She Paid Off $20K of Debt in 5 Months Without Giving Up Vacations: Here’s How | 548

0:00Once you start seeing some success, like once I was able to start paying off those balances that I had to accrue at the beginning just to have the cash in hand to kind of pay ahead for the month, I was getting excited. And it kind of gamifies when you have like the debt tracker in the spreadsheet. You start to see those numbers go up and you start feeling proud of yourself. And then you're able to kind of like continue to be like, how else can I improve this process? What my husband like got on board because he was seeing how it was working and he was thinking I did actually tweak some of my buying behavior because I was like, now I actually know how much I'm spending and how and do I need to go to Target again this week or Costco or can I do that just once a month?

0:47You know, so it did help me. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt-free, but you don't want to live on beans and rice? Or you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? Hey, it's okay if you don't already know how to budget, or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it's okay if you want to seem like you have your finances all together, or you're not on the same page with your spouse when it comes to finances. We know what you're doing probably isn't working, but guess what?

1:19You're in the right place. We're Shana and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners, and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019, helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and know exactly what to do with their money. In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation.

1:51We can help you no matter where you're at, whether you're the single mom who's never had$500 in her savings account, or the millionaire who's paid off four real estate workers. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast.

2:10Hey, Brittany. Thank you so much for joining us. We're so excited you're on Financial Coaching for Women. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Okay. So Brittany, you and I had an annual strategy session back in December and you were phenomenal. You had the system, you were using it. You just needed help planning out 2026. And because again, you were too close to your numbers. You were only seeing it a certain way. And I came in and I was like, but what about this? And you were like, Oh, I would have never thought about that. So just, you've had this system. Tell us a little bit about what led you to purchasing it on your own originally.

2:53Yeah. So I feel like I was not doing super well with some of these apps and things that I like tried in the past that I think, I mean, I don't know if I can say it, but like I tried Monarch and YNAB and different things that I just felt like it wasn't necessarily working because I felt like I wasn't following it. I didn't want to be having some little app telling me I couldn't buy something that I wanted to buy or a necessity or whatever. I just figured that it wasn't super helpful for me. And I feel like I've always been good with numbers, but I feel like I have reached a new kind of challenge once having kids because the amount of cost just went so much higher that before I could just like Jesus take the wheel and I would do it and I would not have like any like trouble like paying off the credit card monthly and everything but then once you have child care that's like more than your mortgage I was like how how do I have a plan for this I feel like I'm always paying in rears like I'm paying for what happened last month when I have credit cards but like what if something happens and now I had to pay for the past and the future and it just was very overwhelming for me and I wanted to find a way to be like a month ahead but I wasn't sure how and I remember I think I was listening to a different podcast that you guys visited on and I started to listen to your podcast and I was like oh I like the sound of this this sounds like a system rather than just a month to month tracking my money and where's every single dollar going that's like takes a lot of time I don't want that level of detail I want to have just like the broad strokes guardrails up and tell me what I can spend because I was thinking I was like maybe I'm an overspender maybe I have like a problem with spending and then all of those kind of thoughts creep into your head if like these systems that I've tried haven't worked so maybe there's something wrong with me.

5:00And so I finally like after a couple months of listening to your podcast, I got the system and I went like full in. I'm very like detail oriented. I also love design. I love that it was pretty. I was like, this is actually very pleasing on my eyes. I love that everything like adds up for me. And I was still really nervous to like ignore my full amount on my credit card for a couple of months because I was like, I've never carried a balance. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can bring myself to do this. I have a great credit score and all the things. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to trust that I want to get forward thinking.

5:42So I'm going to do it the way that you all laid out. And it took me about five months to pay off the balances that I had to let kind of go and just pay the minimum system payments, which I felt good that I was able to kind of put that behind me so that then I was able to kind of think future oriented and not just constantly feeling like I'm paying for last month. Yeah. So how does it feel to be paying for everything in cash with your own money, especially now that you've got that done, that paid off. That must feel amazing. It does. It does. I feel like I also, since like last March, using the system really brought like more awareness and like acknowledging how much things actually are like I feel like it just like it took me like up until like now to even start seeing like how much are we spending a month like what do we actually cost like I have I didn't really understand and it's funny because you guys mentioned that you'll see like subscriptions and things that you might not realize you had and we had skype on there my husband's from south africa and i could have sworn that he was still using it for like calling south africa but apparently we've been paying for monthly for like three years and now it's like shut down like we don't need there's not even the company you're just donating yes they love you so much like that was funny but it was just like i feel like i still had to do everything in the month.

7:15Like as you guys were saying, like not having savings buckets. And I feel like that was really hard because I'm like, now it's the most patient person I wanted to do it all on day one. But I feel like it helped for me to do a little bit more detail each month on like one of the things that we're spending that month of that by the end of the year, I could actually see like how much would I even need in a savings bucket for that. Mm-hmm. I love how you originally said forward thinking. I think that that is so important here because a lot of people say, well, I just rack up the card and then I pay it off every month and I have enough in my account to pay it off.

