MMS084: Can You Pay Off $50,000 in 18 Months?

EPISODE 84

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Money Mastermind Show. Let’s Talk Money.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:03.6] GC: And welcome to the Money Master Mind Show. Tonight, we have Deacon Hayes of Well Kept Wallet and he has what seems to be an extraordinary story of paying off a large amount of debt in a relatively short amount of time. So if you are listening, this should be a pretty inspirational story. I know all of us have some sort of debt. So hearing about how you pay off a big amount in a short amount of time, I think that’s of interest to me. So it should certainly be of interest to you.

Welcome to our show Deacon.

[00:00:33.4] DH: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:00:35.5] GC: Absolutely and let me introduce the rest of the Money Mastermind Show. We have Kyle Prevost of Youngandthrifty.ca, Miranda Marquit of Planting Money Seeds, Peter Anderson of Bible Money Matters and Tom Drake of the Canadian Finance Blog who we’ve kidnapped and kept in a basement there if you’re watching on video.

So Deacon, you seem to have an extraordinary story here. If I’m correct, you have paid off about $52,000 in debt in about 18 months, is that correct?

[00:01:22.8] DH: That is correct, yeah. My wife and I, I can’t take all the credit.

[00:01:26.9] GC: Yeah, okay that’s fair enough. Before we all get in trouble here, right. Tell us a little bit about that? What got you into that debt and how did you start to get out of that in so short a time?

[00:01:40.9] DH: Sure, so I mean the main catalyst was my wife and I are getting married and when you have a man and a woman inside a condo, things start to happen and I am talking about money conversations you know? And so…

[00:01:55.7] GC: I hope so.

[00:01:56.9] DH: And so we were talking about our different backgrounds. I came from one background, my wife came from another and it was clear that we needed to get on the same page and develop a game plan to tackle our finances. So the first thing that we did was put together a one page spreadsheet that said, “Hey, what does it look like?” And that’s when tallied up everything.

We had an $18,000 car loan, I want to say about, actually I’m going to mess up the math here, but the rest of it was student loans and credit card debt and it was apparent that okay, when we added it up it was $52 grand and we didn’t want it to last forever. We wanted to make a change drastically and we wanted to do it while we’re young so that we can enjoy the rest of our lives. So that led us on a journey to pay it off in the shortest amount of time possible, which in our case was 18 months.

[00:02:47.8] GC: Now let me ask you, when you started looking at putting all these money together and figuring out what it is, was this after you got married or did you have an idea of what each other’s debt was before then? At what time did you notice what this money was and how much it was?

[00:03:03.9] DH: It’s funny, there is this article on Business Insider where they had interviewed me and I see this title for the first time and it said, How Newlyweds Got Married and Had No Idea the Debt They Had, and they were talking about us. We did not know ahead of time. We knew after the fact and it was a little bit late then but no, it was apparent that we really needed to have those conversations. So it wasn’t until after we got married.

[00:03:31.0] GC: What was that like finding out from each other that both of you were in such debt? I mean I could imagine maybe a student loan is something that is not so much of a surprise but other types of debt like car loans and credit card debt, I guess that could be a little bit of a shocker. How did that feel once you found out about it?

[00:03:49.2] DH: Well, it was pretty equal so that made it a little bit easier to swallow. My wife had more student loans but then I had the car loan, right? And then we both had credit card debt at different degrees. So that really was like, “We’re not going to play the blame game.” It’s like, “Hey, this is the reality of our situation. We got married, we’re in this together.”

So it was just kind of more of eye opening and we need to make a change because my parents have both filed bankruptcy separately, they got divorced and then her parents they were in their mid 60’s and they really hadn’t started saving for retirement yet. So we knew we needed to change the way that our family is going to go moving forward.

[00:04:32.5] GC: That’s a pretty commendable way to go into it there. So how did you start to decide how you’re going to actually pay everything off? What order did you do it in? How did you know where to get the money from?

