Single Mom, $50K in Student Loans & Now I’m Debt-Free

Join Lauren as she discusses how, as a 24 year old Single Mom, she managed to pay off $50,000 of Student Loan Debt to become one-hundred percent Debt-Free! Lauren opens up about how she broke the generational chain of debt to change her Family Tree and how you can too. You don't need to continue living paycheck to paycheck! For more resources on how to become Debt Free Listen to The Ramsey Show wherever you listen to Podcasts. 

Transcript

Okay, welcome back to MILF season. I think that this is the, I don't know, seventh or eighth episode and I think that half of my episodes have been when I'm somewhat sick and I woke up after work this past weekend and like literally didn't have a voice on Sunday morning so I'm sorry that once again my voice is a little raspy. I don't know, maybe it sounds kind of hot, hopefully it does. All right I was really trying to get some videos for my TikTok account going of me filming and recording and I started to get frustrated because I usually just sit on the floor so I don't have to hold my mic. I don't have any fancy microphone equipment and I was just getting frustrated trying to make a stinkin get the angle right, get the lighting right, then you could hear hear me like moving the mic and I was just like no I really want like as best as I can do for this podcast and hearing you know from me moving all around just just isn't it. So today's episode when I got my new laptop I basically lost I had recorded three kind of little episodes and I lost those and my first episode that I re-recorded after getting my new laptop was my debt-free episode and I feel like I didn't sound excited enough in the episode. So this is what we're talking about today. We are talking about how I became a hundred percent debt-free and how you can absolutely do it too. So without further ado let's get into it. Welcome to MILF season. I'm your host Lauren and I'm a 24 year old single mom to my beautiful two-year-old daughter. Join me for raw and vulnerable conversations where no topic is off the table and I'm so ready to spill the tea.

We're talking motherhood, parenting, dating and relationships or really lack thereof, friendships and sobriety, addiction, finances, and well all things real life. Welcome to Free Therapy. It's milk season baby. It's kind of hard when I think about where to start with this episode because there's a lot of internet gurus. There's a lot of people in the TikTok world and the Instagram reels world which is basically just TikTok delayed by a few weeks I think and just even actual professionals telling you what to do with your money, how to get out of debt, actually most people don't encourage you to do that, and I am by no means a professional. This is not professional advice. This is my personal experience and how I feel comfortable handling my finances and how I feel most free. Yeah so take this however you want. I do hope that you'll listen this episode and feel inspired to do the same thing that I did and feel the freedom that I feel now. So let's talk about it. College. The biggest start if you will to my debt-free journey starts with college because everyone feels like they have to go to college. But let's just say I don't know the actual math, but maybe 90% of the population, probably more cannot afford to go to college realistically.

Putting aside student loans, who can afford 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a year for college, a very small minority of people and their parents and maybe their grandparents. So my debt free journey started in college naturally. I'm very very grateful for my parents because my parents grew up like when I grew up I should say I was listening to Dave Ramsey so my parents would play like Dave Ramsey while cooking dinner and I'm assuming that this was from a Dave Ramsey thing I'm not sure but I remember growing up I used to have to do chores and I would get like a dollar or fifty cents per chore and that was kind of my first introduction to money and I I just have to give the biggest, biggest thank you in the world to my parents because whether they never let me, it was never talk of the house with finances, I never had a credit card.

And let me tell you, if I had a credit card, I would have had a lot more debt. So to give you the facts before we get diving into the specifics, I paid off $50,000 of student loans. loans. $50,000 of student loan debt.

50,000 for some of you, maybe that's way more than your student loans. I'm guessing the majority of you, it's probably way less than your student loans. And the crazy thing is is that I did this in eight months, eight months, guys, I changed literally the projectory of my life and my future family, my future children's lives in eight months.

It was a lot of sacrifice, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a really, really, really short-term sacrifice. It typically takes people about a year. I just have the biggest smile on my face right now because I almost I don't even know where to start.

I'm I'm just so proud. I'm so proud of myself. So to get into it, I go to college and naturally I cannot afford it. And so every year my parents put a little bit of money towards it.

and then I would save up some money from the summer, my summer job, put it towards college, and then the rest were student loans. And what's crazy to me is that student loans are just like, check here, check here, fill in some information, and you're good to go. Like $10,000, $20,000, you're good to go, you signed off.

