Being broke is one of the most emotionally exhausting things a person can experience. Oftentimes, it helps to hear how others have come out okay on the other side of a terrible financial situation. In this video, one woman explains how she and her wife went from being broke to being comfortable financially in one year, including all the steps (and help) they needed to get there.
Making it work is brought to you by wealth simple which gives everyone access to simple affordable investing on cruise control after her layoff my wife and i were left to rely mostly on my very meager salary to make ends meet she would play music usually once a month on the side and was in the process of opening up a small brewery but our financial situation
Was taking a toll on our relationship we didn’t have money to go out and hang with friends we didn’t have money for gas sometimes we were sharing her 12 year old toyota tacoma we owned a small home which was fortunate for us we eventually learned a lot of ways to save and made sure to check in with each other emotionally along the way a year later we are in the
Process of buying a new home we owned two cars and i’m free from my private student loan debt we made all this happen with a few hiccups along the way but we came through relatively unscathed here’s how number one we didn’t ignore our spending habits when i became the breadwinner for our family on a barely above 30 thousand dollar budget i was scared and began to
Feel burdened unlike my wife who lived with low debts on her credit cards and student loans i was carrying a hefty one hundred thousand dollars in student loans my payments on those were higher than what we both paid for the entirety of the mortgage i didn’t understand why i didn’t have any money left over after paychecks until a friend recommended that we try out
A financial tracking app it was so useful we learned that we were eating out way more than we had originally thought and that our travel spending was a bit outrageous taking stock of where our money was going was helpful in leading us toward financial health number two we learned from our risk-taking and our mistakes after adopting a puppy we decided it was time
To upsize and sell her home by this time my wife had come into full time work so it was a bit less scary but we were still working on paying off other debts we sold the beater car i had bought to get me through the summer in order to cover some of the costs we then began to save small amounts and in december we purchased a brand new car but in an unfortunate bout
Of bad luck we got in a terrible accident in her old tacoma the very next day thanks to hitting a patch of black ice after realizing we were medically okay we remembered that we had just had our credit pulled twice and were not able to pull it a third time while in the process of selling our home and buying another so we purchased a car off craigslist with the
Insurance money from the accident but later we found out that the car we bought was on a fraudulent title and that it came from a different state than we were told we were very fortunately able to purchase a family member’s old car but we learned a huge lesson really think through your big financial decisions we are to women who know cars but even then the wool
Was pulled right over our eyes number three we didn’t starve ourselves figuratively or literally splurging on getting a puppy has brought nothing but positive energy to our lives and so has being realistic about the other things that give us joy making such a big decision caused me to evaluate myself and my worth in my career i look through my employee handbook
And took the steps necessary to ask for a reevaluation of my salary and it worked being afraid to ask for what i deserved was holding me back but it was easy for my supervisor to hear and it gave us the opportunity to pocket a little more towards saving we love to travel but we knew the way we were doing it before wasn’t working for us instead we made plans to
Stay semi local and drive to places that we wanted to see bringing food from home and camping gear we already owned we saw the other cities that were hubs for airlines and made inexpensive round-trip visits to see friends we know the things that bring us joy are worth it and similarly to over restrictive diets when you keep yourself from spending on something you
Become more likely to binge we are admittedly guilty of splurging occasionally but it’s nowhere where it could be had we ignored giving ourselves small pleasures here and there number four we didn’t avoid the difficult conversations when we sold our previous home technically it was under my wife’s name i paid half of everything but upon purchase it was her money
That made the down payment and my name was not on the title we discussed this often and in our marriage we truly function as what’s mine is yours we do all joint purchases and spending from one account and to her me putting into that account every month meant that the home was we mine so when the home sold my wife said that no questions asked part of the profits
We made from the sale we’re going to pay off the twenty one thousand dollars i had in private loans all of it coming from a poor background i was not comfortable being cared for in such a massive way but my wife saw it as a way for us to afford more home later after a lot of heartfelt discussion and a few tears we came to the same conclusion paying off these loans
Was the right move for both of us my wife used part of the profits of the sale to pay off her credit card debt as well and we both ended up on top it also gave us the chance to practice something that doesn’t often come up in the day-to-day conversations with deep meaning asking us to look far into the future we are now prepared to dive into the second home using
The rest of our profits from the sale on basic renovations i think this is the most important step toward making large financial changes and being serious and honest with ourselves we can make positive changes that we never saw possible i’ll be 30 in a year-and-a-half and i still can’t believe that i will own a home a car and no private student loan debt thankfully
After a few years of fumbles and lessons learned i am going to be able to make even greater strides toward financial stability moving forward if you’re looking to take greater control of your own financial life it’s easier than you think to get started with a company like walt’s simple you can open an account and start putting your money to work today wealth simple
Is online investing that’s as simple and human as it gets in just five minutes they’ll build you a custom portfolio to fit your personal goals and timeline just answer a few easy questions and they’ll manage your money for you on autopilot set it forget it and let your money grow in the background you can turn on automatic deposits as well as set up a smart savings
Account with higher rates than big banks for your shorter term goals you’re writing your next great adventure or that handbag you need they also have a socially responsible portfolio that invests in green stocks and companies that support gender diversity the fees are much lower than big banks and tfd viewers will get their first $10,000 managed for free with no
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Transcribed from video
How We Went From Broke To Comfortable In 1 Year | Making it Work By The Financial Diet
