BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 221: Hard Decisions Leading to a $170k Debt Payoff (During Covid)

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

Darius Smith always knew how to make money, but wasn’t very good at saving it. Growing up, he had jobs ranging from delivering phone books, to running paper routes, to even putting up eviction notices on homes. He opened his first bank account when he was around nine years old! So how did Darius end up with almost $170,000 in debt? An even better question may be, how did Darius pay off all that debt in only a few years? Darius spent time at multiple different colleges, racking up $40,000 in student debt, then buying a Mustang, paying for a wedding, putting some charges on credit cards, and finally combining his wife’s debt with his. They started to use the “debt snowball” method, but after having to take out business loans, the debt grew even more. This is when Darius decided that he and his wife needed a plan to conquer their finances. They moved into a friend’s extra room for cheaper rent, stopped going out as much, began working more than one job, and siphoned all the money they could into savings and debt payoff. As of July 2021, they are debt-free! In This Episode We Cover How to prepare to take on student debt (when needed) Avoiding lifestyle creep and finding ways to lower your expenses  The “reverse house hack” and renting a room for far cheaper living expenses  Mortgage forbearance and student loan forbearance in 2021 “Isolating yourself” from friends or influences that will cause you to spend more Having a money date with your partner and going over finances regularly And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter Get Tickets to BPCon 2021 Net Worth Calculator Debt Pay Off Plan 6 Month Spending Tracker Sinking Funds Tracker Lifetime Earnings Calculator BiggerPockets Money Podcast 121 with Seth Jones BiggerPockets Money Podcast 73 with Ramit Sethi BiggerPockets Money Podcast 127 with Ramit Sethi Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/moneyshow221 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 221, where we interview Darius Smith and talk about being conscious of your finances. Hey, I found this FI thing and I'm also interested in personal finance. I need you to like not spend any money so we can like budget and figure our lives out. So that was a process to get that like through one from one ear through the other. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me as always is my forward thinking co-host, Scott Tram. French. You're always in front of us with these new adjectives to describe you, Mindy. Thank you so much.

Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or claw your way out of debt and back to zero. We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams. Scott, I am so excited to introduce Darius Smith to our listeners. I love his story. It starts out kind of the same as everybody else's. I had some debt and then I paid it off. But what I really

love about his journey is that he is conscious of his money and conscious of his spending and conscious of his investing and conscious of his financial situation all the time. And that really does make the difference between financial success and financial unsuccess, which isn't the word. Yeah, I think he made a lot of decisions that put him and his wife in the hole years ago. And in the last couple of years, have really, has really, I think, have taken a very sophisticated fundamentals-based approach to navigating his way out of money. And then compounded that, the whole situation, is a very nuanced, but I think intelligent, navigation. of the COVID situation. How do you handle COVID when you've got moving parts of multiple parts of

debt, new jobs, moves for your family, all that kind of stuff? And he made a lot of interesting decisions that I think some may find controversial. But I, after thoroughly dissecting those decisions with him on this show, feel showcase a high level of intelligence and frankly, the right approach. I'm trying to think that I think I would have done very similar set of actions to him in his set of circumstances after discussing with him. So I think we'll learn a lot. And I think that the way that he conducted his affairs and got in the situation that he's presently in is evidence, I think, of a good level of sophistication and intelligence and hard work and perseverance and all that kind of good stuff. So I think it's a fantastic episode. And yet another difficult and

unique perspective. Yeah, Scott, I really, really enjoyed listening to his story. And once he explains the reasoning behind his choices, it makes so much more sense. And, you know, I want to highlight that he's, what he's doing is well within the constraints of the mortgage and the student loans and, you know, the programs that are available right now. So he's not doing anything, you know, illegal or immoral, in my opinion. But I think it's a, I think it's an interesting perspective. Yeah, I think it's a sophisticated, advanced approach that he says,

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Darius Smith, welcome to the bigger pockets money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I am very excited as well. I've been a long time listener and I've looked forward to this moment. Not that it's like my goal or anything, but this isn't the pinnacle of your existence? I'm going to go with no, but it is definitely a very exciting day for me, though. I like the honesty. I appreciate the honesty.

Okay. Well, let's jump right into it. Where does your journey with money begin? So for me, I would say it began as a kid. I have a lot of people in my family that are entrepreneurs, or I would say one specific person, I have an aunt that was an entrepreneur that helped raise me a lot. And she loved money, and I think I just got a love for money.

I always wanted to be a millionaire. And I just, I guess she just taught me a lot of different things about money. And I was always like a side hustler from growing up. I have siblings. And I think I have four brothers. And I think one of my brothers specifically is one that's like the hustler of the family. So we always like learned a lot from him. I remember like growing up, we would like make money on the weekends and then like go home

and iron it and come home and like fold our bills and make it look all real crispy and cool. my dad always worked a million gazillion jobs. We were the guys that were doing eviction notices putting on your houses. We were the ones doing the paperouts. I think everybody in my family has had a paperout. I think we also were the people that delivered phone books. I know people don't have them anymore, but we did that. My mom worked at a bank, and I didn't think much of it at the time,

but I think I opened my first bank account when I was like eight or nine. And she was like a joint person on that account. But going back and thinking about it, that probably all built into me being really frugal and growing up the way that I did. And I think I grew up very frugal, probably cheap starting off. And I think it's kind of growing into frugality now. And that's probably the very beginning of it. I can kind of give more detailed or stories growing up as well,

Well, you did mention the F word, frugality, which is my favorite F word. I think that's awesome. I think frugality is really huge in the journey to financial independence. And there's, you know, Scott's got his four, his four lovers, spend less than you earn. If you only spend this much money every year, but you make this much money, then you have a lot more opportunity to try new things because you're, your outlay, your financial outlay is so low. And there are people on the other side of the coin who are like, oh, you should just make more money. Well, that's great. It's, you know, of course, everybody wants to make more money, but that's not always the option. That's not always easy.