It's really mind-blowing, and it's really dangerous, and it's really scary. The student loan industry is just, it's mind-boggling, because you have these 18-year-olds who are just signing their lives away it feels like. And so many people think, I'll never pay off my debt, I'll never pay off my student loans.

You can do it, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. This is a lie that we are told and sold so well to keep you chained down to the system and to being in payments and never getting ahead. Like I mentioned, I never had a credit card.

So my only debt was these student loans from college. And when I was in college, I knew like student loans were bad and I knew I shouldn't be taking them out because I listen to Dave Ramsey. And maybe if you're listening to this, you're like, oh, God, here we go.

Here she goes again. If you know me, I always talk about Dave Ramsey. Here she goes talking about Dave Ramsey again.

Maybe you don't even know who Dave Ramsey is. Again, I am not a professional. Dave Ramsey and his personalities are professionals. They take calls from people like you and me every day that are chained paycheck to paycheck, can't seem to break this cycle, don't have enough money to get by to live to do anything fun, or they're just drowning in credit card debt. And Dave Ramsey, I will always follow his principles. So I'm not going to get into detail about every single principle that he has and you can decide whether or not you want to follow them. I can only encourage you to do the same as I did. Dave Ramsey, he has seven baby steps and the first baby step is to save a thousand dollars. So they say that most people can do this in I think one to two months. That thousand dollars isn't going to be big enough to cover any massive emergency and they know that. That's where they get a lot of criticism. Well a thousand dollars is barely gonna cover blah blah blah that's okay it's your starting emergency fund. A thousand dollars is likely going to cover these little little emergencies. You save up that thousand dollars and it needs to be liquid. You need to be able to access it very quickly in case of an emergency.

So for me, I like I said I never had a credit card so I'd always had some money in the bank, a couple hundred dollars but nothing crazy and of course being a young girly girl I would spend it on Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, clothes, like the mall. Like I would just spend the money. I was really not a saver.

And so the first time, I should say the first couple times I attempted in college to save this thousand dollars, it just, it didn't work. I wasn't ready. I wasn't mentally ready to start, start my future and start getting out of debt.

And I didn't want to change anything, so nothing was going to change. I didn't want to stop buying all the alcohol in college, so I was just spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on alcohol. I didn't want to stop going shopping.

And I went to Forever 21 and spent all my money on going out clothes. I just I wasn't ready to make the change, even though I knew I needed to. But nothing changed.

So nothing changed. My actions didn't change. So my bank account didn't change.

And my student debt just kept getting higher and higher and higher. So in college, my freshman and sophomore year, like I mentioned, I kind of knew I needed to start paying off my debt, but I didn't really care. And every now and then, starting my sophomore year, I might put $100 on my loans, $500 on my loans.

I have a distinct memory sitting in the hallway one time, trying to put some money on my loans, and it wouldn't work, and I was just like, fuck this. I'll just save the money, and of course, you just blow the money on something else. And then my junior year came, and college, Everyone talks about when you have a kid, time flies by.

When you, I don't know, you're just, as you get older, time flies by. For me, college flew by. Freshman and sophomore year was doing whatever, acclimating to the college life, and then junior year hit, and you're like, wait a second, I'm gonna be a senior next year.

I'm graduating. That means I need a job. And I need to get my senior year internship in order, and then where am I gonna live?

Am I gonna go back home and I'm gonna move to the state my college is in? What if I get a job offer from my senior year internship? Like you have all these thoughts.

And then junior year I was like, I'm gonna have to start paying off my debt. How am I gonna do that? How am I gonna do that?

And junior year is when I started to like really understand and realize and be hit with the reality that these student loans weren't going away and that personally, I really started to feel like I just kind of was like, was this the whole point of college? To get myself into $50,000 of student loan debt? What did I really learn?

So I really started to reflect. And junior year is also when COVID for us hit. So we got sent home and I got sent home and I was working at the grocery store and starting to like save that money and doing online classes and fast forward to senior year.