[00:04:44.4] DH: So I’m a simple guy. There’s a lot of resources out there. I read a lot of financial books and I was listening to some radio shows and such and so the method that really stuck out to me was the debt snowball method where we listed our debt smallest to largest regardless of the interest rate and you know what’s funny?

I took a personal finance class in college and I was supposed to put together a plan for the next five to 10 years and part of that plan was actually the reverse, was the debt avalanche where you pay off the highest interest rate first. So here I was, I was like, “This is what I learned in college. Oh duped from the interest standpoint,” but then I realized, well, that’s not how I operate.

I really needed those small victories fast to give me momentum and to give me confidence to keep moving forward. So my wife and I came across that thought. “Katie, that’s perfect. That’s for us.” So we really just started tackling the small debts, a $300 credit card here, a medical bill there and then just snowballed.

[00:05:46.0] GC: It’s funny how there’s so much of a clinical, sort of mathematical part to this whole personal finance thing, but really so much of it is really psychological isn’t it?

[00:05:57.5] DH: Yeah, we’re human beings right? If we were robots, the debt avalanche make sense a 100% of the time but because we’re messy because we’re human beings because we’re all about psychology and behavior. I mean I’ve coached and counselled hundreds if not thousands of people and it’s just amazing to see the difference the debt snowball makes for people.

It’s just a light bulb that goes off like, “I can do this. This makes sense.” There are people that do it the debt avalanche way but their engineers, they are people that are really good with math and that works for them but that was the method that we needed to do.

[00:06:32.6] GC: I found that it’s a good introduction to get that small thing out of the way, right? Once you get that then you can switch around, then you can find other things but having that, like you said the victory early on, that really does help. So where did you guys find the money to pay? I mean that’s a lot of money to pay off in a relatively short time.

[00:06:55.0] DH: So one of the things that we did is we created a make shift net worth sheet and we realized that, okay yeah, I had this $18,000 car loan but my wife had a $5,000 car that was paid for, right? So I am thinking, “Okay, let’s shift some things around. What if we sold her car, sold my car and then bought to cars for less than $5,000?” And so that’s exactly what we did.

I bought a Honda Accord, it was like a ’98, for my wife for $1,250 bucks and she drove it for a few years. We put a little bit of money into it but it’s an older car but it was nowhere near what we’re paying car payments and then I bought a Lexus but it was a ’96. It was a Lexus CS300 for 22 or $2,500 bucks. So we bought these used reliable cars, sold my brand new car.

Which is an interesting story because it was upside down. So we had to come up with a $1,000 but really, that was one of the early decisions we made to say, “Hey, we no longer have a $500 car payment because we got rid of this car,” now we can take that and start plowing that to our debt snowball.

[00:08:03.3] MM: I want to know why you got the Lexus and she got the Accord?

[00:08:10.8] DH: That’s a really good question. The funny thing is, I work in this luxury wood flooring manufacturer and so I was a sales rep. I was the only sales rep for the company and we did one to $50 million homes and so the owner of the company, he’s actually the reason why I got this brand new car. He came into the office one day and he’s like, “Deacon, you can afford this.”

He puts down this add of a brand new Nissan Ultima. It was $300 something dollars a month but I really wasn’t that after you added everything up. Anyways, I got this brand new car because of my boss and then I was like, “Okay, well to appease him, I’m going to get somewhat of a luxury car,” but granted, it was like 12 to 15 years old.

So it’s not like this shinning piece of equipment. I mean literally, you couldn’t open the passenger door from the outside, you had to open it from the inside. I had to get seat covers because all the seats were cracked, there was no AM radio. Back in the day, I liked to listen to AM radio, now I’m more into hip-hop but you know, so there are small sacrifices that had to be made for this luxury car.

[00:09:21.6] MM: One of the things that I think, because you were talking about you are paying off $52,000 in debt and we hear stories of people who are tens of thousands of dollars in debt and one of the things that struck me is you were like, “Well I was a sales person and I was going to this expensive homes,” and it just makes me wonder how many of us and up in these huge debt situations because we’re trying to look a part, we’re trying to look rich rather than actually engaging in the habits that will make us rich.