And if you spend, you know, let's say I spend like 30 or 40,000 or $40,000 a year. And if I spent $120,000 a year, there's a whole lot less opportunity out there for me to take a job that, you know, that pays low but has great experience or, you know, I have to make at least $120,000 a year if that's what I'm spending every year. So when you reduce your expenses, I think your opportunities expand exponentially, which is a lot of X's in that one sentence. For sure. I think reducing it is like the first step and then now you can always increase it as high as you really want to. But if you don't reduce or at least learn to reduce or have that frugality mindset or at least understand how to be frugality.

then, I mean, lifestyle creep is a real thing. Like, you can make, your upside is always going to go up or has the ability to, but if your lifestyle creep follows, then there's really no spread. So you have a great point there. Well,

and just one of the ways to make a lot of money to really scale your income is to embrace the irregularities that come with those types of opportunities, like a sales job or equity in a startup, or, you know, know, a business that's going to take you a year to build and won't pay off for three, four, five years, right? If you can, if you spend all you earn, you just don't have the opportunity, you can't take those opportunities with that. And so that can dramatically improve

your financial position in fits and starts and huge lumps forward that you can't even under, you can't even conceive of if you're optimized the income front and spending all of that. You just spend every dollar. So that's why, yeah, I think you start with exactly right there. Makes perfect sense. Yep, I agree. So what's your position graduating high school? Graduating high school, I would say I went to, I left my city. I was born and raised in Las Vegas.

I left Vegas, went to an HBCU in Kentucky, and I spent a year there and decided I'm spending way too much money and having way too much fun compared to what I'm learning at least. And it decided, it helped me decide that I wanted to come home. So I went home and went to UNLV. at that point, I think I had racked up 20 grand in student loans, maybe in that first year, just from living on campus, et cetera. I always worked in high school. Like, I probably worked one or two actual W-2 jobs, always had, like, a candy business that I did in high school. And I bought my own, well, no, my parents helped me get a car. And I don't think I saved any of that.

Like, I was always the person that knew how to make money. and I was never the person that was like actually saving it. So after my first year, I would say I probably had like 20 grand student loan debt, but that's it. I didn't have any like credit cards or car notes or anything like that. After that, I came back to UNLV and took the long route of graduating. It took me, I think seven years. And I got a computer engineering degree, which I guess in the long run is worth it.

But don't take the seven year route. if you have a choice, if anybody's listening. What slowed you down? What happened to take seven years? There's no really good reasons. I just, it was hard. I didn't pass my classes. I was distracted. I did work through college, so I mean, I could say I worked full-time. I worked at different restaurants on the strip and things like that. But I don't think those are excuses. I should have just worked harder, and computer engineering is like a very big challenge. So it was like the hardest thing I've ever done.

And there's probably a couple of other things that are probably not related to the podcast that just, you know, distractions, really. Fair enough. So what year do you graduate with the computer degree? And what's your kind of financial position at that point? Yeah. So I graduated 2017. And I probably within that time period, racked up another 20 grand.

So I think I'm like $40,000, $38,000, $40,000 in student loan debt. I was working. so I thought I needed to buy a nice car. So I bought a Mustang. I did do it like the kind of right way to where I got it used. I got it to where it never lost the amount of value that I bought for. So I was always like on an upside there. And I got a couple of credit cards, but nothing that was like extravagant,

like maybe $1 or $2,000 here and there. And I was always working through college. So at the point, I think at the time where I graduated, I had like 40 grand student loan debt. I got married the week or so before or after I graduated. So that was like another $4,000 or so. And I think me and my wife both having engineering degrees was like we both had some student loan debt.

So I just accumulate hers into mine as well. So I tracked both of our net worth, but as a family. You only spent $4,000 in your wedding? It was five, six, seven thousand or five or six times that. But that was the only thing that we had to put up. credit cards. Oh, okay. I was going to say that's, that's, that's, you're able to, I mean, that's still, you could spend $100,000 in your wedding. There's lots of really, really expensive weddings, but, all right. So we're in 2017, um, just got married. We've got 5,000 in credit card debt, 40K in student

loans and we've got a Mustang and two engineers married there. How, how do we have more student loan debt because you hold that in? What's the, what's the total there? I think my wife was a lot better than me. and she also went through it a little faster than I did. So I think she was only about 20 grand in student loan debt. So she's got 20. She had a really good job in Vegas where she was like a cocktail waitress and were making really good money. So she got an even nicer car and a little more expensive.

But again, she was paying for it. So that wasn't my decision if we weren't married at the time. Another car was probably $30,000. And I think we probably, probably have like another five grand and just combined credit cards because we used to travel not used to. We still travel a lot, but we traveled a lot and international before you know what you're doing gets really expensive. So what's the total debt? What's the total debt we've got going up here? We got car loans. We got student loans. We got some credit cards, all that kind of stuff.

So let's see, we've got 40 in your student loans and 20 in hers. So that's 60 plus 30 for her car. So that's 90. And then let's call it 10,000 in credit cards. debt randomly. So that's a hundred. Do we have lunch for your car? And then your, and then his car. Yeah.

How much was your car? By 2017, I had got another one. So it went up a little bit. I think it was about 20. So I think going into, so in 2017, once we both graduated, we moved from Vegas to Indiana.

That was like the breaking point for us. So I think in that move, we were probably negative 1, 10, 120, somewhere around there. And that's probably like, the best point to start of like when I decided, okay, now we're married. So now you're making really good money. Well, we move. So jobs change. But I can kind of do what I know to control our finances and make better decisions, things like that. Okay. So and you're saying this is a turning

point. Do you do you kind of like look up and kind of, you know, have, have trouble kind of comprehending the debt? Do you, do you listen to something, read something? How does that, how does that kind of pivot in your framing of the financial situation come about? There's a lot there. So there's, I will put it a few things. One is I would call it geo-arbitrage or some geo-hack. We isolated ourselves, which is one thing that I always suggest for people to do. We moved from Las Vegas where we were both born, while I was born and raised, we both spent

the last 20 years of our lives, all of our friends, everything we know, and moved to Indiana. And it was for work, but at the same time, it was like, we don't have friends here. We're starting over from scratch. We're not like being influenced to do a bunch of different things. Second thing is we had gotten married that year. I know a bunch of stuff about finance and I personal finances. I'm kind of like into it. But I was making like I worked at a small little restaurant and I was just a guy, you know,

making whatever kind of money on the side so I can go through college. She's making really good money. And she was also more of a spender than I'm more of a saver or kind of the personal finance guy. I always tell her, if I was in her position, I would have turned our stuff around. And maybe I wouldn't have, but I didn't want to tell her what to do with her money when she was the one making it when we weren't married. So us getting married was more like, okay, now we need to figure out what we're going to do with our money. So that was another thing. And then the third thing I would say is you guys say it all the time.