For my college, we got to go back, but it was under strict COVID rules and all this stuff. So I went back and I was like, I need a job. I need to start making money because, as I said, it was senior year, holy shit, I'm graduating soon.

Like, these loans aren't going away. And it just, reality really started to set in. and I got a job at a really popular bar and I started hammering all my student loans.

I started putting, I think all except $100 a paycheck of cash onto my student loans and then I was saving that $100 for going out with friends, going out and getting drinks and food and alcohol and clothes and I was still allowing myself some of that money. But that was the beginning of my senior year and then I went home. I come back for second semester and that's when I got pregnant and I obviously didn't know for a hot minute and I was still putting all the money from sidelines onto my loans and then when I found out I was pregnant, I was like, holy shit.

So this is where in Dave Ramsey's baby steps, you have your baby step one, save $1,000. Once that's done, you line up all of your debt from smallest to largest, disregarding the interest rate And I know this episode's like kind of a little out of order guys, but the reason why you wanna disregard the interest rate, people will argue this, it's not a math equation, it's like a what makes the most sense logically equation. Because say you have like a $100 loan and a $500 loan, actually let's change that to bigger numbers.

Say you have a $500 loan and a $5,000 loan, but the $5,000 loan has a higher interest rate, so you kinda wanna be like, oh, well I'm gonna pay off a higher interest rate first, you're gonna get discouraged, especially if you have a lot of debt. If you're trying to pay off your highest loan and your highest interest rate to knock it out, you're not gonna see, quote unquote, you're not gonna see that progress because you're just throwing money at this big loan and there's no little reward. So if you start with your smallest debt, your $500 loan, you might be able to have that knocked out in one or two paychecks and then it's gone and you're like, holy shit, I just paid off a loan.

and then you're excited and you got that fire starting to build under you. And then you can take that $500 that you were throwing towards that loan or however much it was and apply that total sum amount to the next largest loan. And it just snowballs, that's why they call it the debt snowball.

So I was making all this progress, putting my money on my smallest loans, having that fire lit under me and I started putting more and more money on my loans that I was making from sidelines. And then I got pregnant and I realized I was pregnant And I was like, oh my gosh. So this is where if you happen to be pregnant or become pregnant in the baby steps, you stop that snowball and you start accumulating money for your birth.

So that's what I did in case anything goes wrong, in case something happens with insurance, you wanna have this emergency baby fund. And so I went into full stork mode and I was now saving all of my money except $100. I decided personally to keep putting a little money on my loans because I was really afraid I was gonna completely lose that motivation and I was able over the next Almost you know nine months really to save five thousand dollars cash for my daughter's birth so when I graduated I had paid off around ten thousand dollars of debt and and that was crazy so now my loans are down to $40,000.

This is where I had my daughter and I really, really did lose that motivation. Now I have my baby girl and I have to buy her everything.

I wanted to buy her new clothes, I wanted to buy her toys that she was never gonna use, I needed to buy the specific open mouth sippy cup that Instagram pages told me I needed or her oral development would be wrong. All of this crazy marketing stuff that you see online, I needed it. As a first time mom, I fell for every single trap, every single trap that there was.

And so the reality that I chose was to not save my money and it was to spend it. So I would always have a little bit of money in my savings account after I had my daughter, but I was really blowing a lot of my money on useless shit. And then of course on the important things, on baby food, on diapers, on the necessities.

Obviously I was still taking care of my monthly bills.

And this is where I learned I really needed to start making a budget. I wish that I could remember what snapped me out of it because I kind of coasted from my event planning job at this hotel, then I had my daughter, and then I, gosh, where did I work after that? I think I just went to another restaurant and I really, oh my gosh, no.

After I had my daughter, I worked for another event company, a small company that just wasn't for me. And after that, um, I went on unemployment because again, there was COVID and all this stuff. So I was able to go on unemployment for a really long time, which I was really, really grateful for because I was not ready to go back to work after having my daughter.

I got, gosh, eight or 12 weeks of FMLA and maternity leave and it's not enough time. I'm telling you right now, moms, it's not enough time. 12 weeks, it's not enough.

