How We Money: Knocking Out Debt

How far would you go to knock out $231,000 of debt? Inspired by Dave Ramsey's book The Total Money Makeover, Brittany and Josh Evans are leaving their Sioux Falls home and making some pretty major life changes to complete their seven-year plan for financial freedom. Here's how they money.

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Transcript

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- How far would you go to get out of debt?[upbeat music] Welcome to "Common Cents on the Prairie," a podcast dedicated to helping you demystify the sometimes complex topic of money. I'm Adam Cox, Head of Wealth Management for the First National Bank in Sioux Falls. We're a community bank based out of South Dakota. On this podcast, we share expert insights from around the country and stories from our local community to arm you with the tools you need to make better financial decisions. Because the truth is, the more we talk about this stuff, the better off we're all going to be. On today's episode, I'll be talking to Josh and Brittany Evans. Josh and Brittany have been on a four-year journey, marching towards debt freedom, but they had a big mountain to climb. Now with two kids, they have recently made a big life decision to uproot their family and move across the country in order to pay down their debt and achieve financial freedom. They have done the work, and now they are taking on this next stage with enthusiasm. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Josh and Brittany Evans. Josh and Brittany, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.- Thanks for having us.- Thanks for having us, yeah.- All right, well, I'm excited about this. So Josh, I learned about the two of yours story here very recently, and we talked the last week maybe?- Yeah. Yep.- And I thought it was such an incredible story, like, we have to get this on the show. And then I realized you were leaving really quickly, and so we kind of tossed around, all right, do we do this virtually when you leave, or do we do this in person? But we all had a gap in our schedule, so we're doing this just in the nick of time. So, why are we here? Tell me about your story.- All right, we are here because about four, a little over four years ago, a friend knew our financial situation, not exact details, but knew that Brittany had gone to grad school, accumulated a lot of debt from that, and he had just finished the Dave Ramsey Baby Step too at that time.- Okay.- And was still motivated from that and knew our situation and thought it'd be really helpful for us. He had actually just had back surgery. We were visiting him in the hospital.- Oh, wow, okay.- And he had basically said,"If I buy you 'Total Money Makeover,'"will you both read it,"and then would you be interested in doing it?" So we knew that we had always planned on attacking it. I think we kind of, once she got done with school, started working, we had so much debt that we were like, well, there's not more we can do. Like, I mean, we're maybe spending too much on food or something, but in general, we don't really feel like there's much ground to be made, and basically make minimum payments and live on, I guess.- [Adam] Yep.- But we read the book. We were motivated at that point. We thought that's definitely something we could do. Created a budget. Realized we did have a little wiggle room.- Okay.- But yeah, basically we started out with just over $231,000 in debt.- Okay.- That was about two months before we had our first son.- Ah, okay.- So, yeah, that was kind of our motivation too, and also a tough time to start.- Sure. Yep.- And just because you don't get that progress right away. You're basically saving to pay for the medical bills at that point.- Yeah.- So.- Yeah, well, kids are super cheap.- Yeah, right, right.- So.- We've learned that, yeah.[group laughs] But yeah, so four years later we just got under the $100,000 mark.- Nice.- And we were thinking, oh, that's really cool. We've made a lot of progress and then thought,"We still have like three more years of doing this," so.- Yep.- It's like, I don't know, we just, we have since had a second child, another boy.- [Adam] Yep.- And we, I don't know, you hear people say that they grow up so fast or whatever, and we want to maximize that time with them while they're still living in our house, and one of the things that we're really intrigued to do is travel.- Okay.- Just create those experiences. That's some of my favorite things from my childhood.- Sure.- I think same for her.- Absolutely.- And we're like, well, we're three years away from being able to do that'cause we won't go anywhere until we're out of debt.- Sure.- Basically, I mean, we might go to the Black Hills or Duluth or something regional, but no beaches, nothing like that, so.- Yep.- So just one day we were talking about it. Brittany had kind of joked,"Unless I take a job as a traveling physical therapist,"it's kind of the end of it at that point." And I kind of went to my computer and started looking things up. I was like, well, what does that look like.- What is this, yeah?