7,551.11. That’s the number between us and credit card debt freedom! Goodness. As I’m looking at the numbers this morning, I’m a pen to paper gal, I’m absolutely blown away by the progress we’ve made. Honestly, starting off with almost $20k in credit card debt, I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t believe that debt free was possible for us. I thought well goodness, we will have this hanging over our head forever. That stinking thinking almost convinced me it wasn’t possible. But goodness, 18 months later, we only have less than $8k in credit card debt left! Come on!

I haven’t really chatted about our financial journey in quite a bit because honestly money is a tricky subject. Allowing people into your finances poses it’s own sorts of risks and with owning businesses, it can get even more tricky! So I don’t share as much to protect my husband who is a bit more private, and to protect our businesses as well! However, I get a ton of questions about HOW to start your debt free journey, and after discussing financial freedom with family members, I knew it was something I needed to visit more here on the blog! So hey friend hey! I’m Shelly! I use to be a shopaholic. I put everything on the credit card during my lowest of low times of depression and anxiety kicking me in the bum. Instead of going to actual therapy, I ran to THERAPY! RETAIL THERAPY that is, and almost 20k later, I felt more depressed, defeated, and bummed that I had put our family in an awful financial situation. AND I admitted my defeat and financial failures to my husband RIGHT AFTER we opened our first restaurant. Yikes! He took it pretty “gracefully”, but I continued to beat myself up about it for months! The month after we opened our first restaurant, I started our debt free journey, and here we are 18 months later, and we only have $7551 to go until we are credit card debt free! Come on God and tons of discipline and sacrifices!

So how do you start! Well

Step 1: TAKE an honest look! Open your eyes. Be honest with yourself, your spouse or someone close to you about where you are. Take a look at all of your debts. Cars. Credit card. Student loans. House. Any debt you have. I want you to log-in to each account, and check your accounts. No matter how bad they are, take a look! This is the first step!
Next, WRITE down your debts. I created some printables in January 2019 that I used throughout the year. These printables became our Debt Crushing VISION SHEETS that later became the Debt Crushing Mama Workbook!! Each month, I’d write down our debts, pray over our debts, and write down what I planned to do to tackle that debt that month in my workbook!Yes, my husband was on board, but I wanted to focus on what I could do to earn, sell, ways to save our family money! From side hustles, to consigning, to selling stuff that was collecting dust! Yes we own a restaurant, but our goal is to be debt free including our mortgage, so we hustled! And guys, I reviewed it today, guys, we paid off 10 credit cards, and over $17k in debt! Of course we shouldn’t even have credit cards, AND I still have 3 to pay off before we tackle our car notes! But guys, 9 credit cards in our first year back on our debt free journey! Come on God! And can I tell you my why!? Our why!? Our four children, we want to leave them with a financial legacy for generations to come!

3. Choose Your Debt Payoff Method. We Use debt snowball which is listing your debts from smallest to greatest. Then you’re going to pay the minimum payment on that account and all the others. And any extra money you have, you throw at the smallest debt. Then once you payoff that smallest debt. Take the minimum payment that you were using for that debt, now add it to the next debt, and you’ll have your first debt snowball payment. For example, my Belk minimum payment was 27 dollars. I paid that account off. So I’m moving on to Kohls. Kohls minimum payment is 30 dollars. So my debt snowball will be 57 for Kohls. And you will throw all extra cash toward the Kohls card, while paying minimum payments on the rest of your accounts. Continue this until all accounts are paid in full! I love debt snowball and we will continue to use it until we are debt free.

4. Create your budget (if you have not already), and try to stick to it. Tweak as needed, but we use Dave Ramsey’s Every Dollar budget and the Debt Crushing Mama workbook to budget each month. Also, we attempt to use mostly cash to stay on track! We haven’t committed completely to cash envelopes, but we did it for one month before Covid-19 and loved it and spent significantly less! Try to find areas in your budget to cut like cable, hair, nails, coffee, etc, and put that extra money to the lowest debt you have!

5. Cut the grocery bill and eating out! So confession, last year during a stretch of sports six nights a week, in the span of 14 days, we spent a total of almost $700 on eating out! What the what! I almost died when I looked at our spending tracker. So I’ve tightened the ropes on the grocery budget and have consistently stuck to our $600 budget or less for a family of 6 each month. I shop sales consistently, I use what we have in the freezer and pantry, and I create meals based on what we already have and what’s on sale! I put any extra money we save in this area to debt!

6. Be consistent! If you fail in an area, get back up and try again! You can do this! Pray over your finances! Create a budget! Take an honest look at all your debts. Write them down from least to greatest! Use the debt snowball method and get to work! You can do this! Debt free is a possibility! So let’s make it happen today!

Need more tips? Stay tuned for next week’s part two! Or grab the Debt Crushing Mama Vision Sheets here! or Workbook here !

You got this friend! Let’s be debt free together!

Until next time friend,