I was really grateful I was able to go on unemployment, but I still really wasn't doing much with that money. And then I got another event planning job with a company of women that I absolutely loved. And this little timeline that I described in like 15 seconds, This was over the course of a year.

I was kind of on unemployment, then bouncing job to job to job, never really finding something that I loved and felt comfortable with. And then I found this woman, this event company that I just absolutely loved working for. But my thing was is that I would get up, I would drive 30 minutes, drop my daughter off at her sitter, drive 30 minutes to work, be at my nine to five, drive 30 minutes to pick up my daughter, drive 30 minutes to go back home, give my daughter dinner, give her a bath, and go to bed.

And I got really tired of that really quickly, and I got really, really, really sad because I literally wasn't seeing my baby, and that was really, really hard. And so it was at this time around this event company that I had a thought of, I need to start making as much money as I can in quote unquote as little time, if you will, as I can. I started to have this drive of I wanna be able to work somewhere where I can stay home with my daughter and then go and make a shit ton of money.

And so my first thought was waitressing. I'm gonna go back to waitressing. I can find a place where maybe the shift doesn't start until two, three, or four, and then I'll be good and I'll make a bunch of money.

So I did that and I started working at a Texas roadhouse. And when I got in a Texas roadhouse, my mindset had shifted from pissing away my money to holy shit, I have $40,000 of fucking student loan debt to pay. Like this is serious.

And I was listening to more Dave Ramsey. I was listening to his podcast every single day. I was on YouTube listening to the debt-free screams and the fire in me just started to grow.

I started listening to debt-free screams and I would be crying listening to these people like in hysterics, wanting it, needing it, feeling that fire under me of I need to get out of debt. I cannot continue living paycheck to paycheck. I don't wanna be like everybody else who's miserable, drowning in debt, can't actually afford a vacation, but it's going on a vacation.

I want to be financially free. I just, talking about it right now makes me so emotional because of the way that I feel now, I'm getting goosebumps, the way that I feel now, the financial freedom that I feel right now being completely 100% debt free, to remembering being so stressed at the grocery store because I would fill up my cart and get there and be like, oh, fuck. Between I was on WIC, I was on SNAP, and I'm so grateful for those programs because they saved me so much money, Moms and dads do not be afraid or embarrassed to use those state programs.

They saved me so much money. But I remember I would go to the grocery store and just fill up the car. I had no budget.

I had no grocery list and I would just be like, well, fuck, like I hope I can pay for all this. Oh God, I'm like moving money from my savings to my checking and pulling cash, hoping I had enough. and it's so stressful and honestly a little sickening that that's how so many of us live.

We just don't know where our money's going. We don't have a place for every dollar. So when I started at the Roadhouse, I realized, all right, I need to get my ass on a budget.

I need to know where every single dollar is going, especially because I was making cash tips and cash is just so easy to spend. So the Ramsey network is a big component of cash envelopes. I would get my paycheck and then my cash and I would sit down and I made a budget on the EveryDollar app, which I cannot suggest enough.

And when I would get paid, I'd go to the bank, withdraw all of my money and do my budget and put every dollar, literally, that I'm having cash in every envelope, every category I mean has an envelope. So sounds a little crazy, but I actually have three wallets. I have my everyday wallet that I always keep my gas money, my grocery money, my coffee money, and then there's a fourth little section in there and that's where I put my tips that I make every day at work and that money gets sorted into the following envelopes, the correct envelopes.

And then I have my other two wallets that are my lifeline of my cash envelope system. They've got my entertainment money, clothing, babysitting, therapy, every other category in my budget that isn't paid through an online bill is in my cash envelopes. And let me just say, it took a lot of discipline and self-control to learn to use the cash envelope system because you just see the money sitting there and you could go and say, oh, well, I'm gonna replace this $20 I'm taking from this envelope and you never do.

So it takes a lot of discipline to learn to use those envelopes. Swim at the Roadhouse, making no money. Everyone assured me, you're gonna make so much money here.

Literally making piss water money, nothing. Literally nothing. And I got really frustrated, and that's when I heard rumors of this bar.

And that the girls that work down in this section, on this strip of bars, make a lot of money. So I decided that I was going to leave Texas Roadhouse, and I was going to go work at this bar. and I had to go in, I think four times before I even was told when the manager would be there.