- Yeah. I was like, well, that would be really intriguing, actually. We could really cut into it a lot faster. And yeah, it kind of took off from there. I brought it up maybe a week later, and I said, "Is this, like,"you would never actually do this, would you?" And I think it was probably in her head at that point, too, and it just kind of took off from there.- Yep. Okay. So now the next adventure is you're going to be a traveling physical therapist?- Yes.- Okay, for how long?- We're assuming probably a year and a half. My oldest will start kindergarten in two years, so we'd like to come back and settle down in the Midwest near family once he's ready for school. But we're planning on taking that whole time to go and experience new things, and get the debt paid down first, and then maybe have some more fun travel assignments, too, that money isn't necessarily the sole focus of it, and go just do some fun things.- [Adam] Yeah.- I think one of the big motivators for me is one of our goals on top of traveling and making experiences for our kids is we'd love to live on an acreage someday.- Oh, yeah.- And not too long before this kind of came about, we went and looked at one that we were interested in, and I think we sat down and like crunched the numbers and were like, "We are much further away from this," than we realized being able to actually get a bigger house, live on an acreage somewhere like that. Our house is great that we have now, but we knew it wasn't our forever home. And that was kind of a moment for me, where I was like,"Wow, we're a lot further away than I thought we were." And we still, even though we've come a long way, we still have this mountain of debt to overcome, and that's where I really started to get more frustrated with it. We've come so far, we've done so much. We're budgeting, we're doing what we can, but we still have a long way to go. And I think in my mind I was thinking, well, if I want to cut this down, we either got to get second jobs and spend less time with our kids, or that's when the travel thing just kind of came into my mind, was that would be a different option. I think in the beginning I was kind of joking about it, thinking, we have two kids. Like, how are we going to uproot them every three months moving across the country? Like, it's just not feasible. And the more we dug into it, we realized,"You know, this is actually maybe something we could do." We talked to other travelers. He has a friend who's a travel nurse. I have a friend who used to be a travel therapist. While they didn't do it with kids, they could at least give us an idea of what the life is like.- Yeah.- If we could actually do it. And finally we just decided to dive head into it and let's do it, and let's knock out this debt.- All right, well, I have so many questions.- [Brittany] Yes.- So many questions. Okay. This is an incredible story. How long the two of you been together?- Good question. [couple laughs]- We've been together for 12 years. Married for eight.- Married for eight. Okay.- Yes.- I knew that. I was seeing if she did.- Yeah.[group laughs] At what point in your relationship did the two of you really start talking about money?- Probably I suppose after getting engaged.- Yeah.- Yeah.- Nice.- I mean, she was planning on going to graduate school at that point, so I knew what we were taking on with marriage, but yeah, we really, I mean, I suppose with the wedding you start budgeting and stuff like that.- Yep.- Get a feel for that type of stuff. But yeah, probably at that point.- Okay. How'd those conversations go? Were you guys on the same page?- Yeah, I think so. Neither of us are big spenders. I probably am a little bit more than you are, but I think we both had similar mindsets and grew up with similar mindsets in terms of money.- Yep.- That made it a little bit easier, that we weren't on opposite pages.- And we're both pretty laid back, and so I think that helps, and-- Yeah, yeah. Brittany, a lot of this debt was yours? Like, how did you feel about that? Did you, like for me, I always use myself as an example, when Diane and I got together, 100% of the debt was mine. So the $220,000 or so in student loans that we had, that was all mine. And so that came with a lot of feelings for me coming into the marriage with that. Did you have any feelings about the debt or were you just chill about it?- I mean, I felt bad that most of what we were taking on was mine, and even now, all of his student loans and everything is paid off, and literally what we're down to is mine. But at the same time, I love my career, I love my job and if I went back, I don't think I would change it, even knowing the amount of debt that I took on with it. So there's some feelings of feeling bad that I have accumulated this amount and it's taking us a long time to get there, but then I also kind of look at it as, well, I also love what I do. I'm passionate about it, and now we're going to get to experience something really cool that we wouldn't otherwise with this mountain of debt, so mixed feelings about it.- Yeah, mixed feelings. Okay. I mostly felt bad with mine, so you're doing much better than I was. Can the two of you think back to a time when the weight of this debt and what you were going to have to undertake became real? I mean, you've been doing this four years now. Was there a moment when the two of you kind of looked at each other and were like,"Oh, this is going to be, this is going to be a lift?"