Ep. 172 — Getting Married With Six Figure Debt

Hey, hey, Hey, I set up for a young woman that I met in Atlanta last weekend, she said, and make to day.

Every time she hears that. So we're back and we're black and brown.

I'm Tiffany, I'm Mandy, and this is brown and busy. Happy hump Day.

Yes, I'm super excited because we have an interview.

In honesty, they're like the cutest couple in the world.

So I was instagram stalking as I do, and I came across the story of this phenomenal couple from my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia. Hey, so in Atlanta, it's just an Atlanta themed episode today. Tiffany was that landa this weekend without me, But it's fine. And this couple, their names are Leo and Faith and they are twenty seven years old and thirty years old, just married last year, and they decided to spend their first year tackling one hundred thousand dollars worth of debt

It's just a great, great lesson that you guys are going to learn today because it's just it's not easy when you're it's one thing to make your own financial decisions and goals and choices. It's another when you have to this is not a boyfriend or whatever, like, you must consider someone else's feelings when you're tackling your financial goals and theirs as well.

Yes, so excited to have them on the show. You guys are going to take a quick break and be right back with our interview with Leo and Faith. I can't even imagine what it would be like if I got married and then we sat down one day, did some calculations and realized we had close to two hundred thousand dollars of debt. But I wanted to bring on this week's guest to the show, Faith and Leo from Atlanta, because I came across them on Instagram and their story

Yes, thank you for yes, thanks for having me, thank you.

We're glad to be here.

How how wow did you do this, How did you well take us back to when you guys first met, when you got married, and when was it that you realized you were sitting on Was it two hundred something thousand dollars worth of debt?

Yes, it was approximately two hundred.

And eleven thousand, and we met in twenty fourteen. I moved from Boston for a job here in Atlanta, and Faith moved here for school. She went to Emory University. And a friend of mine invited me to a small to a young adult service at his church. And so I went to that service on a Wednesday night, and

She didn't know about that. She didn't know about that debt yet though.

In her in her mind she was like, I don't know about her, so.

And y'all are newly would so you mean it's only been a year. Did you guys know about the debt before you got married?

Yes? We sure did.

We had premarital counseling with our pastors a few months before we got married, and we were forced to talk about everything, including our finances. So when we sat down with them, one of the sessions that we had was about our purpose and what was the purpose of our marriage? Why are you two together? What is it that you guys want to accomplish.

So one of the things that we wanted to do as a family was be a.

Family that gave, and not only financially, but our time. And the biggest thing standing in our way was our debt. So we decided to looking our accounts and total all of our debt up to see what we were up against. And there was the two hundred thousand who was leading.

The charge as far as having the most amount of debt.

Me, I, of course was So I went to private school.

I know, I heard Emory you were in trouble.

Yes, So I.

Got both of my undergrad degrees from private school, and I also got my like graduate degree from private school too, And I just thought it was normal to call Sally May and I took out an excessive amount of student loans. I didn't apply for any scholarships. I was just like, well, Sally May is just going to get me through Emory and all of my schooling.

So I was the one that brought in all the debt.

I mean you had some help, yeah, help, don't take full credit and now you're a nurse practitioner and Leo, you are an occupational therapist. But how when was it that you realized, Okay, if we really want to tackle this debt, we need to take on extra work.

Right away. There was no way we would be able to pay off.

All of our debt within a reasonable amount of time if we did not pick up extra jobs. So I started doing the extra working first because Faith was still in school when we started dating and courting, So I worked on the weekends, worked on pretty much practically every Saturday. So I was doing six days a week for as

So we just said, this might.

Have to be our life for the next couple of years so we can really attack our debt.

I was just gonna say, was this a plan that you guys created before you got married or what did you kind of wait until after.

It was a plan to pay off our debt, but we did not anticipate that it would be to this extent, to this extent and as intense as we have been going this past year. I think once the ball started rolling and we saw how much ground we were making, then we decided to just put our foot on the pedal a little bit more each month.

How do you get to one hundred thousand dollars in a year? To walk me through that, I mean, that's what twelve months in a year? Seventy five carry the one. It's a lot of money. Yeah, every month. I mean that's thousands of dollars you guys were saving each month. So I mean were you reducing your expenses? How much were you bringing in those extra jobs? I mean, I feel like you guys must never have even seen each other if you're working that much.