And I showed up on a Saturday night after one of my roadhouse shifts, I changed outfits, I dressed up, and I went. And I was determined, I was so fucking determined to get an interview here, to get a job here. I did not give up.

I would've gone in five, six, seven, don't care. Don't care how many times I had to go in, I was literally determined to work here. And I went in, I said to the bouncer, who I thought was a bouncer, was actually the manager.

And I was like, hi, my name's Lauren and I am looking to speak to the manager. And of course he probably thinks I'm some drunk bitch. And he's like, I'm the manager, what do you need?

And got kind of serious and I was like, I would really love to have an interview, I really wanna work here. Was wondering if you're hiring. And he was like, actually, yeah, send me your resume, text me your resume, and we'll see if we can get you in for an interview.

Texted my resume, the next morning, had an interview, or got scheduled for an interview, I should say. So I was so persistent, so persistent, I would not have given up. I don't care how annoying I am, I literally went back.

It was the same girl too, every time I went in there, I was like, is your manager here? She didn't tell me. So I did it on my own accord, I was showing up.

Showed up on a Saturday. So I got the job, and I started making big girl money. I started making really good money at this bar.

And it was really funny because at my interview, my manager was like, okay, so like you just really need to make sure you fill out all your bank account information because one time we went to deposit X amount of money into this girl's bank account and it bounced because she like messed up her account number. When he said how much money he went to deposit into this girl's bank account, I go, bi-weekly? He was like, no, for the week.

And I, it took a lot to control my face react, like my facial expression because I was wow. I was like that's a lot of money. And it was game on for me.

Once I heard that and then I actually started making that much money and more, fucking game on. I, oh my gosh, you know what though? Hold on, because I need to tell you guys something.

When you're paying off this much debt and it's taking a while, especially when I was the roadhouse like not making a lot of money at all it was really discouraging and something that I did was I had my waitressing notebook and I printed out a Polaroid that I love of me and my daughter and I got some fun craft paper some fun scissors and I cut out a little piece of paper and I taped it to the bottom of my Polaroid picture of my daughter and and I wrote my why. And I taped that on the inside of my waitressing notepad, and then next to it, I did another little fun design, and I wrote total amount of debt left, and then I had a piece of paper that I could take off and change, and I kept track of my debt.

So that essentially every day at work when I opened up my waitressing notebook, which if you've ever been a waitress, you live with your notepad, it's always on you, right? You're opening it up five gazillion times a shift. And every single shift, I was reminded of why I was paying off my debt, my daughter, myself, my future family, and our future.

And I got to stare at that big, scary number. It was so encouraging every week when I got to take off that $40,000 and rewrite and re-put in my notebook, $39,000. I did not pay off that much money that quickly at the Roadhouse, but that's my example.

It was so, so encouraging. And then it was really cool to also, like I love talking about Dave Ramsey. So it was really cool when I would just have my notebook out and someone at one of my tables would see it and be like, well, what's that?

That's really cool. Is that your daughter? And I'd be like, yes, actually, like I'm paying off my student loans and this is how much I have left.

This is how I remind myself this is why I'm working so hard and it just made the process that much easier. I mean everyone you could love your job and there's everyone has a day where you just don't want to fucking show up. You don't want to be there and you're in a bad mood or you're sad or you're you know whatever emotion but you have to show up and my why I was reminded right there every single day every single shift whether I wanted to be there or not she is my why I am my why my future family and my future family tree is my why. Financial freedom is my goal and I'm going to fucking accomplish it.

So let's fast forward to bonfire again. I start making really great money, money I have never made before. I was putting everything on my loans. I was doing my monthly budget the first week and a half of the month all went towards my budget. Everything else was going on to my loans. So So I was putting every month between $2,000 to $3,000 to sometimes $4,000 a month on my student loans. $4,000 a month onto debt for a degree that I am literally three, four years out of college already not using and I'm switching fields.

I'm studying for my real estate exam. I failed my real estate exam this past week. So I'm back to the drawing board, back to the grind of studying.

I'm already not using my degree that I went $50,000 of debt into. So that's that's a little side tangent.