Who you spend the most time with is who you'll start being more like. And because I did this like geo hack where we're not like around all of our. friends. The people that I spent the most time with it was really you guys. Like I was listening to the podcast, listening to a bunch of other FI podcast. I read every time I would listen to the podcast, I would go and rent the book from the public library in Indiana or wherever any other library. And I just pretty much read, listen to podcast and was on Mr. Money Mustache and doing the whole thing and like took a year of like figuring a bunch of stuff out. And there's like a really good story behind all that too. Well, let's go into that and let's start with, you know, what's the,

what is the, the conversation with your wife look like about money since that's a big change? And is that an event or is that a process that that goes on there? It's both, really. So the event is she's making really good money working on the strip in Vegas and I'm making not so good money. We both graduate. I drag her for making all this really good money to Indiana where I get a job first, and I'm making an engineer, but starting engineer salary, like $60, $65,000. And she didn't find a job until after we got there. So she went from making really good money to depending on me for a few months of income.

So that's the event. The process is, hey, I found this FI thing and I'm also interested in personal finance. I need you to, like, not spend any money so we can, like, budget and figure out. our lives out. So that was a process to get that like through one from one ear through the other. And it wasn't a very fun process of change for her. It was definitely a struggle. But she's like, wow, what a surprise. But she's my buddy though. She's, she's, she's always been real cool about it. And she's always been open to a lot of things. And I think now, I think she really, really, really appreciate state and we always look back on our Indiana years. We were there for two years and I think things like

literally did a 180 since then. I think she really appreciates that. So did you have questions specifically about that process though? Yes. So what did you say to her? Because that can, when you're the spouse that is the spender and the saver comes up and says, you need to not spend so much money. It feels like an attack. So how did you phrase it to her in a way that she got on board? Or was that a series of conversations? Because I think it, you know, when you discover financial independence, you're like, oh, we got to do this. We got to do this. And you think, oh, it'll just be one conversation. They'll be like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. And it never really seems to be that conversation. Yeah. She's super open.

minded and she's like if you want to run with something, I got your back. So she was supportive. It was hard to change, I would say, the real life decisions probably for her and for me as well. I'm not going to say I just didn't spend money because I was the same way as well. But what we did is we talked about it. I kind of explained some of the easy numbers, the high level things. She's like, okay, cool. How did we get it done? We would, have like finance Fridays where we would like cook dinner and then just kind of chill at home and then read like a Mr. Money mustache article or something like that. And sometimes I would like send her the podcast that I thought she'd listened to and enjoy. That was a little aggressive.

So those didn't always go through the same way. But I think she figured it out and understood. And I would say just it's just really experienced. The more you're exposed to it, the more it kind of makes sense to you. It's just like if I give you guys something that you don't know and I'm like after X amount of time, you'll, it'll mean something to you. You have to experience it and go through. And I think over those couple of years, it all started to make sense. In addition to that, it wasn't, it was a little bit easy for me because she was, we were kind of in a position where if we didn't do this, we would be struggling. well, I wouldn't say more because we were like just barely getting by at this time. When we moved, we had the debt.

And then we also went from her making really good money to us both making kind of mediocre salaries. And we're pretty much trying to grow it from there. And we had the debt from when we were making really, really good money before our professional salaries or our professional careers. So we had to cut back on some things. and we had to kind of take a step back. And it was a struggle for us, but I think it was more so because of the salary change,

and we were kind of forced to make some of these changes. So it was kind of a good thing. The timing was kind of perfect. And now that we've both been working for four plus years in our current positions, we've kind of increased our salaries or I've kind of changed jobs that increased how much. much I have my earning potential. What, um, what does this first year look like in terms of you paying off

the debt or be getting to accumulate wealth in some in some way? How does that, you know, you're, you're having these conversations, you're spending a year listening to these things. I assume you're making lifestyle changes and cutting back a lot on a lot of things. How much damage you're able to do to that debt? Um, honestly, it wasn't very, like we had, I took the, um, Spritch, actually that Spresci wasn't created yet. So I took like the Dave Ramsey approach. So I took like the Dave Ramsey approach of the snowball effect. And I listed all of our debts, list our minimum payments, and said,

okay, we can put X amount towards it. Excuse me, that X amount was very little at that time. And there wasn't much that we could do. And we cut back on some of our lifestyle things and replaced it with things like hiking or things like hanging out and listening to music at home, et cetera. But there wasn't much that we could do. And if I'm being honest, it actually probably got a little bit worse before it got better because I opened business when we were in Indiana.

And that business was going well for a really long time until I got exhausted and overwhelmed and probably closed it pre like way before I should have and didn't close it the right way where I could have like at least broke even on it. And I actually accumulated even more days. because of the business and we didn't knock off very much in that meantime. So where is this? This is about a year, a year and a half after he moved to Indiana? I would say, I would say 2018, it opened in 2000, or no, I think 2018 is when I began

working on it by 2019, January, when they like officially opened. So almost the second year. So when does your debt level peak? What's the most in-depth point? That happened. I guess the day we decided to close business for good. And it was like, okay, all these business loans that the business was paying for stopped. Well, they stopped getting income.

And I got it like under my personal name. So I was still responsible for it. And we still had all the previous stuff as well. So at this point, I think we're probably 170,000. negative at that point. No, I would say probably closer to like, I think it was like a total of 20, 30, yeah, probably like 170 negative in complete like entire debt. So, yeah.

And this is like summer of 2019. From there, we just, I was like, okay, before we decided to close it, we had to have a plan because otherwise we need the business to pay for the business debt. And there's a huge reason why the business closed. that's, I guess, for the business podcast, for on Bigger Podcasts. The plan was to leave Indiana, go back to Vegas, or we have, like, connections. We have roots and we have other things that we can do. And I was going to pursue my career and go into a sales role because I had kind of ventured

off into it, but it was post sales. I wasn't getting commissions or anything like that. And from there, we could also do what I can. call a mini house hack or a reverse house hack. So I closed the business and we moved from Indiana back to Vegas and we stayed with really close friends slash family. And what I call it as reverse house hack is we're not really house hacking where we own the real estate and we're letting someone live with us. But we essentially get the same benefits out of it by staying with someone else. So we negotiated with our friends that we'll pay $600 a month. Because their

mortgage is like $1,000 or less. I think it's a little less. And we would pay $600 towards their thousand, which would cover, you know, our rent for our one room out of their four. Plus it would also cover for all of the utilities. So now we're gone from like $1,200 rent and plus another $300 or $400 in utilities down to just $600. We still both have both of our incomes. So that cleared like $800 of cash flow every single month. From there, I also was working remote. My wife got a job in Vegas.