Yeah.

So, I mean we reduced pretty much all of our extra expenses. And so every single month we had a budget meeting and we listed out, you know, what we had planned for the month and what.

Else did we do.

We carpooled to work, so we both work in South Atlanta, so instead of taking two cars to our job. We carpool which saves us on gas and also miles on another car.

And we rarely.

Eat out as well, So I'm packing all of the lunches, i am making dinner.

Every week, like we're rarely eating out.

And that is what helped us save a lot of extra money, because if you think about it, if you're constantly eating out, you know, even if you get a meal that's like five dollars, after a while, it begins to add up. And we realized that we were saving so much money by packing our lunches, by making dinner, and also carpooling.

Yeah, and we also don't have cable, so we have an antenna that we from Walmart so we can pick up the local channels.

We have our firestick.

I still till this date have the iPhone five S and I know they no longer.

Make that apple. Yeah.

So my phone bill is literally less than three hundred dollars a year because I'm on a family plan with a bunch of cousins of mine. So any little wiggle room that we could we found and extra money would go straight towards Sally May and fed loan servicing and great lakes.

You should walk them through our weekend times of like with working.

You get it.

So Faith and I would go to work on Friday.

Friday afternoon, I would leave my full time job and go to my part time job for about three and a half to four hours.

Faith would be home sleeping. When I get back, Faith would.

Be waking up to go to her overnight nursing job, and I would go to sleep. In the morning, I would be waking up and Faith would be coming back in and I would be leaving to go to my part time job on Saturday morning. And we did that for the past six or seven months as we got really intent, so it would literally be like, hey, oh, hey, see you later, Belkis and yep, see you in a little bit.

Yeah. But it was worth it though.

I mean, we have a poster that we have been tracking how much debt we've paid off, and even though we spent like a few months of our life not really seeing each other, it's been really worth it to see how much debt we were able to pay off. With a lot of discipline, a lot of self control and just deny it delayed gratification.

We were able to do all of that.

How did you prioritize the debts too, because you don't have just student loan debts, you have some credit card debt. I think you said you had a home improvement loan. Like a lot of people have different you know, piles here and there. How did you prioritize them?

The credit cards were from wedding expenses, so we got rid of those fairly early. It started with me a month before we got married attacking those, so we prioritized that, and then we transition to the loans that were under my name, which were my student loans because Faith was able to qualify for a loan repayment. So we were like, oh, let's just try to get rid of my loans because we don't have that option for me.

So what do you mean loan repayment?

So she has the option and we haven't done this yet, but she has the option at the end of I think at the end of next year where she can apply for loan repayment through her job in exchange for two years of service to continue working in an underserved population. See yeah, so she has that as a nurse practitioner, where as I don't have any of those options as an occupational therapist, so we decided to attack mine first.

Okay, right, Yeah, A lot of people don't realize. I was going to ask when you said you were a nurse, because nurses, I think, doctors, even teachers. There are these lone loan repayment assistance programs you can look into. So that's excellent that you found that. How much how much are you able to get forgiven or repaid through that program once you apply, So for.

An exchange of two years as working as a nurse, they could give you up to fifty thousand dollars. Wow, which is fantastic.

Yes, And we we.

Were speaking to our financial advisor, and we have the option to have I guess the government or these loan repayment programs pay off the remainder of our loans, but it would take us six years to do that because you know, fifty thousand and then I think it's fifty thousand for the first two years, and then it goes twenty thousand for the next two years and then ten. So we have the option to do the loan repayment, but we don't want to be in debt that long.

No, we're ready to be done.

Yeah, So you do have just some debt left that you're still paying off.

You have over one hundred thousand left, Okay, just a little bit. Okay there, I.

Was gonna say, so, what's your timeline? What do you think? How long do you think before you knock it out totally.

We're hoping by the end of twenty nineteen that we would be done, and that is.

If we apply for the loan repayment.

So they just have to be at her job for another two years starting next year.

Okay, Wow, you guys are goals as far as like working together.

So you know, that's my question because people ask me this, how do you get on the same page financially with your partner?

How were you able to do?

So?

Was there somebody that took a little longer to get on the same pintial page or was it something that you know, it was easy for you guys to come to a consensus.