7:51And I'm like, well, give it. This is the life that you're living. How much better could it be if you have, like you said, this forward thinking of paying in cash and paying everything not in the past, right? But in the future with cash, like how, think about what you could be doing with your money if you weren't just racking it up and not really understanding where your money is going. You know what I mean? And I love your budget because you actually had that month specific section. You literally mimicked everything that we do. I mean, you were fully in when you saw the budget, you looked at the fully full in your login.

8:28It has like a fully filled out example. You use that. You listen to our podcast. You watched us on video, you knew exactly how to use this to the best of its ability. And I saw that when I, when I was coaching you and anyways, I just think that going all in, like you did and not necessarily doing it right. Like some not saying you weren't, I'm just saying somebody, like if anyone is seeing this, like, Oh, I have to do it right in order to be successful. No, but you like literally were trying to do it the right way from the beginning, because like you said, in order for you to see how much you were spending without using a credit card, you wanted to kind of mark those things down in your budget absolutely i feel like it's kind of like when people are trying to eat healthier and you have to track for a while just to understand like what is the right portion or what is like the amount of protein that i'm even supposed to get in daily i feel like it was a bit of that kind of learning experience of like let me try it a different way because what i've been doing has only led to the results that i've had so far so Like, what if I did it a different way?

9:32And I think within like a month or so, we did, I think, 90 % paid for Florida vacation and cash. There was a little bit of a like having to put a little bit on credit cards because it wasn't super smooth. So I feel like that keeps kind of happening, but it's less often. I feel like the little hiccups that come about or like the thing that was more than I had plan for for that month or whatnot like it happens but I feel way better knowing that I have a plan for it and that it even if it's like a hundred dollars on my credit card to buffer like the groceries budget or whatever I'm like I know where that money's coming from and how to cover it and I'm not leaving any like balances to keep going for future me as you guys would would say you're closing the gap.

10:26Yeah. Well, yeah. Creating a problem for future you to solve. Yeah. I think. And so, you know, the only thing I would say there, if anybody was listening is maybe just, I just told my clients this, this morning, you, you really do have to once in a while monitor your amounts in your budget for your spending, because, you know, if you're looking in there and you're at, you know, zero by halfway through the period every time, then it's not enough, you know, you're not giving yourself enough. And then, you know, so you want to do that here and there just so that you don't necessarily have to turn to a credit card but again it's all part of a learning like you're eventually going to get that like that sweet spot amount and you won't have to do any of that what i wanted to ask you is you mentioned some other apps we don't have to talk about those other apps we don't we don't have to talk about their names but we really have no idea about those we have never used them we don't know anything about it so i'm wondering if you can speak to like you and thank you for acknowledging the pretty design that we that we I feel like the differences in the different ways that those work, what ours is doing for you, why you like ours, why the other one didn't work.

11:30Can you speak to any of that? Yeah, I feel like some of the apps that I tried would have like connectors to like the credit cards and like all the different accounts, which already felt like overwhelming. And you have to put like your usernames in and all the things. but like it still didn't feel like it was like 100 % telling me what does this month cost because it's like oh those are expenses from last month these are expenses from this month oh I forgot to do this thing like for the water bill is only like quarterly I have to put that in a different category so I feel like it gets like very granular on like you need to know exactly how much it's going to be.

12:16And if you forget it, then the whole amount is all thrown off and it's going to yell at you and say like, you can't spend that. I don't necessarily know that that was helping me make decisions in the moment. It was just kind of basically giving me a report card that would say you spent more than you made. And I didn't really know how to correct it because oftentimes the things I'm spending money on are things that we do need for the family or kids growing out of their clothes left and right. And so I'm like, I have to buy those next sizes. So instead of feeling like I'm just bad with money, I kind of have more of a game plan now with this is more of like the plans to build a house.

12:59You know, you use it to help guide what you're doing in the future rather than have like a retroactive report card on you failed. And I think that's important because again, what that is, is accounting and bookkeeping and tracking like all that's all you're doing for the past instead of planning for your future, planning for your month ahead, sending the money to your spending accounts automatically. So it holds you accountable to what's in there and then you don't have to worry about anything. Then why are you tracking how much you, I mean, do you think I want to know how many times my husband went to Publix last month because he also works there and he also swipes his card like 10 times a day?

13:40No, I don't care. All I care about is don't go over. Like we were 98 or 68 cents. I think last week in the budget girl, we right there before the Thursday and everything replenished. I'm, I don't care. Like it was great. We didn't go over. It can't, it doesn't let you go over by the way. Right. So that's the other, that's the other like bonus. and then everything would plenish the next day at midnight and we were good to go again. So it's like, I don't care. I'm not going to go through my grocery account and figure out how many times, like what we spent money on. I just know that we had enough food, we were good and we spent within our budget.