[00:09:56.1] DH: I totally can vouch for that. I think that was kind of the thing, it’s the “fake it until you make it” type of deal but really, I was realistic of my ’96 Lexus. It wasn’t the greatest car in the world. It wasn’t like I was really faking it. It wasn’t like I had this Jaguar or something but yeah, I think that we do and that was part of the new cars. I didn’t a new car. My entire life I drove used reliable cars and so I just bought in that lie. It was like, “I needed this to be able to do my job.”

[00:10:29.1] GC: I find that interesting.

[00:10:29.8] PA: I’ve got a great quote from Thomas J. Stanley on this topic. I just had to jump in.

[00:10:36.9] GC: Go for it because I was thinking that too but go ahead.

[00:10:39.1] PA: Oh okay, the quote is this. “It’s the true financial goal of most Americans is not to be rich, not to be affluent, not to be wealthy. The true goal is to appear affluent and seem wealthy.” So it really goes down that idea. So many of us are getting these huge debt holes because we’re trying to portray this image of success and the reality is not that.

[00:11:04.6] GC: I think in the book, Millionaire Next Door, they talk about it and if I am getting it all correct, it’s the plumber that has their own business, they can go around in the beat up pickup truck that has a better shot at building wealth than the high priced lawyer that has to look like they’re driving the expensive Mercedes and has to have the thousand dollar suits,” because they have to put on that appearance all the time, so that’s interesting.

[00:11:31.1] MM: Yeah.

[00:11:31.5] PA: One thing you did talk about too is the sacrifices they had to make in order to reach this goal. Was that really an important part of this having to get rid of that nice car, maybe having to cut back in other areas as well?

[00:11:44.8] DH: Yeah, absolutely. So this Lexus, right? It didn’t have a cup holder. At least — so that was one thing I’m like, “Gosh this is a basic necessity in a car that you have a cup holder.” So I want to say I was six months in and I press on the dash and sure enough this cup holder pops out and I’ve been driving this car for six months and I had no idea that it had a cup holder.

So it was a sacrifice that I made but no, other than the cars there was a lot of things that we decided when you’re young you get invited out to do stuff a lot, go out on the weekends, go to restaurants and bars and things like that and we just realized that we weren’t in a financial position to really do that. We needed to eat in and we might have eat out occasionally but it was like Chilli’s two for $20, right?

We would go out, we would be out of the door with tip and everything for $25 bucks and maybe that’s once a month. So I cut my gym membership, I cut our cable, anything that was unnecessary that are like, “We don’t really need this during this time.”

[00:12:48.3] MM: I think though that that brings up the question of how feasible is this for everybody to try and do? It’s one thing if you’re a young couple and you’re on board and you are doing it together but what happens if you have like three teenagers or if you have a partner who’s not on board and who doesn’t want to make quite the deep sacrifices? I think that that’s where you start running into trouble and you have to start tweaking and looking at the feasibility of paying off that much debt in that short period of time.

[00:13:27.7] DH: I think this is where, my grandpa used to say, “I don’t want to hear excuses. I want results,” you know? And so this is what I tell people, “If you want the results it’s going to take sacrifice and everybody in the entire world can do it.” And people in the United States by all mean. If you go to I think it’s like Globalrichlist.com or something like that and you can type in what you make a year.

If you live in America, you’re the top 95% of wealth in the world. So I have a series called Debt Success Stories. I feature probably 50 people or 50 families. There was a couple that they moved to a house in the hood with their two little kids because they had inherited the house from a relative and they had no mortgage payment anymore.

They were able to pay off all their consumer debt and they were completely debt free and they love it. Now, it’s kind of like their thing. They call themselves “Hood Rich”. There was a lady that had cancer and she paid off debt while she was getting chemotherapy. I’ve just had so many people that when you say “enough is enough” and you’re willing to make that sacrifice, it’s totally possible.

[00:14:39.1] GC: Did you find that being married helped get out of this situation?