So Leo, it wasn't easy for me to come to an agreement with this. So Leo is the one that is very determined. He gets a goal and he just runs after it. Me, on the other hand, I am not like that. And so when I saw how much debt we were in, it just to me, seemed impossible for us to get out of.

So I struggled with that.

But then I think that the thing that helped me in that process is realizing that this is just a temporary season, Like this isn't going to last forever, So let's just sacrifice right now so that for the next I don't know, maybe fifty years of our life, God willing, we can live that debt free. So this is just a season, and so we just have to sacrifice and do everything that we can right now to get out of it.

Yeah, and for our conversation that we had, you know, we would dream about what we wanted life to be like five years from now, ten years, three years from now, and that helped us, you know, sacrifice the now for what we wanted in the future.

And we knew.

What it was like to sacrifice in order to go to school, so we had already experienced life in some capacity, so hey, why not do it for a bigger goal?

Why not do it for our family? Why not do it for generations after us?

So that's what really kept us motivated once we knew what our why was.

So I love that that was smart. You guys are honestly You guys are really really inspiring. And I love that that teacher dreaming helped you get on board Faith, because it is hard sometimes for people to because it's hard you feel like you work hard and you don't want to sacrifice your life away, but when you realize it's not really an eternal sacrifice, is just a temporary one.

Right, definitely, And that's what helped me be able to get through it. And then also having the visual helped me as well.

That we created.

Yeah, so we started off doing the.

We started off by doing the highest interest rate because mathematically that made the most sense. But Faith wasn't really a fan because most of our high interest rate that was the highest amount and it would take us forever to pay those off.

But once we switched to the debt snowball, she was a lot more.

Forgiving and on board when she was able to see us cross off you know, one or two loans every month.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean that's why studies show the snowball works, because it's all about that, like motivational, like the psychological impact of a little smell. It's like when you whenever I took a test in school, I always put my name on the paper first, because I was like, well, I did that right, and then I'll move on to

So even though we still have the one hundred thousand dollars left to know and to reflect back on the past year, like when you really think about it, this year flew by and we were able to pay off one hundred and four thousand dollars in twelve months, and so even though we still have the next twelve months, what are the next one hundred thousand dollars left?

Like, it seems extremely doable to us.

And I mean our plans are we plan to start a family soon in the near future, would be really nice.

What else do we plan on doing? Just vacationing.

We're going to Costa Rica, enjoying restaurants in Atlanta, and spending more time with our friends. So we're just really looking forward to the time that happens when we're debt free.

Yeah, and you know, we love to share our story because, like you said, many people don't think it's possible to pay off debt.

And that being in debt is normal.

And I don't know anyone who is okay with paying double or triple what they bought or purchased. And that's what we do when we stay in debt all of our lives, Like we're paying triple the price or the value of our product. So we just want to encourage folks to you know, list their dead, see what it is that they owe, and create a plan. It doesn't have to be twelve months. It could be five years,

So that's what drives.

Me and that's what keeps me going, and that's what we're looking forward to in the future.

Were there any moments this year when you guys kind of hit the wall and looking ahead to next year? Will will you go at it as hard as you can going on it now? Because I know when you and I spoke before, you had talked about you know, getting I mean, it can be really really draining. This is keeping pace like this, and it can start to take a toll, you know, on you individually together as

So I'm really tired, fair enough be very tiring. So I think that even though we spent a lot of our time not seeing each other, the thing that helped in our relationship was constant communication with one another. And I felt like we grew in our relationship because it's almost like we were forced to communicate. We had to see how each other was doing, and that is what helped us get through it. Realizing that I had a teammate, someone that was there wanting to accomplish the same goal

When you say break, do you mean taking on less work?

Definitely less work. So I'm still, of course doing my full time job, and I'm still doing some overnight shifts, but definitely not as much as I was doing before, because I was literally doing like my full time job along with like five to six overnight shifts each week, and so now I'm probably doing maybe about one overnight shift a week, which is a drastic change.

Well, I think a lot of people listening might say, Okay, I'm in a similar position.

Where do I start? Where would you suggest?

Like, if they're with someone and they're married now, and they're just like, okay, both want to admit that we're really in debt and we're not sure what's the first step?

What should we do?

I would tell them to dream together? Okay.

I think going straight to the numbers may not be the best way for some people. So talking about where you want to be in the next three five years.

What do you want your life to look like?