And then I also got another job in Vegas where I was making pretty much double, but I still had the two jobs for like a few months. That gave us a whole lot of cushion to where we were making like two, really three incomes for a few months. And one of the incomes was double what it used to be. What did your household income change from on a monthly or annual basis in this period? We were both making in the 60s, so I think it was about 5K a month. month before taxes. The other one was like double. So it went from like five so 10k total before taxes to like 20 with keeping the other job. And then after I stopped working the first remote job, I think it was like 15. What are the two jobs? So before I was just a software engineer and I kind of

made my way to the sales process doing professional services. And then from there I went and worked as Solutions Consultant, which is another way for saying a sales engineer. So I was working with the sales teams. Okay. And the second job, what was that? That is the second job. That's the second job. That's the higher paying that was like pretty much a double job. The first job was the software engineer. So you're working 40 hours a week as a software engineer and after hours in this solutions engineering sales type role in addition to that. Same company for both of these?

No, so I was working with a company in Indiana, where it was really all over the country, but I had the job in Indiana, started working remotely. And that was more so I would do that when I had the time to do it. Every now and again, I'd have meetings during the day, but it didn't intercede or kind of overlap too much. And then when it did start to, that's when I had to quit the job. But the real first, like the first priority job was the sales engineering role that I was, you know, it was a local job that had to be at. And it was making way more money.

So I, you know, prioritize that for sure. And what's your, what's your wife's two jobs during this period or job? She just had the one. So she's just a civil engineer, not just a civil engineer. She's a civil engineer, a really good one. Okay. So you go from making 10K a month. to 20K a month, then you're paying $600 a month in rent.

And I assume continuing a lot of the frugal habits you developed in Indiana. Is that right? Yeah. So we developed all those habits and we brought those with us. We started like sharing expenses for grocery slash eating out because we're living with a whole other couple. Pretty much everything we had cut in half except for our rent or living expense like decreased dramatically.

Then we were paying like additional thousand to $2,000 a month. extra on our debt. Okay, great. So you're paying one to $2,000 a month and going towards the debt at this point and on this new cash flow. So how does that look like over the next six to 12 months? So how much damage you're able to start doing? Yeah. So I would say this is, that was like the real turning point for us. So in 2019, at the end of the years, when I got that second job, that's when I started like actually tracking our stuff, our debt, or I call it our, our, well, let me look at it at really quickly. I have it right here.

I look at it pretty much every day. Our wealth tracker is, goes back to 2019. And we were at like the negative 170. And I would say six months. I'll just go a year. I'll just go to 2020. And it looks like we were at negative 100,000. So like a 50 to 60,000.

thousand dollar change happening that. And it's not just paying off the debt fast. It was also, this is like, this is like March 2020 that I'm looking at. COVID happened. So we got like the COVID relief, whatever thousand dollars per person. We also got tax returns, which actually increased quite a bit because of the debt from the business. We also got, I think those were the two big things that went into additionally paying just a couple thousand dollars extra in debt. Plus, we also have retirement accounts that had increased. So this is more of our net worth rather than our tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending,

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do and you know how to do it but just because you know it doesn't mean that you're going to do it and just just like when you are trying to lose it. weight, you step on the scale every day at about the same time. So you're not, you know, weighing yourself in the morning one day and right after a big meal the next day. You step on the scale every morning at the same time and you keep trap. And it's real easy to see when you're veering off course when you're looking at it every single day. And it's really easy to skip that. Oh, I know I had six beers last night, so I don't want to look at it today. And then, well, I didn't way myself yesterday, so I don't have to weigh myself tomorrow either. And it's so easy to veer off course

and recorrecting or correcting, I guess, is more difficult. You look at it every day. You keep it in your mind. And then once you start doing that, you go out and you're like, oh, I don't want to buy this because then I'm going to have to enter this into my spreadsheet tomorrow. And I don't want to look at this and see the problem. Or, hey, I know I don't need this because I have been keeping track and We're doing so well and I want to keep that momentum. So my husband is the same way. He gets up in the morning and pretty much the first thing he does is open up the computer and check all the things.

And he loves to do that. And it keeps it in his mind. And it's brilliant in its simplicity. If you want to change your debt, look at it every day and see where it's going and see what you're doing. I love that. Yeah. And it seems like this is the turning point for you is after you start looking at it.

every day, we now see numbers really begin to move in a really meaningful way. I mean, that's, that's incredible to build $60,000, $70,000 in net worth in a matter of seven, eight months with this. And I imagine a lot of that was going towards the debt paydown, which is not tax advantage. You know, you're not, you're not able to shelter this. This is just hustle and keeping as many of those dollars you're earning as you possibly can with this. Yep, exactly. I always also compare getting financial. fit to like working out or losing weight. And for me, it's like one of those things that, for me, it's like automation. You can't automate, you know, yourself walking on a treadmill,

but what you can do is automate your schedule to where every single day you have to make sure that you work out. And the way that I did that before is I had to make sure I wake up at a specific time and I had like three things to do. I had to read something for X amount of time. I had to work out and I had to, I forget with the third thing. I think it was like meditate. And I literally had like one hour to do this or I'd be late for work. So this is how I automated that. And I did the same thing with our budget.

And that's, I think, what helped me and my wife especially have some of the frugality, some of the frugal ways that we have now just because it's easy to get off track if you, I guess, allow room for that for yourself to get off. track. One thing that I say is people spend and they you don't really, you spend more than you want to, but when it stops is when your bank account gets empty. Like you stop and you figure out what else you can do other than spend. So what I always do is I use different accounts that each get empty or they get refilled. But once that account gets empty, then you can't spend for that specific thing. So we have like a bills account that we don't touch. It's sacred. It's like you

cannot move money out of that thing. Only money goes in and then they're all, everything's auto transferred out or auto paid out. We also have like a fun money account. If you're wanting to do something is for fun or it goes on that card, once that's empty, then you, I mean, you're done until you get money back in there. So that's one of the ways that we kind of fix that problem as well. How much do you a lot for the fun money? Today or back in the day. But it started off with zero, honestly. We shared a fund of money account and it was like we didn't have money for it. And we, I set milestones for us once we pay off this amount of debt or once we get to this net worth, which is usually like from negative 100 to negative 60,

you know, then we'll get $100 a month 100. Today we're more so, I think we're at like 500 a month each. and we also have like a travel account that we add to. So it's getting kind of out of hand. But it's still, we're still taking care of all of this important stuff too. That's the point, right? The point is to do this so you can have those rewards. Mind, you're about to say something?