[00:14:45.8] DH: Yeah. So here’s what I’ll say for our situation, is we’re dual income, no kids. “Dink’s” as they call it in the finance world and so my wife is a teacher and I was in sales but I will tell you this, back in the day we’re starting off in our careers. So the teachers don’t make that much. Sales, I was 100% commission. I am getting started.

So I want to say maybe we’re around $70 grand. If you were able to see over that 18 month period, what’s that? $105,000 coming in, we paid off $52 grand and then obviously you have to factor in taxes and all the debt payments and all those things. So it wasn’t an easy feat. It’s not like we were making a $150 grand while we were doing this.

[00:15:32.8] GC: I just find that interesting because I think sometimes, it’s tough living on your own on your own salary and just trying to get by and sometimes having that extra income like you said, it’s like you almost need to partner out in order to really just kill off your debt sometimes but you have the right person also that’s willing to go on and work with it.

[00:15:54.2] DH: Oh yeah, that’s key. So yeah, if you’re listening to this, it’s time to get married and find someone that’s a breadwinner. No, but it was definitely helpful in my case.

[00:16:07.8] MM: Such a gold digger.

[00:16:10.6] DH: Yeah, you know what, those teacher salaries.

[00:16:13.7] PA: You guys mentioned you had dual income, I may have missed it but did you say you were also working part time during this time or was it just your full time jobs?

[00:16:22.7] DH: So at the end, I decided to pick up some part time work because I had this, what I thought was this unattainable goal of 18 months. And once we start to get towards the end, I’m like, “Well this is possible if I get a second job,” because then I knew that I was going to get some extra income coming in on top of my sales gig and so I decided to deliver pizzas.

Now when I was in high school and college, when I was probably in college delivering pizza, it was glory right? I’m listening to my music, I’m driving down the streets with one hand on the wheel, it was just the life and I get to this pizza joint and literally they have me cleaning grease traps and I’m peeling potatoes and I’m like, “What did I sign up for? This is not as glorious as I remember.” So I did have some part time work towards the end of the 18 months there.

[00:17:20.0] MM: So I am kind of interested in the psychology of what makes you want to do this because I am going to be super honest here, there is no way I would work two jobs and cut back that much in my life. I don’t care how much debt I was in, there was no way I would ever do that.

So I am just kind of interested in your mindset, what is your motivation there? What motivates you to do that? Because I have a hard time picturing myself having that — I have fire for some things but that is not one of them. We all know how much I hate sacrifice. So what pushes you? What’s your motivation? What was your motivation to keep going with that?

[00:18:07.9] DH: For us, we had a couple of things that we wanted. One is financial freedom. I eventually wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur now, been for almost four years but the reality is, I couldn’t do that if we were in debt. The amount of payments if you were to add up credit cards, car payments, student loans, I mean we’re probably paying 1,000 to $1,500 a month outside of mortgages. It’s just debt payments.

So we knew that that was one of the building blocks to having that freedom to be able to quit my nine to five and work for myself. Another thing is travel the world. We love to travel internationally and so it was our goal to get rid of this debt. If you have an extra $1,000 a month, that’s $12 grand a year, you can do some pretty nice travelling.

So we just valued different things, right? We just decided that we wanted to go to Singapore where her college roommate lived and so we went to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Indonesia when we got out of debt. We wanted to go to London and Paris because I’d never been there. My wife had but I was like, “I want to go, you got to go,” so we did that but we would not have been able to do those things have we not been debt free.

[00:19:21.7] GC: What kind of student loans did you have, if you don’t mind my asking? Were they private loans or were they federal loans? What was the impetus? I hear you on the financial freedom but a lot of people think, “Okay, it’s a 30 year loan maybe it’s a low rate,” what was it that made you want to pay that part off?

[00:19:38.3] DH: They are federal loans and believe it or not, they’re even higher today, not our student loans, but it’s just ridiculous. When I look at people’s student loans, and I’m like, “That’s higher than” — and I can’t believe it. It’s like seven or eight percent for some people for regular federal loans. I don’t remember what mine are, let’s say they were 5%.