14:12It's time to enter your coaching era because making good money should feel like making good money. Yeah, imagine six months of private coaching where we'll tell you exactly what to do. No guesswork, no confusion and absolutely no judgment. It's a done-for-you system that actually works. You don't know what you don't know, and that's not your fault. And that's why we're here. Financial coaching with us looks like two coaching sessions a month, personalized recaps, and after-hour support, you can text and email. So you're never stuck wondering what to do next. Together, we're going to build your budget, set up your system, and tackle any challenges that come up along the way, which, by the way, they always do.

14:51If what you're doing isn't working and you're tired of trying to figure it out on your own, Sign up for financial coaching at budgetbesties.com forward slash coaching before all of our spots fill up and we will help you go further faster. Six months from now, you'll wish you started today. I think that it's helpful because it's like the trial and error where you're like, you give yourself an amount for spending that month and you kind of feel it out and you're like, oh, I actually need more of my kids budget or whatever. And like, you're able to kind of maneuver the amounts and things that you need.

15:23I like that kind of concept that you guys were saying, like your be your own bank. And so like, I had right from the get go, I had like all the different checking accounts, my I have a credit union bank that allows you to have like all the different bank accounts, something that took me a while that I only did recently, which is like, eight weeks or eight months in is that I was doing a tracker in another Excel spreadsheet of my cash flow. super nervous about like is there the right amount in there and like with all of these going out and so recently I I made everything automatic now that I have some like savings buckets and then I have like actually made it much more consistent on like the groceries and gas budget my spending my husband's spending and then like our family spending amounts I put that on automatic too whereas before I had all my bills automatically getting paid, but I didn't.

16:22I left spending and savings to do manual. And I was just really anxious for a while that the right amounts were going to be happening in my bills account. But I finally had let go of that. I took the training wheels off. I mean, everything automatic. And I'm not using a separate spreadsheet to also track. So it feels like really good, but it's also like, okay, I've seen that I've had the evidence over the past like eight months that it will work. I've gotten better around, like, I feel like there were some months which was helpful. I did one of the like one-time annual reviews in December to try to figure out how to handle the whole savings buckets.

17:08My husband and I both work in technology and we make good money. And I was trying to figure out, do I do like a holding account for like these savings buckets and that sort of thing? Or how do I actually fund the savings buckets? And so we worked together and kind of made a game plan for those quarterly commission checks that I get to actually fund those savings buckets, which made a lot of sense. I wasn't quite sure how to make it work when like some months we'd get paid a lot because I have my bonus and some months are less. And so how do I make a game plan with kind of the fluctuations month to month?

17:50Yeah, I think that, you know, it's, it's, I'm glad that you were able to have that have that call. And, you know, honestly, we say so much on the podcast, you guys give such great feedback, you do such good things, but somehow, you know, some stuff gets missed, you know, and it's like, Oh, well, we thought we were clear about that. But it's like, you need to hear it. Like, who knows how which podcast you miss, which how much you heard, how much the kids were talking to you at the same time in the pocket. Like, you know, so, so sometimes coaching is like a really good, just helps you accelerate.

18:17And I think that Vanessa hit the nail on the head. Like some, like you, you're going to get it. Like, I just, just show me this real quick. I always think, you know, how we all are, we'll say we're visual learners, like show me how to do it one time and I'm good. But if you try to just tell me how to do it, sometimes I'm like, I didn't compute, didn't stick in there. Didn't don't got it. So anyway, so sometimes I think that coaching is helpful for that, for that reason. I did want to talk about the automations because I think a lot of times, especially you're super smart. You said you're in technology.

18:47That's what I got out of that. You know, a lot of times we are reluctant to loose, like loose the reins of that, let go of the tracking of the like consternation of the, I'm used to being stressed out. I'm used to doing all of this. I need to stay this way because and but eventually like you like you did you will learn to trust yourself you'll learn to trust the math and then you can literally spend that time doing anything else absolutely absolutely and I just needed like help coming up with the plan I feel like I did the DIY version well because I had you all in my ears listening to your podcast and the videos with the the budget system and I I just kind of was like, how do I level up?

19:33And maybe there's something I don't necessarily know of how I could make this even better for the next year. Because I feel like it's constantly like a learning experience that you're going to continue to get better each time. And I feel like that a lot of things were running smoothly. So once you start seeing some success, like once I was able to start paying off those balances that I had to accrue at the beginning, just to have the cash in hand to kind of pay ahead for the month. I was, I was getting excited and then kind of gamifies when you have like the debt tracker in the spreadsheet, you start to see those numbers go up and you start feeling proud of yourself.