And then once you guys come up with a common goal, write down how much you owe visually seeing the amount of debt that you owe, what your lending institutions are, what your interest rates are. I mean, the government is

Yes, come to playing with that nine that's the Planet that's awesome advice. Thank you guys so much.

This has been so like I mean, I wish I would have when I first met Superman that's my nickname for my husband.

But now now he's on board.

But in the beginning, oh boy, it was like everybody's not a bunch of nisan.

What he was, he was not impressed.

But but what did help to your you know, to your point on face is that when we started talking about the life that we wanted and we wanted to buy a home and some other things. So once once he saw that, you know, that what we were working toward was going to make that happen, especially when we started home shopping.

Then he was like, Okay, I totally get it.

And now that we have a house, he's so excited, and we're closing on a second one for investment purposes. And now that's why, yes, that's why when I said.

What do you want to do for our honeymoon?

You know, do you want to go on vacation and whatever, that's why he was so quick to say no, I'm honestly, I'm fine. Because now he's fully on board because he can see the fruits of our labor, right that's great.

That's it.

And I don't you know, aside from you know, buying an investment property cash and receiving all of the rent to your pocket, I don't know anything in our case that would have put you know, eleven hundred plus dollars back in our pockets from paying off our one hundred

So we're just super excited.

Thank you all so much for coming on the show. We'll be following your journey. Tell us everyone if you're if you're gonna be, you're gonna be sharing your journey on Instagram, right of course, awesome whether you're what are your Instagram handles so the folks can follow you if they want to follow Leo?

What's yours?

Mine is Leo, that's l e O J dot L.

And mine is Faith Underscore Jasmine, which is J a S M.

I N E.

And the number five.

You guys are too cute. I wish you both the best newlywed gold. I mean, go for a nice dinner for for your for your anniversary coming up right, Yes we are.

I sent Faith the menu and we're going to a place that has sixty dollars steaks.

Faith face, I am not on board with that.

Thanks, stay Justice one time, Faith, It's one year Justice, one time, live it out, Faith, just this one time.

It's okay, this one time. I give you budget, these the permission.

Wow, that, honestly was such a great interview. I feel like that even if you're not married, there's just so many great takeaways of of what you can learn from from both Faith and Leo As. My biggest takeaway was that before you do like the tangible work, to really work on the emotional and mental work by just dreaming about what.

Life could be like, and that's what's going to motivate you. What about you, Mandy? Would you take away?

I love that they did pre maoral counseling and they did it through their church, which is really smart. Husband and I did pre marital counseling too. We found we just I mean I think I just googled family therapists pre mariital counselors in my city with my zip code and just found, you know, a highly rated one, and we did that for I think we had maybe four or five sessions with our therapists before we got married, which was helpful. It helped us just get in the

It was a huge breakthrough.

Because it was someone but that wasn't me, that wasn't so close to him to us, you know, asking those types of questions and that helped break the ice and release set tension.

Well that's good.

I mean, we didn't do a pre pre marital counseling, but that would have been helpful. I guess it wasn't like I will say, though we like we you know, we were together for a while, but we didn't have a huge like as it relates to personal finance, because by the time we got married, we'd work through a lot of like the financial differences we had fake goodness.

He didn't have superman, didn't.

Have any debt that made it super easy. Quite honestly, it was just some habits that I thought, like, you know, we could do better as it relates to this, but he didn't have like you know, there was no credit card dead, there was no student loan dead, there was no mortgage, there was nothing. It was just like, m that's probably not the best way to go about that, that kind of thing.

But now we're on the same track.

So I hope you guys enjoy today's episode. To me, it was really inspiring and I hope the biggest thing you took away was service and that if you can dream it, you can do it.

If you can dream. Okay, r Kelly. Oh we should take back that song though. Can we just take back that song without without giving him any kind of royalties?

I don't. I don't think so.

I just I mean, it's such a shame because it is a great song, but he is the most terrible human being on the face of the worst.

Yeah, well let's end on that note. That's cool. I like to bring it back to sexual predators at the end of every show.

Yo.

If that is that so bright a bush, such a lovely time, We're like, huh yeah, let's bring some terribleness.

Up anyway, all right, mandra until next week.

Love wait, love you, I love you. I'm so tired. I'm like, oh you didn't stay back. Oh no, oh, my gough, I'm fine.

Mandy