saving up for a Nintendo Wii. The Wii had released the previous fall and was still a pretty hot item. At two hundred and fifty dollars plus tax, that was without a doubt the most expensive thing I had ever purchased. I finally had something to throw all my money at. Walmart was part of our Friday night ritual as a family and Friday also happened to be payday for me. I spent what seems like every penny I earned on Wii games, controllers, accessories and attachments. Not one penny was saved.

Later, when I was fifteen, my dad helped guide me as I started a small lawn business called LawnCrafters. I actually just found my old three-ring binder that I ran the business out of in my storage unit a couple of weeks ago. A lot of good memories, a lot of life lessons, and a lot of money was acquired over the next three or so years and so little of it was ever saved. I remember the summer after graduation, it hit me around June that I’d be going to college in about eight weeks and I didn’t have any money. So, for what seemed like the first time in my life, I buckled down and stopped spending money, I was on a mission to take some money to college, which I was paying for myself (not that my folks weren’t willing to, they were, but that’s a story for another blog post). I left for school with about twenty five hundred dollars in August.

Survival was the name of the game. My monthly tuition with room and board started at about eight hundred dollars per month for the first year (remember I started with over two grand) and by the time I graduated it was up to sixteen hundred dollars per month in addition to books, fuel and insurance for my truck, and any leisure money for having fun with friends and making sure my girlfriend didn’t leave me for someone who could provide more Taco Bell than I could. I was making pretty good money for a college student. I was bringing in thirteen dollars an hour and working forty-five to seventy hours per week. It definitely could’ve worked had a put any effort at all into managing my money, but it didn’t. I managed money the same way seven out of ten adults still do. Check the account, if it’s above twelve dollars, we’re getting pizza! Instead of living on purpose, I went by the seat of my pants (or rather, the growl of my stomach). The cafeteria food was obviously less than appealing, so off to Chipotle I went. I did manage to graduate debt free (roughly a sixty thousand dollar adventure) in spite of myself thanks to the job I had and some really good summer jobs that I got to do with my dad. It still hurts to think of how much money I wasted during that time.

My college method seemed to be working for me so I drug it with me into my brand new marriage. My wife, a natural saver as you’ve already read, had a nice little nest egg for us, amounting to whatever was left after her semester overseas (love you babe!). We promptly burned through her several thousand dollar nest egg. I remember the day when I realized that we had less than fifty dollars left in our bank account…the entire bank account, checking and savings. I had to break it to my new wife that she couldn’t go to the store that week because I needed fuel to get to work. We both proceeded to freak out and take action, which brought to light a big problem. We had one bank account, which is a step above some marriages, but neither of us really knew what was going on with it. Well, I knew that it was close to empty each week, but whenever it would get below a hundred dollars I had it set to auto transfer another couple hundred over which freed me up to spend way beyond our fairly humble means. We had to dig in and find out what the problem was so we pulled a report of all our debit card transactions for the past sixty days and let me tell you, I wish I still had that report of all the stupid things I bought! I specifically remember spending forty-five dollars on some pdf that claimed to be the number one authority on training your Boston Terrier (we recently acquired a new puppy). Forty-five dollars is a lot of money when you’re only making twenty-four thousand per year. It was time to change some things. We took a baby step and made a really basic, crude budget. It probably had just seven items on it and as long as those seven things were covered, we were good. Thankfully, we haven’t been down that low again since then but there was still room for improvement.

We were married in 2015 and in 2017 my dad passed away suddenly in a horrible car accident. To put it very plainly, it shook me to my core. I was forced to evaluate everything in my life up to that point. What I found was the I was on the path of least resistance. I was going with the flow and had no intention of doing anything but just that. Losing my dad changed everything for me. It’s somewhat hard to explain but the best way I think I can put it is this. Losing a parent removes some part of you that you draw security from, you’re suddenly much more vulnerable than you’ve ever realized before. Before, you knew if everything else failed, you could always count on Mom and Dad. Now Dad was gone and Mom’s life was thrust into a new kind of hell for her that she didn’t know how to handle. She was now facing no income (unfortunately, my Dad didn’t have life insurance. It was “on his list” but I think a lot of us can relate to those lists we have that rarely get completed. My Dad was the sole bread winner for the family because Mom was at home raising my ten younger siblings (you read that right, I’m the oldest of eleven). She had so much on her plate now that I felt like I needed to be a point of security for her, and I was in no position to do that.