I was going to say, I love this idea. What you said is so spot on when you are paying for things and you don't have any more money, you don't buy any more things. I mean, of course you can put it on a credit card, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about paying for cash. or using debit cards or things like that.

That's, I love that. When you're out of money, then you don't spend that anymore. If you've got the bills account and this is just for bills, I can't take that and go out to lunch with my friend. That goes into my fun money account. And, you know, $500 is a lot of fun money, but that's your money to spend as you want to. I'm assuming that we have fast forwarded to paying off all this debt.

Yeah, yeah. So we're in March 2020, and we have negative 120 in net worth. Is that right? Uh-huh. And how do things proceed from there? So I think from March 2020, so as of this is July now, we just paid off. We have one debt left from the business, and it's like $8,000 now. And we just passed last month the $0 mark in net worth.

So now we're finally a positive net worth. So we have like $8,000 excluding student loans because I'm still hoping for Uncle Biden to come through with those things. But we're saving up money and not putting towards the student loans, but we're saving up our monthly amount in another account. So hoping that if they do pay those off, then we'll just use it towards an investment. And if they don't, then we'll probably just use it towards that. But I think I missed some of the question that you asked. Well, just how are things proceeding? So you're saving a few thousand dollars a month.

It sounds like it sounds like this just the status quo continues. You guys are working, saving, and periodically upping your fund money as you hit certain milestones with this, which I think is a great formula for success there. And last month, we get to a zero net worth, it sounds like. Correct. So we are currently just $8,000 in debt other than the student loans. And two months, it'll be paid off. So after July's payment and then after August's payment, it'll be paid off because August gets a bonus for my job.

And we'll just use that to pay it. And then we'll have $2,500 freed up of literally like debt. So now we're going to take that and start using that for it. towards investment. So we'll probably save up to get like a down payment for a house or we'll figure out what we want to do if nothing else will put into index funds. That or my wife might work less or not at all because there is a baby on the way. So that's like the next plan. It kind of opens up things for us to have like opportunity of what we need to do or want to do for next year. Well, that's awesome. Congratulations on the new family member with all this stuff

from getting back to zero. And look at that. The work that you just put in to knock this all out probably makes that decision to have your wife potentially stay at home for a little bit that much easier than it would have been if you hadn't gone through this grind that you just, this three year grind that you just kind of described here. Absolutely. Well, easier or even possible. There are a lot of two family, two income families that can't not be two income families. So I think that's that's fantastic. Again, it just opens up more options. Are you going to continue to live with this other couple?

Do they have children? Do they know about your baby? So we actually don't live with them anymore. Oh, okay. Last year we bought, so after after I started making more income, we bought a house, but we bought it, we bought a new build. So we had like a bunch of time to save up for, really, we weren't saving up. We were paying off debt and then we had just enough money for our down payment.

And that switch happened sometime last year as well. So we actually are doing a different house hack right now where we have a three-story house in Vegas and we have the whole third story is like a whole suite bathroom, bedroom, everything. And we have someone renting that out. So I guess I left that out into this growth path as well. On your net worth a spreadsheet, how is your kind of payments per your net worth per month kind of trended. Has it been, did you start off with maybe a thousand or two thousand and kind of begin accelerating that to three, four, five thousand a month over time? Or how has that looked? Yeah, for the last few months, it's been five grand every month. Our net worth has gained or between, sometimes it varies. Sometimes it's like four,

sometimes it's like six. And then every third month or every quarterly, it goes up like about 10 just because of the bonus that I get. But before this current job that I have, we also, I think before then it was going up between two and four. So it was like, it's just been accelerating since some of this going towards investments rather than just going towards paying the down debt. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge inflection point that you've grinded out for two years, two or three years to get to and you're in great shape now. Can I ask how old you are? I just turned 30 this. year as well, both me and my wife. All right.

So, Scott, we have, we have very similar, like, timelines. I followed the podcast for a long time. I feel like we got married around the same time. I feel like we are around the same age. And once you were at bigger pockets, I think that's around the time that I got my first professional job. Actually, I think you were a little bit for me before that one. Nice.

Yeah. And I was, I remember you sent me an email a few years ago about a lot of this progress here and a lot of details. So that was really cool to see is to hear that, hear that. And now here you are with completely back to zero and in great shape with a lot of this stuff. For sure. I would love to dive more into the student loan conundrum with that. How much student loans, what is your student loan balance today? And how does one noodle on this? Because I think it's an art here, but I want to hear what's going on in your brain about that decision and the

amounts and the stakes there for you. So there's two things. I'll start with just answering your question directly. Then there's like another caveat that's like probably also something that people might have opinions about, but I don't really mind too much. So my thing is there's rumors that they want to pay off X amount of dollars in student loans. And I don't want to miss out on the opportunity if I have that chance. Right now there's no interest on it.

So I'm not losing out by not paying it. So we are just literally putting that payment towards another debt because we know for sure that it's going to take effect right now and actually help us out. If they do pay it off, then my wife should be completely cleared out because she's gotten kind of lower. Mine is like I've always just paid the interest, so I'm still at like $38,000.

And we'll have enough money to just pay that off completely if we choose to do that. I won't choose to do that, though, so it doesn't really matter either way, but I'll still at least get some of it paid for. The second part of it is within all of this, I worked for when I got the new job as a sales engineer, it was for a startup. And that startup folded. So last year, like less than a year into me working for this new company, it went under. and it was like right after, like the month after we paid our first mortgage, I lost my job, which is like the bigger job paying all of our bills.

And it was like panic mode for a day, then it was like, okay, we'll be fine. But because of that, we put our house into forbearance and we've not had to pay a mortgage. And we've included, we've been increasing our forbearance. So we have like three months left on that. But I got another job like a couple months later and we've been paying ourselves the mortgage into a high interest savings account. And that way, if once the forbearance is over, if we need to just give them all that money, then we'll have that money available to give them. Hopefully they just put it at the back end of the loan and we just get a year of free mortgage. And that would be beautiful.

and then we'll either use that towards an actual down payment for another mortgage or I don't know what we'll do with that, but we have a few options there. So there's like 20 grand in an ally account that we're also not touching as well. So what's been happening is you have only been, you've been making no payments on the student loans with no interest, and you've been making no payments on the mortgage, your house hacking, and you're saving a ton of money as a result in cash that you're building up a very large cash balance as a result of this. So it's kind of like just lucky timing to lose your job, which is, I don't know how that works, but yeah. But exactly what you said. We're house hacking, saving up money, not paying a couple of things that the government said that we don't have to for now. And saving up that money to be able to pay it when they do tell us we have to. So the current picture is, for your financial position, is a slightly positive net worth with $38,000 plus some in student loan debt, a mortgage balance.

and a savings rate of a few thousand a month, but a forbearance balance building with a lot of this stuff and a couple of investments in work 401Ks, those kinds of things. And I don't include my mortgage and my net worth that I track because it's like you never know how much somebody would buy your house for you, but you do know how much the debt is. But if we include that, we have because we bought like right before this crazy market started, And like I think our starting price for our house has gone up like $50,000.