- I'd say early on, I guess when we... We knew we had a lot. We never laid it out. I don't know. Kind of intimidating, I suppose. So we laid it out. Talked with a financial advisor. He had a, basically a schedule saying, like, how you're currently sitting, and you guys will get raises along the way, and put all that information together, and said it'll take seven years.- Okay.- Wow. That's a long time.[group laughs] So like, so I think just knowing, like, it's going to be hard to stay focused for seven years. And, I don't know, I'd say that was the biggest moment for me, I guess early on. You kind of knew all along what you're taking on after that.- Yep.- Just kind of the expectation, I guess.- Yep.- I think we started to feel the pressure more after grad school. We had a lot of things come up, you know? Something with the car, something dental come up, so we kept,"Well, we don't have extra money to pay this off right now,"so we'll put it on a credit card,"or a care card or something like that." And to actually sit, I think it was the same thing for me, to sit and list all that out and realize just how much debt was behind our name was a, that was where it was really like,"Okay, we really need to do something about this." And then the seven years thing was a little daunting also knowing that we were about to start a family and knowing that that would slow things down too, so that seven years would probably turn into longer.- Yep.- But initially I think just writing it all down and actually seeing it on paper and seeing the number was like, wow, that's a very large number.- Yep, yep. So you said one of the things that kicked this all off was you had a friend buy you, was it "Total Money Makeover"?- Yes.- Yes.- Okay. Did you follow that program pretty prescriptively or did you make any modifications?- Yes. We I think for the first three to probably three years or so, we followed it really closely. Did basically everything Dave said. Maybe not as, I mean not, he says beans and rice.- Yep. Yep.- We ate more comfortably than that. But yeah, as far as, I mean, we didn't take out any more loans. When we moved to Sioux Falls in 2020, we rented a town home.- [Adam] Okay.- We weren't going to buy a house. And then a little over a year later, we were expecting another child. We learned that it was going to be twins. Panicked a little bit.- Sure. Yes.- For, yeah, we met with a realtor right away that had rentals. We were going to rent from her, talk to her and decided that it made more sense for us to buy. We could get a first-time home buyer's loan. Wouldn't have to put much down upfront, and we got a lot more house than we would've for renting at that time. So we just felt it made a lot more sense for us. Kind of worried that something would go wrong with the house or whatever. Like, oh, Dave was right.- Yeah.- But I kind of felt like I had to ask for permission to do that, like from a friend, to like, well Dave doesn't say to do that. Like, it felt wrong. But I think we kind of realized, like, we also have to do, like, we have to think for ourselves also and do what we feel like makes the most sense for us.- [Adam] Yeah.- And we did find out a few weeks later that we had lost one of the twins, so, but we kind of kept that same mindset.- Sure.- The house just still made more sense for us.- Yeah, okay. You know, most people just live with that most of their lives. Why did you two choose a different path?- I think we kind of always knew that we were going to go after it, even, I mean, we had tried thinking,"What can we do once you're done with school?" During that time I had actually taken online trading classes thinking that that'd be a nice side job that I'd be able to do. It doesn't take a lot of time, but I never was able to get into it enough to feel comfortable actually putting money at it, so just that kind of just went to the side. But we always knew we wanted to get rid of it. It was just when it kind of came to it right away, we didn't feel like we could.- Yeah. Yeah.- I think a big driver for me is that I enjoyed traveling. A lot of my childhood memories, like Josh said, was involved around going places with my family. And we want to be able to do that for the kids. Even before we decided to do travel therapy, we knew that that wouldn't be very attainable with the amount of debt we had unless we were to go further into debt. And that just didn't really, that was never even an option for us. It was never on the table, was going and doing those things and making our debt even more mountainous. So we decided, I think that's one of the reasons why we decided that we need to take care of this ourselves.- Sure.- And we need to go for it, and that financial freedom will come a lot quicker if we do.- Yeah. Do you think starting a family accelerated or changed the way you viewed your financial future?- Yeah.- I think it did, yeah.