Years ago husband and I found ourselves in a really dire financial situation. We had recently moved from WA to QLD, I wasn’t working and husband had just started his own business.
We had two mortgages plus rent, two car loans, a mountain-sized credit card and what felt like never-ending monthly deductions coming out of our bank. Sound familiar? Money was disappearing quickly so I’d just keep my head in the sand and to make myself feel better I’d buy more crap!
We were recommended to read The Barefoot Investor. I was dubious but at the point where anything had to be better than what was currently happening.
The hardest part for me was changing my mindset of what wealth was. I thought having a flash car, fancy house and designer goods meant we were doing ok in life but that’s so far from the truth. Just because someone has a big house doesn’t mean they are rich and just because someone drives an old car doesn’t mean they are poor.
The first thing we did was print our bank statements and add up, line by line, where our money was going. It was almost like letting my husband read my diary. My diary that consisted of multiple trips to Kmart each week.
We entered all our income and expenses into a budget spreadsheet and it spat out our bottom line. Let me tell you, that was depressing BUT was a good shake-up.
Then we began to “domino” our debts. It almost became like a game, to see how well we could do. One of our mortgages was worth more than the house so we sold and settled with the LMI company. We sold the financed cars and bought cars we could afford with cash.
Once the car payments were gone we upped our credit card repayments. Once all debts were gone we finally saved money again. We started with $100 a week plus $20 each a week for splurge. Once all our debts were paid off we upped our splurge to $40 each and now save over $600 a week in a high-interest saver.
We don’t use a credit card anymore, we save hard for the things that we want. The process started SLOW but after 2 years we are well into the green and it feels amazing.
Are you a Bare Foot investor? Would you like to hear more about what we do to save?