Fast forward six months and Mom is running dad’s lawn business, the same little startup I had in high school. Dad ran with it and now it was doing ver well, well enough to pay a mortgage and feed ten kids anyway! I could at least rest easy now that her and the kids were going to eat and keep the house. Time for me to turn back to myself and give my life a good looking over.

I came to realize that most of the decisions I made were a result (at least unconsciously) of me trying to please my Dad. I went to a Bible college because I knew it would make him happy. I accepted a job working for a church at his behest, he was so excited and proud…and I was miserable. This is no fault of my parents, mind you. I should have spoken up long ago about my dreams and desires. Path of least resistance, remember? I wasn’t one to rock the boat. The six months following my dads death brought me closer to my wife than anything else had. We grew closer in that time than we had the previous four years of dating and two years of marriage. I also had the benefit of a new lead pastor at my church (aka my new boss) who helped me realize that I wasn’t happy. Okay, well I knew I wasn’t happy but he finally got me to address it. After talking with him for a couple months and finally being honest with myself, I decided to look for another job. More than that, I decided to finally take control over my life which brings us to the last part of the story, our journey out of debt.

We had purchased a home in March 2017, three months before Dad passed. Now nine months later in January 2018 we find ourselves with a pretty large thirty year mortgage and about twelve thousand dollars in credit card debt. Yeah, it racks up pretty quick. My reasoning for taking out three credit cards was: I would put all the house repairs on it (oh yeah, we bought a fixer upper with no money, ha!) and pay them off each month, thus raising our credit score. They got me. Macy and I finally wised up (is that a thing?) and decided we needed a plan. Fortunately I knew just where to find one...Financial Peace University. We purchased a membership (I think they were running a New Year special of $100) and we started watching the videos. They presented a really simple plan for financial success…or financial peace. Get it? Okay, let's move on. Here are the seven steps in the plan:

Save a thousand dollars for a starter emergency fund. Pay off all your non-mortgage debt using the debt snowball. Save a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. Invest fifteen percent of your gross income into retirement. Save for your kids' college. Pay off your home early. Become wealthy and outrageously generous

We grew our thousand dollar emergency pretty easily by returning all the things we bought off of Amazon that month. After that, we put things on hold for a couple months because we knew (or at least we were hoping) that we would be moving to Nashville later that spring, and so we did. We actually had to borrow more money just to make the move because we didn’t have the cash to do it (oh the irony). We spent the next five months working extra jobs just to stay afloat. We had our mortgage payment still because our trashy house hadn’t sold yet in addition to our our new rent payment. Turns out they weren’t giving away those apartments in (or even near) Nashville. So with our mortgage payment and our new rent payment that was almost double our mortgage, we struggled to make any progress on our debt. Queue September, our house sells and we can finally start to make some extra debt payments. After that, it went pretty quickly and by April of 2019 we had paid everything off and dropped the extra jobs. Sure, driving Lyft on the weekends and having my now pregnant wife deliver groceries wasn’t very fun (especially if you're struggling to make ends meet for five of those months), but it was a small price to pay for freedom. We now had freedom to choose to let my wife stay home with our new baby because we don’t have a car payment to make or a three hundred dollar credit card bill due each month. We had the freedom to do what we felt was best for our family.

In summary, our path to financial and emotional freedom went hand in hand, at least for me. Now, my wife and I have an online budget using an app called EveryDollar that we both look at and lay out each month in advance. We track every transaction, yes, every single one of our dollars that come through our bank account. Every month isn’t perfect; life still happens and that is when savings is there to pick up the slack unlike before when we were living without a plan and not on the same page. Becoming debt free has made our marriage stronger and given us both a sense of peace that we didn’t have before, I highly recommend freedom.

You can watch our debt free scream here! This was such a fun and incredibly intimidating thing to do, and we were so honored to be the first one's to do their scream at the new Ramsey HQ! There was so much more to be said, but the cat just kind of get's your tongue when you're on a live stream, haha!

Here are a couple of the resources that we used to get out of debt and take steps to do something with the life we've been given. These are affiliate links and we may earn a small commission at no cost to you if you make a purchase. We only promote products we use ourselves and wholeheartedly stand behind. Thank you for your support!

Click here to purchase Financial Peace University!

Get info on EveryDollar, Dave's FREE Budgeting app here!