- Definitely. I think we want to not only have those experiences for ourselves, but for our kids. While it slowed down our journey for a little bit with hospital bills and just all the money that comes with having a new baby and little children, I think they're a big driver for us, is we want to experience things with them. We want to share the world in as much as we can with them.- [Adam] Sure.- So even though they slowed us down a little bit, it's really one of our big drivers forward, I think.- Yeah. And you may not have any, but what lessons have you learned throughout this journey, this four-year-plus debt reduction journey that you've been on? Anything stick out to you?- I think communication.- Yeah.- We have to be on the same page about things. Josh is a little bit better about sitting down and,"Okay, we need to do the budget now."- So you're the budget guy?- Yeah, I'm spreadsheet guy.- Yeah, he's the budget guy.- All right, yeah.- I think we have, like, eight or nine spreadsheets for our budget every month.- Yeah.- Maybe not quite that many, but-- Whatever it takes.- Yeah.[group laughs] But we, I mean, when we sit down, we talk about it, we figure out where our money's going. And I don't think from the beginning we would've been able to knock down as much as we did without having that open communication. And I think it is key to understanding where it goes, too,'cause it's easy to go to Target and just spend money and not realize where it's going, but when you have to sit down and actually talk about it, then you realize where things are going. And I think without that, this would've been a very difficult if not impossible journey.- Yeah.- Yeah, I'd say just to build off that the budget is, everyone says that, but it truly is like you have this much money to spend. I think a big helper for us was to actually take out cash for what we were expecting to spend on food,'cause then you can see, like,"Okay, we only have this much left."Like, we got to stretch that out the rest of the month."- [Adam] Yep.- It also allowed us to pay for our medical bills after having children. We were able to pay that in full right away rather than finance or come up with a payment plan with a hospital or anything like that. We've had other medical bills come up that are over $1,000 where we're like,"We can't pay for that all right now," but knowing that, yeah, we have that in the budget, like the extra, we're going to make a smaller loan payment, but-- Yep.- This is obviously we have to pay this.- Yeah, you had the cushion.- Yeah, we were able to do that, so.- Yeah.- It's about comfort in that sense.- [Adam] Yeah.- I think sitting down and doing a budget, too, made us realize early on, we did have extra. We never thought we had wiggle room, like, oh, but sitting down and actually listing out our finances really made us realize,"No, we do, if we just make sure"we allocate our money in the appropriate places." You know, we do have extra money, we do have wiggle room, and without that we wouldn't have realized that. And that was a big first step for us, was just sitting down and writing things out and we could really see where our money went and made us realize, like,"Yeah, we can do this."We can put a couple extra$100 towards that loan."- Yep.- That was a big, I think a big deal for us that we took out of "The Total Money Makeover," was the budgeting.- You know, a lot of people I think view budgeting as, you know, you're handcuffed, like you only can spend so much. And there is certainly a component of that when you budget. But I've found too, it also gives you some freedom to say,"Okay, we're going to spend X, Y, or Z in this category,"but then we have some leftover,"and so what do we want to do with this?"Do we want to pay down debt?"Do we want to invest?"Do we want to go on that vacation?" So in a sense, it's almost more freeing than not knowing-- Yeah, I agree.- your financial state.- Yeah, definitely.- Yeah. So, you had a friend really kind of give you a gift that started this process going? Normally I would ask, are you paying it forward in any way? But the two of you're sitting here,[group laughs] so I think that answers that. Have you had other conversations with people about your journey and has that inspired people? Or are you comfortable talking about it with other people?- Yeah, I think we've been pretty open. We haven't been, I don't know that we've necessarily pushed it on anybody, but we've been very open about why we started this, what our driving reasons were, and why we think it's important. We are open to sharing that story with anybody in hopes that that will kind of drive them to do the same, but we haven't been pushy. We haven't bought the book for anybody, but we have been very open. I have a brother who's out of school and we've shared our story with him, and anybody that we know are in similar situations to us a few years ago, we say, you know, "Ask us questions."We're willing to answer any questions," but we've tried not to be too pushy with it.- Yeah.- Yeah, that's kind of actually the motivation I think for coming on here, is we tend not to be pushy people in general, but thought it was an important story to tell, too. That I think it's easy when you have that much debt to be like, "Well, like, it's going to take forever."Like, why not just go live our normal lives"and just live in debt?"- Yep.