The First Step to Becoming Debt Free

Let's talk about the first step to becoming debt free & no, it's not the first baby step! 

If you're thinking about starting your debt-free journey, first congratulations! That is a huge accomplishment and you should be really proud of yourself for putting your mindset into the right direction. 

Before you start your baby steps and snowballing yourself and your family out of debt and into financial freedom, it's important to take note of where you are currently with your spending.

The first step to becoming debt-free is to track your current spending!

Take a month and save every receipt or download a tracking app to see just how much money you're spending. You can always use an excel or google sheet if you're someone that likes to do things manually. I used to track everything on a google sheet before using the everydollar app by Dave Ramsey. 

Once you get a good idea of how much you're spending on the regular, it will be a lot easier t see areas that you may be able to spend less. The best part is that you may not know that you're spending money on eating out or groceries etc.

Once you know how much you're spending then it's time to start your baby step! If you don't know what I'm talking about - check out Dave Ramsey's baby steps to get out of debt! We've been following them ourselves and are currently on baby step #2 (snowballing out of debt from smallest debt to largest). Next will be baby step #3 which is 3-6 months of savings! 

Leave your questions below! 

How we're handling paying off debt with Covid-19 happening

Soooo with Covid-19 hitting all small businesses really hard and especially the wedding industry/our wedding photography business, we had to be really careful with our income right now.

At the beginning of the year, we decided to buy a car (yay!) but we were taking some money every month out of our paycheck to cover the larger purchase - this way we could cash flow it.

Welcome Spen the Range Rover

When Covid-19 hit all of our spring weddings got postponed and some of our weddings even got canceled. Such a bummer for all of our couples who's wedding expectations got totally flipped upside-down. My heart really hurts for them. Anyway, we had to take a large look at our business and make sure we were okay for a few months without bringing in too much income for the business. Luckily, we qualified for the PUA (pandemic unemployment assistance) and the stimulus check which has really carried us through this hard time as self-employed individuals. We are so grateful for what we have and the assistance we received to get us through. For many self-employed individuals (us included) this has been a very unsure time and we weren't sure how everything would pan out for us.

So what does this look like for our debt? Well since the government passed the CARES act which put federal loans in forbearance, our student debt (approx. 14,700) has not been accruing interest. [yay] but we've also been in storm mode.

What is 'storm mode' ?

Storm mode means that instead of aggressively paying off debt - you save all of your extra money when your financial situation is unsure. Since we don't know how long this virus is going to last or how long restrictions on large gatherings will be in place. We are currently in storm mode and haven't made a payment on our debt since March. That sounds crazy to me but honestly, it has been helpful. My dad recently retired and I will no longer be able to be on his health insurance so we are looking into the options for getting another health insurance plan. Many financial decisions and changes coming in the future!

Until next time,
Emily

Debt Goals for the New Year (2020)

I'm so excited for 2020!

This new year has so much good coming I can just feel it. We are moving along into our second official year of business as Tom and Em Weddings and I just love getting to know our 2020 couples better and better. We aren't quite where I want us to be yet but I have high hopes for this next year.

With that said I'm looking at 2020 and thinking about our debt plan this year. How can we squash this thing? When I was working my full-time job in Phoenixville we had planned for the entire process to take about 16 months. Unfortunately, we moved, I quit, life changed - as it does. So here we are looking at our debt which is about 15.5k. We are looking to put approx. $1,250 per month into our debt.

Let's see if we can do it!

December 2019 | Debt Update

Hiya, welcome back to my Debt Updates!

This is December 2019 Debt Update

This months we've paid $1,000 towards debt so far. This is by far the hardest month to save money because I love giving gifts. There are a lot of gifts I'll be giving this year that are close to free or made from things I already have, but there are also a lot that I wanted to buy for people - which is okay as long as you have the money to do so!

By the end of the month, we will have also contributed $250 as a minimum payment towards the debt as well. We keep our minimum payments on while we pay things off because it just keeps us going with a little more gusto!

Thinking about more ways to make more $$ while we continue through this journey - what are ways you make extra income?

- Emily

Painting Wood Paneling

Last year around this time, Tom and I started painting our (now) rental home. It is owned by my parents and at the time, the previous tenant had just left and they need to do some fixing up. This is very common with rentals and since my parents have had rental properties my entire life, I've been a part of this process plenty of times. I was itching to quit my job and get out of that area for a fresh start with something new. We saw the door open for this home and knew we'd like to have a go at freshening it up.

For us, this meant painting everything white. Sorry, painting everything all the wood paneling white.

So how did we do this?
It's pretty simple and I know there are a ton of online resources that are probably better than this but, this is our experience!

We ended up sanding the walls from the top to the bottom. This was brutal to the arms and we definitely skipped some corners and edges. This was a big mistake. Obviously, 70's wood paneling is like plastic material and paint will come off plastic pretty easily. We found this to be true in the many places along the edges of trim that we did not sand. The paint started peeling off immediately. At this point, since we don't own the home and it's a true 'don't upgrade anything' rental - we decided to let it be and just live with a few peely-spots.

After sanding we did a basic primer and then a basic white paint from Lowes.
We did 3 rooms and one hallway all white. I think we'd like to touch up the trim and doors at some point, but for now, we are content with how things are.