It matter because for me it was, I don’t have to make a payment to the government ever again outside of the IRS for debt and so it’s one less thing I have to worry about and people like to use the financial argument, right? I studied business in college, I understand other OPM, other people’s money and they say, “Well why would you pay off your 5% student loans when you get 10% stock market?”

I will say, “Hey, well were you alive for 2008? I mean there is a long period of time where you are not making 10% of the stock market. Have you heard of the lost decade where there is basically zero percent return for 10 years?” So it’s not guaranteed. So for me, paying off debt is guaranteed return of my money and that’s why I did it.

[00:20:43.1] MM: I think that really speaks to the psychology because I have 1.9% interest rate on my student loans and I refuse to pay them off early. I just straight up refused. I actually Deacon and I might have had this conversation.

[00:21:00.8] DH: I think we did.

[00:21:02.1] MM: Yeah, I think we did but I just refused just because I am putting that money into the stock market and even during the worst of it, I was still making a better return on my investment than the 1.9% I was paying on my student loans but I think it just speaks to your psychology because to me, I’m comfortable with carrying that kind of debt, but not everybody is. And so in the end, you have to decide which kind of debt you’re comfortable with and how long you’re willing to make those payments and do that.

[00:21:38.2] KP: I think whatever motivates you to take a second job delivering pizzas, you should do that. If you care enough about investing in the future to take a second job, invest in the future. If you care enough about paying down your debt, if you care enough to put that extra work in and actually whether it’s paying down debt or investing. If you care enough to earn that money and do something productive with it, then do that man. That’s a pretty incredible story Deacon to just put pedal to the metal and just make no excuses and I don’t think many of us are willing to look in the mirror and do that frankly.

[00:22:11.4] MM: Oh I’m not, so good for you.

[00:22:12.8] PA: I think another thing I’m hearing Deacon, when I hear your story, is that it gives you a lot more freedom when you don’t have those obligations sitting there in the background. You have the freedom to go on trips if you want to, travelling, you can save more money. The options are just open wide for you when you have that obligation off the slate.

[00:22:32.1] DH: Oh yeah and I was looking at opportunity cost, right? Like what does that cost me to have those debt payments? And so if we were just to say that on that $1,000, the majority of that is just interest. So let’s just say it’s $500 a month in interest. Well over a year, that’s six grand. People complain about, “I can’t put my kids through college because I don’t have money.” Well that’s because you have a car payment.

“I can’t invest for the future because I don’t have money”. Well that’s because you bought a house bigger than you could afford and you have more debt than you really have to be carrying and so I think a lot of times, we justify our debt but we have to realize that that’s taking away something else. Saying yes to debt in one area is saying no to these opportunities over here.

Whether it’s travel or putting your kids through college or whatever. So for the people who are listening, what are your priorities? Write them down and if it’s having debt, all right. I would say that’s not something that most people would want to prioritize. It would be, “Hey, I want to do all these other things,” you know?

[00:23:34.3] GC: Yolo.

[00:23:36.3] DH: Yolo baby, woo!

[00:23:39.1] MM: Yeah and to tell the truth, I mean I know I’m coming from a place of where I am really privileged where I can say, “Well I can make my student loan payments, my $200 bucks a month on my student loan payments and still have plenty of money left over to do lots of other stuff,” and that’s part of it. It’s just luck because at the time I went to school and the low interest rate I was able to get. Somebody coming out of school with the same amount of student loans that I had is not paying 1.9% and they’re not paying $200 a month. They’re much higher.

[00:24:15.1] GC: It speaks to a different situations too and being aware of what those financials are too. A lot of people have all this debt out there and they’re not even sure what those rates are or what they are and who they’re paying the money to. They just know they got a bill and they have to pay it, right? So yeah, it sounds like if you got five, six or 7% versus the 1.9%, that’s a big determining factor on whether you pay it off too.

[00:24:39.4] DH: Absolutely, and one of the things that I think people miss out on is okay, if you get the $200 student loan payment and I am just using Miranda as example, are you then now that you are saying that that’s okay instead of you’re going to use that money and put it in the stock market. So are you putting an additional $2,400 a year into the stock market now that you have this $200 a month payment?