- But just wanted to give somebody a local story, I guess, that it can be done. It's just a matter of focus and yeah, planning, I guess.- Yeah. What are you most excited about this next stage?- Not having to budget all the time.[group laughs] I think we'll still have a budget and we'll still know where our money's going, but I think I'm just most excited to not be in a constant state of,"Well, how much does that cost?"How much does that cost?"Is that feasible right now?" And then also just being able to actually enjoy some of those travel experiences too, taking our kids to new places. We'll be doing that while working at the same time, so, but after that, even still going down that bucket list. We have a hefty bucket list of places we want to go and things we want to see. And just being able to finally do those things and feel a lot more comfortable about it.- Yep.- For me, it's always in the back of my mind that, like, you spend money almost and it's like,"Well, do I really need that?"- Yeah, right.- Or just how much we have left. It's always just kind of there, I guess. So I think just to get rid of that will be nice.- Yeah. Have you given any thoughts how you're going to celebrate the moment when you're debt free?- Yeah, we talked about going on a trip to Disney World.- Oh.- Taking the kids there.- Yeah, very nice.- Yeah, and who knows where we'll be in our travels at that point, but we thought that would maybe be a good way to celebrate, would be to take the kids and maybe some family and go on our first kind of real big trip as a family. It might have to be a little bit after we're out of debt to save up, but that's what we've talked about doing.- Yeah. Well, good. You're doing better than Diane and I. We didn't plan it very well. We went to the bank, we like made our last payment and like took a picture in the teller line, like it was a big deal, and I thought we'd go out and celebrate and it was very anticlimactic, so maybe we should have gone to Disney or something else. We'll redo that.- We'll have to see what actually happens when it does.- Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, as we wind down today, I'd be interested to get your thoughts on what advice would you give to another couple that's out there that's listening or watching this and saying, you know,"I've got credit card debt, I've got student loans,"I've got medical," whatever it is. What would you be your advice to them as they start thinking about how to attack this and how meaningful it could be?- I would say don't be afraid of it.- [Adam] Yeah.- Write it down. That was a big deal for us, is to actually sit and write it down and see our debt. And I think with the snowball effect, that really helped us kind of know, alright, well this one's only, this credit card only has $1,500. I don't know what that first one was, but $1,500 on it, and just focus on that and know, okay, we can do that.- Yep.- And it was hard to look at the 230,000, but to just look at those little numbers and attack it, and you can do it. And if you just sit down and write it down and really think about where things are going, I think it's attainable, but you just got to take that first step.- Yep. Yep.- I think one thing that we wish is that we wish we would've done it sooner, started right out of grad school versus when we were just about to have our first child. But we still decided it was time to do it. And you can do it. You just have to focus on it and have open communication and just start.- Yeah. Thank you so much for being on the show. This was awesome. And also, you're about ready to uproot your family-- Yes.- like in a few days, so thank you for coming in here and sharing it in studio.- Of course.- It's never the same when you're not in studio, and I just want to congratulate the two of you on how far you've come. Four years is a long time to grind this stuff out, and I know it's, you know, I know, I'm sure it's felt like looking up in a mountain. It certainly did for Diane and I, but you're close and now you're taking this big next step, and it's going to accelerate things, but you're also going to be able to do things that you maybe had thought you were going to put off for a long time, and so while, yeah, you're going to be working, but you're going to go see new places and you're going to go have great experiences with the kids, and that's awesome. So thank you for sharing your journey. I'm sure it will inspire a lot of people, and I appreciate it, and keep us updated.- Absolutely.- We'll do that.- Yeah. Thank you for having us on today.- Yeah. Happy to do it. All right. Thanks, guys.- Thank you.[upbeat music]- I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and share with your family or friends. If you have a topic you want us to cover in future episodes, send us a note through our website. And if you're at the point where you want an expert opinion on your finances, reach out and we'd be happy to start a conversation. And remember, any comments, insights, or strategies discussed on this podcast are intended to be general in nature and therefore may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything we discuss, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and/or your financial advisor.