Here’s how we did it (in a nutshell).

Joel: Pretty simple. Spend less than you make and use the rest to pay your loans off. Next post. 

Emily: That is actually true. It is that simple. But often, the most simple things are really hard and tend to be countercultural. We didn’t know that term back then, but we knew what we were doing was not sustainable or healthy, and that what we were about to embark on was not going to be understood by many. 

Joel: To win with money you need to do a few big things right like take control of your behavior. If you don’t have it… don’t spend it. Answer the question, is this a want or a need? The three biggest expenses in the average American family are housing, car, and food (in that order). These three expenses represent more than 50% of of American’s income. Let’s start with these three and go from there. 

Emily: We were told to buy a house to save money. I never understood that. It never made sense to me to buy a house, taking on the responsibility of upkeep and repairs when we had no savings to dip into to actually make those things happen should we need to. And credit was never an option to solve that dilemma. So, we rented instead, and continued to justify our choice to not buy a home for the next 6 years, ignoring all those who told us we were throwing away money every month. 

Joel: During this time, rent was $725 for a 2 bedroom, one bath duplex. Remember, Emily and I had been living off of my $35,000 salary for three years. Since then, Emily graduated and was making around $50,000 a year when we started paying off student loans. We continued to live solely off of my salary.

Emily: “This time” was 2013, the year our first little ball of fire entered the world. He was born January 1, 3+ weeks early, spent time in the NICU, never slept, and pushed us to points we had never been before. But, we kept on the path without a major change in budget except to accommodate diapers and wipes. We were given most of his clothes, used hand-me-down baby items from friends and family, bought second hand and garage sale items. We moved back to my home town, Joel began a new teaching job, landed a head wrestling coach job. I continued my fieldwork eventually passing my certification exam and graduated in November. We tend to take major life milestones in chunks. 

Joel: Emily, everyone loves babies but let’s stick to how we did it. 

Emily: Ok. I share all of this for context. It was a whirlwind year and a stressful time. We could have leaned into retail therapy as a way to make life more convenient or whatever marketers are masters of making you think, but we kept on the path because it’s just what we did. We could have made a case to buy a house “for the baby” or a new vehicle “for the baby,” but we rejected those and kept on the path. 

Joel: Cars! We will have a post that elaborates on our car philosophy but the gist is we bought $5000 or less cars in cash. This means we didn’t have a car payment and more could go toward paying down loans. (We still don’t buy new cars and I am getting closer to winning Emily over on $5000 or less vehicles). (Side note to the side note, I hate it when people say, “I made a big boy/girl purchase” when referring to buying a new car… dumb for so many reasons). 

Emily: He’s annoying. I am currently driving a van we hit a deer with and the bumper is now held in place with zip strips and a shoestring. I kind of wish I was joking, but this is actually my life. And to be honest, I am just fine with it. It aligns with our values. We have two vehicle criteria: safe and reliable. He has big plans to add tape to further repair this beauty. 

Joel: Duct tape will help… Food. Emily, take over.

Emily: This is where some of my major passions come into play. I grew up cooking in the kitchen with my family. I remember sleeping over at Grandma Jo’s, waking up to the smell of Betty Crocker pancakes on the griddle, then coming out to the kitchen looking under the kitchen sink for the glass bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup. She taught me how to bake cookies and pies, following a recipe. She taught me her famous potato salad and legendary homemade cheesy hashbrowns, neither of which actually followed a recipe, and went more on feel and taste. Papa also made a mean breakfast, taught me cooking and baking tricks like how to test with a toothpick and when pancakes are ready to flip. My dad taught me how to repurpose and reduce waste in the kitchen, making many “clean out the fridge” and one pot meals he would create based on what we had at home. My mom taught me how to can tomatoes and basic staple recipes like tuna and noodles and spaghetti. I was cooking for my family by middle school and was being asked by friends’ moms to bake cookies before middle school sporting events. Cooking is one of my passions. Reducing food waste is another. Stemming straight from the values instilled in me by my family. 

Joel: Emily is long winded tonight. Long story short, cook your own food! And shop at ALDI. Emily is great at knowing the best prices for food and is a great cook. Sometimes she prefers to be called my sous chef. 

Emily: No comment. This time frame is when I really made the switch from health food stores and a local chain to ALDI and have not looked back. I occasionally would buy items from Target or other local stores if I could not find it at ALDI, like spices or baked good without certain ingredients. This saved us at least 50% of groceries. My parents also have a big garden each year, and we would get some produce from that, as well as sweet corn from Joel’s parents that we would freeze. 

Joel: At this time, the majority of our food still comes from ALDI. We bring our lunches to work. And here’s a biggy, we don’t go out to eat that often. We do enjoy going out to eat but we can have delicious nutritious meals at home. 

Emily: Our date night budget was $30 at that time. We also started the “date nights in” early on in our marriage where sometimes we would try to recreate meals, like Noodles & Co. penne rosa and various Thai dishes. 

Joel: Considering the big three, $585 in rent, transportation was about $450 a month in gas, and our food bill for two adults and two babies was $320 a month. Throw in another $30 for going out to eat. So, the big three are taken care of, but what else? 

I took this screenshot of our MINT.com account in 2012, two years in, when we were at the bottom but starting to get a plan together! It doesn’t show Emily’s final year of grad school which we paid in cash.

Emily: Marginal gains. Here is another term we lived, but did not know existed until a decade later. We didn’t live frivolously to begin with, but we took a look at our two months of tracking our spending and used that as a starting point for creating a realistic budget from that time onward. We each had a budgeted $30 of flex per month to spend on things like take out coffee, chips at the gas station, going out to lunch with friends/coworkers, etc. Joel joined my parents’ family plan to reduce our cell phone bill. We allocated $50 per month for miscellaneous expenses such as self-care items. Any other expense beyond the daily… 

Joel: Emily fell asleep writing this… I’ll finish it. We stopped paying for cable before it was cool to not have cable. That saved us $1200 a year. We also had a number of goofy things happen during this time. My parents took a whole life insurance policy out when I was a baby. We cashed that out ($10,000). Emily's car got hit, twice… where the other drivers’ insurance wrote us a check but since it was cosmetic we put it towards our loans. Then my car got hit and their insurance company wrote us a check for $5500. And all the while we were snowballing debt. We will take more time to talk about the marginal gains in a future post, but that is basically our debt story and it took us just shy of three years to pay off $150k in student loan debt. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Answer, "is it a want or a need?" to help change your behavior. 

2. Win the big three (house, car, food) and life gets pretty easy financially.