I think a lot of people don’t do that though, right? They say, “Oh I can get this much in the stock market so I’m just going to borrow the money over here and invest that money,” but do people really invest it? That’s where they got to have a gut check.

[00:25:22.1] MM: Oh that’s for sure too and I think you make a really good point there. A lot of people are like, “Well, I’m going to leverage this,” and like you were saying, other people’s money but what are they really doing with that money and I have my retirement account, I have my travel fund. I’ve got my emergency fund. All that stuff is taken care of and that’s all done with extra money that I am not putting toward paying down my student loans. Like you said it’s what are you doing with it?

[00:25:53.1] TD: In Miranda’s case thought, you are actually making that decision to invest it.

[00:25:57.7] MM: Oh yeah.

[00:25:58.5] TD: I think a lot of people say they got that $200 payment. They’re like, “Well, the interest is low so I’m not going to pay it back,” but then they end up blowing all the money and then they’ve got nothing to show for it, just a bunch of junk.

[00:26:07.8] GC: It’s like they end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s like, “Okay, I paid this off but now this one is really just going to go to something else that I’m either going to borrow again to balance something else out,” but the money is not really going to somewhere that will grow for them.

[00:26:22.3] MM: But really, we’re just trying to make Miranda feel better about the fact that she doesn’t mind being on debt.

[00:26:28.9] PA: No sacrifices.

[00:26:29.9] MM: That is right now sacrifices. No but I think this also brings up a point when we’re talking about “well what are you doing with the money?” What happens Deacon when you actually pay off all that debt and now it feels like, “Oh my gosh. The big day has come. I have all these extra money. I had paid off all these debt,” what do you do with all that money? Do you run out and spend it? Do you have to make a plan for it? That’s something you’ve got to handle.

[00:26:59.1] DH: Oh yeah and so our thing was, we never were savers. That’s why we had debt because we never saved up money to buy anything and so we realized that — well first, I want to say this. When we paid off our debt, it didn’t really sink in. We were used to for all of our lives making these payments and so we’re looking at our bank account, there’s an extra grand in there. We’re like, “That’s weird,” you know?

And then the next month there’s another extra grand and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is actually real!” So at that point, it was like, “Okay, we need to save up,” and people say three to six months’ worth of expenses and let’s just say our expenses were three grand a month. That’s $18 grand and I just can’t fathom that. So I was like, “Okay, let’s just do three months. Let’s make a very small goal in our eyes and have nine grand to put that much in savings.” So that was our next step.

So we paid off the debt and now we’re like, “Hey, let’s put some money in savings and now let’s beef up the amount that we’re putting in retirement,” and then on top of that, we have what I call a countdown fund that’s also known as a sinking fund where we put $300 a month every month into a travel fund so that we can do these international trips I was telling you about.

[00:28:13.1] GC: Nice.

[00:28:15.6] MM: Yeah, and I’m a huge — sorry, I was going to say I’m a huge fan of…

[00:28:17.9] PA: Miranda is always thinking about travelling.

[00:28:19.2] MM: Yeah, I know. I’m a huge fan of the travel fund, that’s my thing. I do the same thing. I’m always saving for the next trip and I actually ended up using a combination. Well right now, we’re using a travel fund where we put a certain amount of money into it each month so that we can go on a Viking river cruise next summer.

[00:28:39.9] GC: With Vikings?

[00:28:41.2] MM: Yeah. No, because I want to but then I realized when I was looking at everything, I looked at Digit and I realized that automatically without even thinking about it, Digit had saved me enough money to pay for my trip across Canada next year, this summer that’s coming up. So I’m like, “Oh works for me.”

[00:29:02.8] GC: That’s the power of small amounts, right?

[00:29:05.2] MM: Right.

[00:29:07.4] PA: There you go.