20:11And, and then you're able to kind of like, continue to be like, how else can I improve this process? What my husband like got on board, because he was seeing how it was working. And he was thinking, I did actually tweak some of my body behavior because I was like, now I actually know how much I'm spending and do I need to go to Target again this week or Costco? Or can I do that just once a month? So it did help me also feel like I had those buffers or the rails up when you're belt bowling. I need to have those up just to understand like, how can I be successful? Where are kind of the boundaries of how much I should be spending a month and where can I kind of tweak things so we're not going over.

21:00Yeah. No, I love that. You talked before at the beginning about how much debt you paid off. You said that you paid off, it took you five months to pay off the credit cards that you normally had, kept a running balance on. So do you mind sharing in the amount of time that you've used the system since you said March, how much debt you guys have been able to pay off? yeah it's a it's close to 20 000 wow reverse reverse reverse i'm gonna drum roll how much has it been 22 000 that's so crazy that's a lot of amazing like that and how long remind us one more time it was about five months and i feel like the other piece of that is that we also went to like Myrtle Beach for a week with the kids and we went to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire in the summer.

21:54And we funded all of those things like for like with cash or in our case, we use all debit cards, but with our with money that we had. So I also just got back from Italy going for 10 days solo and visiting with my aunts and things like it just felt it feels better knowing where we're at so that we can also plan to do like fun things for the future and just like know that okay we're planning for summer camps for my kindergartner which is astronomical I feel like my my savings buckets did not predict quite as much as I thought they were going to be so like now I know I'm gonna keep track and put that in like my savings buckets amount so that I I can maybe even just have like a camps bucket so that I don't have like this, the sticker shock as much next, next year at this time.

22:49So yeah, it's helped tremendously. And I finally feel like I found a system that I enjoy using and I find myself in it like every day. And I'm like, I don't know why I'm looking at this. I don't have anything to check off right this second, but I get really excited to check a box and to like plan off the months. And I feel like I've gotten a little nerdy about it. We did try to make it pretty for that reason. And I mentioned this all the time because, you know, that's the girl version of my husband when he was going to retire and lose half of his income or more. Actually, he needed to look at it every day.

23:20And it just feels good. It feels good to know your numbers and to know what's actually happening. It's OK. It's like or I could be scrolling on TikTok or something. Let's do that instead. We love that one for you. I want to really quick point out what you what what do you think would have happened with that twenty two thousand dollars if you weren't doing this? like you I mean we don't have to really go there but that's where my mind was like you paid off $22 ,000 worth of debt do you think you would have paid that off do you think it would have just kept spending it do you think you would have kept using your credit card and just racking up a little bit at a time like who knows I think it would have just disappeared on like a bunch of little things I feel like I always was paying off my balances each month but it has the running balance so you never really feel like you're getting to zero.

24:05So you're like, I'm always owing something. And then it ends up being like, when a flight comes up, that you're like, Oh, I got to just put it on, put it on the credit card, add to it. And it just, I feel like the mental capacity that it takes to try to think about where do I have balances? Like, what are all the cards that I have a balance on? and how do I have to plan to pay for all of these? It's very stressful. Even when we had the amount to pay them, it still felt really stressful to have a variety of cards with a variety of balances. And now this feels much simpler. It's just like I look in the bank account, I can see the amounts, and that's that.

24:48I don't have to think about who I owe or how am I going to do this payment plan or any of those things. I feel like I got stuck in those like PayPal credit and pay over six months, which I would, but it's just like one more thing in your mind to have to remember and to have to keep track of and have a whole plan of action on the various different due dates. And I'm just like, I don't want that. I want it simple. I have so many other more important things. I want to automate these things that we're working towards our goals. and so that we don't have to like think about are we making ends meet every month?

25:27No, and I love that. And I also want to reiterate that you not only paid off$22 ,000, you lived life and went on vacation and enjoyed yourself while doing it. So I think that that is really important because you weren't living on rice and beans, you know, and gazelle intense. That would not work for me. Dude, where did you do that? I was going to say, you're so busy. Yeah, look at your cute little thing. I'm like, I'm going to go find that. It's so cute. Anyway, yes, yes. Yeah. Love that. Well, Brittany, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. We know that hopefully this will resonate with somebody who was in the same situation that you were in and hopefully maybe take the leap of leap of faith and just try something different.

26:09Like you said. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much. I look forward to hearing you in my AirPods again, yourself in your AirPods. It's going to be fun. if you're tired of feeling like your finances are all over the place and you're ready for a simple set it and forget it way to budget we have something special for you watch our automate your budget master class at budgetbesties.com forward slash automing we'll show you step by step how to finally organize your money how to set up your account and put your budget on autopilot so your bills saving and spending run like clockwork imagine less stress more savings and the freedom to spend money without having to track every dollar or babysit your bank account.

26:48Go to budgetbesties.com forward slash automate to start today.