So we have a whole lot of equity, but I don't include that in our network though. Okay. What I understand about the forbearance process is that you, did you have to prove a hardship? Like, did you have to say, I lost my job? And then they put you into the forbearance plan. What I understand is that the payments that you're not making currently just get tacked on to the end of the loan. You used a phrase, so we just get a free year.

You're actually going to be paying interest on that. You are, yeah. You know, for that extra year. So it isn't free. I want to make sure people aren't hearing that as free. But I understand what you're saying. And you got another job right away, which is nice. I'm not sure that you're going to be able to get a mortgage in the next year or so.

And this is something that you should talk to a led. about before you start looking for another property because you were in the forbearance program and Scott was it Seth Jones that we were talking to about that? I didn't even look up his episode number. I have to go back and look it up really quickly. He and we talked to him right when that first came out. So I'm not even sure that that is that that's completely 100% correct information now as well. I'm sure there have been things that worked themselves out over time.

But I would definitely talk to a lender and see if I can't get a loan next year, when can I get a loan? There might have to be a year before you come out of the forbearance plan before you're even eligible to get another mortgage. Yeah. There's three ways of doing it. Putting it at the end was one of them, changing how much your mortgage is by increasing it just to catch up is another. And then just paying it all out right is the third option. So, and I think it's dependent on your situation. So I'm just waiting for them to tell me which one is for us.

I would prefer to put it at the end. But if that still is that, if that is an option, then we can do a creative financing way to get another house. But if not, we can always invest somewhere else as well. So I'm kind of open to all those options. Yeah, I think that would be a good one to talk to your lender about and see which one of those will have the best, to give you the best chance to recover from the fact that you have a forbearance,

now in terms of getting that next that next mortgage if you're going to try to invest in real estate with a lot of that. Yeah. And I would I would ask them, you know, what is the scenario for each one of these? Like what is the consequences isn't the right word. Scott, what am I trying to think of? What is ramifications? What happens?

Yeah, ramifications. Yeah. What happens if I choose to put it all at the end of the loan? What happens if I choose to just pay it out? Like if you choose to pay it out and then you can get a loan right away, maybe that's the best option. If you've got a property that's really great, if, I mean, right now this market is so nuts. It almost doesn't even make sense to be looking. I'm with you on that.

So, yeah, I would definitely talk to them and, you know, talk to them now and see what options you have. There might be options that we haven't even thought of it. Darius, how do you think about your cash flow right now since you're not paying on a student? Like, what's your cash flow right now that you're able to accumulate on a monthly basis? And what would it be if you have to pay that mortgage and begin paying off the student loan debt to some degree? So essentially, the cash flow will be the same. So we're paying the mortgage is just not going to the mortgage company. It's going into account that we can't touch or we don't touch.

So it's not in any of the money that we're touching. So we have the money for the mortgage just to... I see. And we're also like... budgeting that we're paying our mortgage. We're paying all everything as well. Student loans as well. We have that money is going towards that last debt that we have. But it's 200 something for mine and 100 something for my wife's. And we're paying $2,500 a month extra on that third, on that last loan. So we've got a lot of room there. I see. I see. Sorry. Yes. You mentioned that before. And it makes sense.

So you are continuing to operate very conservatively as if you are, making these payments. You're just stockpiling it in cash while you're kind of assessing your options and seeing how the cards fall with a lot of those things. Right. So either way, we'll be able to, you know, go depending on either way that they tell us that we need to go. I think this is really interesting and something I haven't fully wrapped my brain around yet with part of your story here, because I can see why you're making the moves you're making. And I have a few heart palpitations about the way that you're the way that you're doing it with the forbearance piece and then, you know, kind of the wait and see approach with the student loans with those types of things.

So I think, like, hey, hey, I can completely empathize now that I'm seeing that. And I'm trying to kind of noodle on that as an approach for this. So how do you think things are going to play out? What's your kind of hope going forward over the next six months as you come out of forebearance? And let's assume that the student loans are not, there is no federal markdown or contribution to those student loans. Yeah. So I'll go to worst case scenario first. Worst case scenario is the forbearance is over and they say, hey, you owe it 20 grand.

Then I'll just take the 20 plus 20 grand, or there's more than 20 grand in the account, take 20 grand from it, pay them and continue paying the mortgage just as we've been doing before. The student loans, let's say that ends and we have to pay that. then we'll just, instead of paying almost 3,000 on the last debt, we'll pay $2,700 on it, even though the payment is only $400, we'll pay $2,700 and put the $300 towards that. Everything else stays the exact same. We're still saving the same amount. We're still investing the same amount. We still have the same amount of fund money.

We still have the same amount in our bills account. We still have the same amount in our joint account as well. Best case scenario, where are you going to say something? So, Darius, I think you've got an interesting. approach here and a unique set of circumstances with the moving parts, you're in the middle of a very long grind to pay off all of this debt. COVID hits. And suddenly a lot of things that were certain before become uncertain. The interest rate in your student loans goes down to zero. There may be a benefit to not paying down the student loans. You lose your job and you take the

appropriate defensive step of going into forbearance. You're able to get another job. And And you're not required to come out of forbearance at that point, I believe, with those types of things. So you're continuing to assess your situation and build a more and more defensive position, which I think is a natural reaction to the COVID environment. And now you have to kind of see you're waiting to see where the cards fall. And I think that, you know, you can argue all day about interest rates and spreads and investments and inflation and all this kind of stuff. but I think that the way that things unfolded, I can completely empathize and understand the way that you set this up in a defensive conservative approach to that.