So the thing about working at the bar and making the best money that I could, I felt with the least amount of time so I could still spend time with my daughter is that there was still so much sacrifice. When you decide to pay off your debt, you are laying so much down. Becoming a mom is the most sacrificial thing that I've done so far.

I think that we live in such a selfish culture, self-centered culture, and just time in the world with social media and such. And then when I had my baby, I realized that everything wasn't about me. That, you know, I already like to think that I'm pretty self-aware, but when you have a child and that child from day one is relying on you for life, to live, to stay alive, to survive, it's really amazing when you have a baby as a woman, something just changes.

Like, as soon as that baby comes out, I swear there's some like divine hormonal change and you're like, yep, I'm a mom, here we go. And you just know what to do. I can't even explain it.

It's really, I see, I'm stumbling. It took me by surprise and it's so beautiful and I just love being a mom. And I started to sacrifice for my daughter and put all of her needs before my own.

That's something that you have to do when you become a mom. And I've never sacrificed as much as I have then becoming a mom and laying my life down for her as I have paying off my debt. Paying off my debt took so much sacrifice.

I didn't do plans. I'd say no. I couldn't go out to eat.

And sometimes I still did those things, but it's really a choice. There was a couple times this past summer and fall where I worked five days in a row at the bar, which you're listening and you're like, yeah Lauren, that's a normal work week. At the bar it's not.

At the bar, when I work my Friday, Saturday, Sunday shifts, I'm working a full work week in three days. And not only am I working a full work week in three days, I'm seeing and interacting with thousands of people and dealing with shitty people and really nice people and you just get the whole spectrum and drunk people obviously. So, so much happens between Friday night and Sunday.

night and it's very overwhelming at times. Those times that I picked up every shift that I could, I picked up any shift. We rarely drop shifts. There's only like five of us that work here and you give up a shift you're giving up a lot of money. So I rarely, rarely gave up a shift or people rarely gave up their shifts but when they did you bet that my ass was like I'll take it. I'll make it work. Don't even have a sitting yet. I'll arrange it. I'll make it happen because it was so much money and it doesn't even have to be like a lot of money. If you're going into your shift. There are times I picked up a shift and I didn't even make up my babysitting money.

Didn't even make up for that $100 that I spent on babysitting or maybe I made $20 a profit. And you know what? That's the chance that you have to take. That's how fucking bad I wanted to be out of debt. I'd rather be slaving away at my fucking job, try to make that $20 to put on that loan than sitting on my ass doing nothing and being miserable. It's just you've got to learn and have that fire and be so fucking ready to sacrifice. Those days that I picked up those extra shifts at the bar and I was working five days a week, that was like 50, 60, 70 hours. It's literally insane. There was one time that Saturday night rolled around and I had been working. I think it was like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. It was Saturday and I was crying. Her new manager was taking forever to do his checkout.

and I started crying and I was like I need to go home, I need to sleep, I need to be back here in six hours like crying and there were so many nights that I sobbed, sobbed my whole drive home. I live like 35 minutes away. So many nights that I just cried and cried and cried because I was tired because I missed my baby. There were days that Friday night drop her off at the sitter go to work. Saturday I wake up I'm with her for an hour drop her off at the sitter go to work. Sunday with her for a couple hours drop her off at the sitter and go back to work and it's fucking hard. There are times that she started calling my daughter started calling my mom mom her babysitter mom and she's only two she doesn't obviously I'm not like oh my god she was calling someone else mom she doesn't know but she just knows that I am her mother I'm the one that's supposed to be taking care of her the most and loving her the most but I'm gone so many hours and so naturally she's calling the next two people that are taking care of her most mom and that was really hard that almost made me cry a few times the amount of time that I spent away from her made me cry and I wasn't even working a 9 to 5 I was working a 3pm to 3am.

It's just all about sacrifice. How much are you willing to sacrifice for a short period of time so that you don't have to live paycheck to paycheck. So that when your car breaks down and you have that thousand dollar repair or you get a ticket for parking and it's $200 It's not ruining your day. You just, oh fuck, that sucks. Guess what?

I could pay for it cash. I can pay for it right now, no problem. Guys, I can't even verbalize how much freedom I feel.