[00:29:08.5] GC: So Deacon, we’re getting towards the end here and we like to finish off our shows with a final word from everybody. So we’re going to go around and just sum up what our thoughts are on the subject. So Tom, tell us your final thoughts on paying off big amounts in a small amounts of time?

[00:29:26.7] TD: Well one thing I liked that Deacon said there that we didn’t really touch on was how he had an 18 month goal and that led him towards getting the pizza delivery job. We’ve talked about goals before but I think that probably helped you quite a bit because really if your goal is simply, “I’m going to pay off this amount,” without any kind of timeline there, you can just get off slowly. So certain set a goal when you’re trying to pay off this. Make it realistic, you can’t pay it off in a month maybe but a good realistic goal and do what you have to do to make it.

[00:30:00.4] GC: Yeah, it seems like it really made a sense of urgency in how to do it. Peter what’s your final thoughts?

[00:30:07.5] PA: Well, if you’re going to be going down this road of paying off that debt as fast as Deacon did, I think that you really have to be ready to make it happen. You have to be ready to have the rubber hit the road and actually sit down and start planning and actually doing it. Now, I’d like to quote and I heard Deacon give on another podcast.

It says that, “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, and others make it happen,” that was Michael Jordan. So you really have to be ready to sit down and actually do the work, make some sacrifices, get organized and be dedicated to making this goal happen but sit down and think about your goals about why you are making it happen and with those goals it will be a lot easier I think.

[00:30:52.5] GC: Miranda, what’s your final word?

[00:30:55.8] MM: Yeah, I think just like what we were talking about, it goes back to priorities, what Deacon was talking about. What really matters to you and what do you want to have happen in your life and figure that out and once you know that and you’re committed to that. Then you can start making changes and start making a plan.

[00:31:15.9] GC: Kyle, your final word?

[00:31:16.5] KP: I guess my final word is simply as inspiring as Deacon’s story is if that sort of sacrifice doesn’t suit you, if you don’t think you’re ready for that, try very hard not to go into debt. I know that’s easier said than done, but that’s a reality and Deacon fought and made his new reality. If that fight doesn’t appeal to you, try not to get yourself into that hole.

[00:31:39.8] GC: Sounds good and Deacon, if you’ll close out the final word?

[00:31:43.9] DH: Yeah, if you’re listening to this and you’re in a similar situation of where we were, know that we were just average people. I might sound that I know what I’m talking about now but back then, I knew nothing, right? I was just piecing this together as I went. So this is totally possible for you if this is something that you want to do.

So I just encourage you to give it all you got. Use resources that we talked about like the debt snowball. I’ve got a debt elimination that’s free that helps you use the debt snowball and tell you how long it’s going to take you to get out. There’s all sorts of stuff out there and so I really encourage you to just not wait, not procrastinate but take action now.

[00:32:24.4] GC: You know I love that part of your story because that’s what I love hearing. There’s so many people that think that you have to have some sort of expertise in this in order to make it happen, you have to find somebody else. But really we’re all just starting out that way and we can all make this happen and we just have to find a place to start and do it.

Deacon thank you so much. For those people that are out there, can you tell them a little bit about Well Kept Wallet and where they can find you and what you’re all about?

[00:32:50.2] DH: Sure. So Well Kept Wallet was started as a way to document our journey out of debt and so it’s website called Wellkeptwallet.com and I’ve got some free resources on there if you go to my resources page. The debt elimination form, a starter budget form, pretty much everything you need to get started because I want to make it easy for people.

There’s so much stuff to sift through and so it’s my dedication to get you from where you are to where you want to be when it comes to your career, money and lifestyle and so that is what Well Kept Wallet is all about and I’d love to see anybody over there and help out in anyway you can.

[00:33:26.9] GC: So definitely, definitely go out there and check out Well Kept Wallet and check in on what Deacon is up to. Deacon, thank you again for sharing your story and your inspiration with all of us and thank you everybody out there for listening and watching and until next week, be good with your money. Goodnight.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for joining us on the Money Mastermind Show, get more information at Moneymastermindshow.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes and YouTube and follow us on Google Plus.

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