And you haven't been, you know, you've been applying it all to a bank account with all these types of things to wait and see where the cards fall with a couple of these things. And if you can come out of forbearance and tacking on the end of the loan, great, you have that to apply to the highest interest rate debt or the next one in your snowball. And if you have to pay it all off right away,

you go ahead and do that, and you can assess your options from that point. So I think that you've, you've, you've navigated this circumstance from a position of how do I create the most flexibility and assess my options when there's more certainty at a later date, which I don't think you can argue with at the strategic level, right? People, I'm sure people will argue with it to a certain extent, but I think that I understand the strategic intent behind what you've done with this. And I'm trying to, like, think about how I would have handled the situation under the same circumstances. And I wonder if I would have made dramatically different choices in some of these, in some of these areas. So I think this is going to be a really good discussion here. We've got to be careful to make sure that no politics

get into the discussion in any comments on our YouTube channel or Facebook. We're not going to go into politics on those types of things. We'll just remove them. But I'm really interested to hear at the strategic level how other people would have navigated this. And I think, I think, think you, I get it. I think that that makes sense. And it's hard. And there's no right answer. It's a mess in the middle of COVID, losing your job while you're in the middle of paying off debt. Like, I think it's fascinating. And I think you're, I thank you for sharing all of this with us because this is art, not science, and this is a mess. And how do you attack a problem like this other than to attempt to build out flexible position and assess options from there?

Well, and not only did he lose his job, he lost. the main job that was paying the bulk of the bills. And when you lose your may, it's so easy to sit here in July of 2021 and say, oh, well, he got another job. When you lost your job in what, March, April of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic where we didn't know how it was spread and we didn't know what was going on and everything was shut down and you hear all these stories on the news about how everybody's losing their job, of course you think that it's going to take you forever to find another job.

So I just want to, I want to throw that out there too. Remember, he's making these decisions a year ago when we didn't know anything. So I think that the mortgage forbearance was a really smart decision based on the information you had at that time. Yeah. Well, I think I completely, I think that that to me is beyond argument at that point, right? You lose your job. You got to go and you and you're not building a large emerge.

emergency reserve, I imagine at the time, because you're in debt pay down mode, right? And so why would you build an emergency reserve if you have debts to pay, right? So that makes perfect sense. So that's why the tool exists. The strategic question is that is continuing it after you got the next job with those types of things. That's, I think, the interesting one. And I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer there with that. I think that's where the debate begins around around that as a technical choice and and what what and how to proceed from the current state um with this because you're you're right now what you're effectively doing is you're arbitraging the mortgage interest rates you're still paying that right that's still accumulating um for that

and you're arbitraging that for a savings account rate um from this so i think it's it's probably around time to make a decision about what to do with the more with the forbearance and and move out of it and one of those three i would be interested to see what the the the group thinks is a you know or or what you decide as a as the option to move out of that with there and how you would apply that that the the 20 grand that you bracked up here yeah so i've only got i think a couple months left and like i said i have that the uh almost a year's worth of uh forbearance in a bank account and there's really there's three options but there's really two options either give them all the money because they ask for it or use that money to do something else with it.

I am going to do whatever is legal. So I'll just say that first. If they tell me I need to give them the money, then I'll give them the money. If they tell me we can put it at the back end of that and it's my choice, absolutely, I would rather have 20 grand rather than have a year's less of paying my mortgage off because I can almost guarantee that I won't pay this house off in the next 29 years. I don't plan on just staying here, whether I keep it or not. I don't plan on trying to pay and get off fast.

So it just stretches out and I can get $20,000 every year for it, I would. So as long as it's legal, as long as I'm following the rules and as long as these are options that my mortgage company has given me, I would definitely prefer to take the advantage that I have with the advantage is not that I'm getting I guess a free mortgage. The advantage is that they're giving me the option because of my situation. And the way it's worked out is you've effectively arbitrage to the three, three and a half percent interest rate for 12 percent appreciation or whatever it is, right, with this. So so so that that's probably more honestly. Yeah. Yeah, maybe 20 percent annual appreciation or something like that. So so that makes perfect sense. You're not

going to pay down to mortgage early. You're probably going to sell the asset before you ever pay down the full mortgage with that. So, you know, maybe this is making a lot of sense to me with the way you've handled the situation. And I think it's brave of you to share the specific circumstance here because I think some people have opinions on it. But I think it's been a valuable discussion with this. And I think that this is the hard stuff you got to deal with when you're paying off debt

like this and going through this situation. situation. You lose your job and you've got the student loan debt still and all this other kind of stuff. And that's the messiness that that is personal finance with this kind of stuff. And I, again, I think it's a great discussion. I do too. I want, I just want to say, hey, we encourage respectful discussion in our Facebook group. I'd love to hear what you have done in this similar situation, what you would have done. I do not want to hear anything about, oh, you're doing it wrong. and this is you're taking advantage and blah, blah, blah. He lost his job at the height of a pandemic that hasn't happened in a hundred years.

And I like what you just said, Darius. I'm going to do whatever options. My mortgage company gives me that are best for me. Legal options. That's your right. Yeah. And then in addition to that, I will also say that there are lots of advantages in life. And you take advantage to what's given to you.

Some people are born into it. a rich family, and there's nothing I can do about that. My family was not rich. Some people are born with incredible athletic ability. Who's to say that they shouldn't use that? Some people are born with, or not even born, but some people worked hard to get to certain situations, and they, you know, got those certain situations, but maybe they were in the right time or the right place that they wouldn't have gotten full advantage of, even though they worked hard. So to me, it's just like I'm not going to turn down a really good option. And to me, I don't even think it's like, I don't even think it's really that great of an option, like losing your job. Like, I just lost my

job and then followed through what everyone else did. And then they automatically give you a certain amount of time. So, you know, and then I'm just making sure I have the ability to, you know, pay or not versus what the options they gave me. So I'm okay with whatever comments and would love to, you know, talk about it. I love it, man. I think I agree. I think you should approach it from that position of self-confidence and knowing that you're doing what is best for you and your family.

And you're doing that from position of knowledge and a tremendous amount of self-education and a lot of a fund and a fundamentals based approach that you've been applying for years in a row with methodically moving. towards wealth. Like you, you do you. And I just thank you for bringing this topic to discussion with this and want to make sure that we're showing that the detail and analysis behind that. You built the most flexible and defensible position with the best set of options that you thought you could create out of navigating the pandemic circumstances. And I think it's great. And I just applaud you and I'm grateful you came on the show and discussed it with this. Because I think,

I think this is going to help people think about their situation if they're in a certain similar set of circumstances and going through similar things that you guys went through. When did you take the forbearance? Did you take it right away after losing the job? Or did you wait a little bit? Or how did that work mechanically? Yeah. So for me, once I got the notice that we were all losing our jobs, we were getting laid off. It was a last check. And then there was about three months of emergency funds that we used to pay mortgage to pay every other bill that we have. And I thought I would get a job pretty quickly. And it did take about four months.