I can't verbalize enough how proud of myself I am that I sacrificed for eight months and just gave up basically my life and fun and time with my daughter to create this future for us.

Like right now, maybe it doesn't sound like a lot, right now my emergency fund is at $10,000. I have never had $10,000 before. I've never seen my account be above basically like $1,500.

And my goal for my emergency fund is 15. So I'll be able to have that done in about a month, month and a half. And then I get to save for a new car.

And hold on here, because by new I don't mean brand new. I don't lease cars. I mean a good used car.

It's gonna feel new to me. And I'm gonna be able to pay for that cash. And if something happened today, like I did have a breakdown for my car, I could just say, I don't feel like putting any more money into this beater I've been driving.

I'm just gonna go buy this good used car and I'm gonna pay cash for it. I hope that you can hear the calmness in my voice because it doesn't stress me out. I'm not stressed out by money.

If I'm at the grocery store now and I'm in line and my grocery bill is a little bit over, I say, oh, damn, I really messed up that on my budget this month. I guess I'm gonna have to adjust that. And then I pay it, and I pay it in cash, and I pay it on my debit card.

I'm like holding back tears right now because so many of my friends are stuck in living paycheck to paycheck and living this stressed out life and taking vacations they can't afford and driving cars they can't afford and buying things I can't afford. And that is such a heavy, heavy burden to carry. And the freedom that I feel having no debt, having no credit cards, having money in my bank account that is mine.

It's, I don't even, it's amazing. It's so, so amazing. People a lot of times give me a lot of shit.

They're like, you need to go get a credit card right now. How are you gonna buy a house? You can't buy a house without a credit score because guys, as crazy and as scary as this statement sounds

my credit score is like a 700 something, I don't fucking know, I don't care. My credit score in eight months is going to be undeterminable, undeterminable. That statement freaks people the hell out.

They're like, that's not good Lauren. And I follow J Ramsey and I believe that that is good. And if I wanna buy an apartment and they wanna see proof that I can pay my bills, I'll show them and then I can show them my bank account and they'll be like, yep, she can afford the apartment, no problem.

And if I wanna buy a house, there's manual underwriting. I have a goal of being able to pay for a house in cash. One of my goals seems fucking insane.

I know I say that loud and I'm like, God damn, that's a lot of money, but guess what? God damn it, I'm fucking debt-free. I have no payments.

I don't owe anybody anything. That extra $4,000 a month that was going onto my loans is going into my bank account. And when I get my emergency fund done in the next month and a half, it's going into investments, which means that I'm gonna be a Baby Steps millionaire.

I joke a lot with my friends at the bar. They're like, oh, you must be rich, rich. I'm like, yeah, I'm about to be, actually, because I'm smart and I know where every dollar is going and I'm not overspending.

I've got my budget going. I say no still. No is so powerful.

That's one of the biggest, most powerful words that we all need to add to our vocabulary. No, I can't go out to eat tonight. I need to cook at home.

No, I'm not going out to the bars tonight. Or no, I'm not going out and drinking tonight. I need to save my money.

Getting out of debt is more important than having a fun night out. No, no, just learn to say no. I love, as you guys know, I love Andy Frisella, I love Ed Milet, I love these big, big, like top entrepreneurs, mindset coaches, if you will.

They're really big role models to me. And I was listening to an Ed Milet episode once, and he was talking about money, actually. It was around New Year's, he put out this episode about getting your finances in order and how to do it this New Year's, because everyone's living paycheck to paycheck, and how to break this cycle.

And he said something that really stuck with me. He started talking about everyone has their fancy cars that nobody else cares about. You're driving your BMW by somebody and they're like, ooh, that's a nice car, and they'll never see you again.

They don't care about your nice car. You're buying these brand name clothes, brand name bags, and nobody cares. Nobody cares.

Or everyone has the same one you do. You're buying these things to impress people you don't even know and who may not even like you. And you know what he said?

He goes, you wanna know what my big flex is? It's not my car, it's not my nice house. My biggest flex is my bank account.

My biggest flex is my 401k. And when he said that, it struck home with me because I am definitely a material girl. I love material things.

That was my gift to myself when I did become debt-free. I actually wanted to buy a Versace bag, but I told myself that I'm gonna buy a Versace bag than I want when I sell my first house because it is very expensive. And so I bought myself a Dooney and Burke bag that's not as expensive.

It's actually only like $200. So, but I like material things. And so when he said this, it just, it struck a chord with me because he's so right.

And he's not saying, oh guys, guys, come look at my 401k, come look at my bank, like come look at how much money I have. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is I'm good.

This is my flex is that I have money. My family is saved. My family doesn't have to worry about money.

I can pass this money on. It's generational. I changed my family tree.

It just really, really, it struck such a good chord with me. My flex is my bank account and my 401k. That's what I want.

Like, of course, I wanna be able to buy that bag that I want, and one day, I definitely wanna have a really nice car. I really like cars, but right now, why would I bother buying something like that when my two-year-old's gonna destroy the backseat of my car anyway? Dump her juice out, dump her snacks out, and nobody cares.

So myFlex is gonna be my bank account. It's gonna be my 401k. I just really, really loved that.

And being debt-free is allowing me to do that. I think I'll get into the specifics of budgeting on another episode, but something else I really want you guys to take away from this and really hope you take away from this is that I would not have been able to become debt-free without a very serious, intentional budget. And it did take two to three months to kind of get my budget on track and really know what numbers work and didn't work.

But that's gonna be one of your first steps if you wanna get out of debt is to get on a budget. Because a budget gives you permission to spend the money that you're making and save the money that you're making. And it just allows you to keep track of every single dollar.

I could go on and on and on and ramble about being debt-free, but for now I think I'm gonna leave it at this. You can decide to change your life. You can decide to change your family tree and you do not have to live paycheck to paycheck.

Being wealthy, being a millionaire, being rich doesn't have to be some fantasy that you can never acquire. You can do it. You can pay off your debt, you can pay off your student loans and you can have money saved.

Something has to change. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change. If you don't work out, you're never going to have the body you want. If you don't stop eating shit, you're not gonna be healthy. You're gonna be sick. You're gonna be on meds. You're not gonna have the figure you want. If you keep spending money and getting into debt and over and over and living paycheck to paycheck, You are never going to have money, but it can end with you. You need to face the person in the mirror.

You need to look at yourself in the mirror and say, get it the fuck together. Nothing is going to change if nothing changes. You need to live in reality and you need to face the reality that you've put yourself in.

You signed off on those loans, you have an obligation to pay them back. Don't rely on the government, they're not going to do it. You have to take control of your life.

Being debt free broke a generational chain for me. I think I'm the first person in my family to be debt free. And that feeling is amazing and that freedom is amazing.

I am no longer a slave to payments. Every paycheck, I tell it where to go. I tell every dollar where to go and the rest is mine so that I can become a millionaire.

It's crazy so that I can have money, so that my family can have money, so my children can go to college if they decide without any payments, so I can bless them, so that one day I can bless a single mom and pay for her groceries at the store, pay for her car, something, help with bills. I don't know, but I'm so excited to be able to use the money that I've worked so hard for and to get to keep it, to give it, to spend it, how I choose and how I deem suits my life best and also how I feel is a steward of God.

I get to make that decision because I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, wake the fuck up and get it together. It is up to you. Look at yourself today in the mirror and say, I'm worth living for.

I am worth making these changes to my life and I can do this. You can do this. I know you can.

Please, please, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about becoming debt-free, about budgeting, about money. I am so beyond open with my finances, it's crazy. I love talking about how I got out of debt.

I love talking about Dave Ramsey. I love talking about budgeting. Feel free to text me, slide into my DMs, anything, guys.

I love talking with you. I am so, so grateful for your support. If you have any questions for me about becoming debt-free, Please, please reach out.

You guys, I'm debt free! As always, if you've made it to the end, thank you so much for listening. I am not only on Spotify, I'm also on Apple Podcasts.

So please like and subscribe and follow. Thank you guys so much for listening. It seriously means the world.

You know I love doing this podcast so much. I love getting to hang with you. And I hope that you enjoyed today's episode.

It was a very special one. I'll talk to you guys soon.