And on that fourth month, it was, things are starting hit the fan. I don't know if you can say that word on there, but it was starting hit the fan. And it was either start to reverse back or to take that forbearance. And that's why I still have a few months left on that forbearance, because I didn't do it initially.

So now we have like a 12-month spread, but it did take a while before we decided to do that. So otherwise, I wouldn't have taken it if we could have just survived that period or if I didn't lose my job. I wouldn't have even come to mind. Nope, love it. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I love the way you've thought about this challenge. And I think it's, I think it's a fascinating area to navigate.

And you've done it from a fundamentals principle-based approach about how, what is best for your financial position, And how do I navigate my cash flow? How do I set up the most flexible future situation? So I think it's a fascinating discussion. And thank you for sharing it with that. Let's go ahead with the famous four if now is a good time. Mindy, you want to kick us off?

I always want to kick us off on the famous four. Darius, these are the same four questions we ask of all of our guests. What is your favorite finance book? I have a few, but I'll just give one. Or maybe can I do like two? You could give us multiple. They're all going to be repeats because I literally get my whole list from your podcast. At the end, sometimes I'll just go to the end and then just like make sure I write down these books.

But I'll give you one that's probably not from this podcast. And the number one that I have is profit first, which is actually a business book. And for me, it taught me how to section everything off into different accounts. So that way I could once I run out, then I don't have money in there. and it stopped me from spending more. In addition to that, there's a few others, like smart couple Spanish rich or smart whoever, you know, they fill in the blank finish rich.

And I think another really big one was, I will teach you to be rich by Rameet Sethi. I think it's called I Will Teach You to Be Rich or I Can Teach You, something like that. Those are some of my tops. Yeah, I will teach you to be rich. He is very forceful. We've actually had Rameet

on the show twice now. We'll have to get those episodes and link them in the show notes. Yeah, great, great episodes. Darius, what was your biggest money mistake? Our biggest, well, I'll say my, because I'm on the show, but me and my wife, combine everything. Our biggest money mistake, by far today, it is so bad, is like this stupid timeshare thing that I felt for. I'm, like, really big in the sale, so I always say, like, I can't be really sold to, and we travel a lot. So there's, like, this thing, hey, come to.

to this casino or this hotel and let's just talk for a minute and they're like, hey, you should, if you guys travel, you should buy this timeshare and it'll save you all this money. Obviously, it didn't work out. We never got to use it a single time. It was like a credit card plus a thing that we finance every single month. And there was like this one time a year fee that was like $900 that you kind of get some backup. It costs us probably thousands of dollars. And we just paid it rather than ruined our credit.

And it was like bad. It was like a four-year thing. That was the biggest thing I was happy to get off of my back like in 2019. We don't really talk about the timeshare is too much on the AP Money show because I've just been so conditioned via South Park to stay away from those. But the timeshare is not a good one, I think, for folks listening, stay away in a general size. Right. For sure.

I have never heard somebody say, I went to the presentation. I said no when they let me go. They always want to push, push, push. I've never heard anybody say, I bought a timeshare and I enjoy it. I'm happy I did it. I love it. I get to use it all the times that they said. I have taken a friend's week a couple of times.

A couple of different friends had weeks. They're like, oh, we can't use it. Like, I can use it. And it's less expensive than if I were to go and rent a place at the same location. But with travel hacking. I can't support timeshares. I have very strong opinions and we'll keep them to myself. Me too.

And if you have the opportunity to go and sit through this free presentation, skip it. If you can't say no, I'm not going to do this and walk away. It sounds so awesome. Oh, we'll give you a free, whatever. A hotel and free. Yeah. No. Just don't even go.

The free stuff that they gave us didn't turn. out to actually be real or free. So just throw that in there too. Shocking. Shocking that they didn't live up to all of their promises. Just say no. Don't even go to the presentation. Okay. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out besides don't go to the timeshare presentation? Figure out how you can make more money, but after you figured out how you can get your spending to where it needs to be, You can only decrease your spending so much, but there's an infinite amount that you can increase your, that you can increase your earning potential. And I guess part B to that is one thing I always tell all of my friends or people is that the kind of job that you get is literally the kind of job that you apply for.

So, like, there's like a bunch of jobs out here. And if you're, let's just say you're in, you do retail. you could literally work at like let's just say gap and not that that's a bad job or anything but you could also do the exact same job and work at like the Gucci store you know what I mean like it just really depends on where you're applying and what your mindset is so if you think you know you want to work in retail if you want to do whatever job it is apply for the highest paying version of that and just to keep applying until someone gets you in so that's like part B of that one yeah thank you I haven't even heard that advice

but I think it's spot on. Go after what you want and be relentless for it and don't go to the higher end of the scale of the spectrum with that. Take the hardest job, the one that will lead you to the best career potential with those types of things. I think it's awesome.

What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Everybody always struggles with this and I'm more of a on-the-go kind of guy kind of like you are, Scott, or at least I like to think so. I even Google something and I have notes right in front of me And it just says joke right now. I don't know.

But I did read something that said, where is like the, where's the best place for a fortune teller to work? Where? The bank. I thought that'd be a pretty good FI joke. Maybe not. Scott didn't laugh.

I think this one went over, I think this one went over my head. They tell your fortune, how much your fortune. I see. Yes, the bank teller of the fortune. Yeah. Wow, Scott.

I finally stumped them, guys. Yeah, that was great. I read that. Okay, Darius, Darius, where can people find out more about you? I would say I have a website. I'm not as on social media as I use as much on social media. I have a website called wealth is my worth.com. I don't know if you guys want to put that in the show notes,

but you guys can definitely find more information about me and what I do with money there. in addition to that, you can just email me. So you can email me at Darius at wealth is my worth.com. Or I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably the better place to find me, more professional things like that. But I do have social media too, but I don't want to link it on here. Absolutely.

We will link to all of those and any social media that you'd want to include in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash money show 221. And can you tell us a little bit about wealth is my worth? It's a course that I've taught, I've recorded, and I also teach it live as well. And I'm really just teaching people a lot about personal finance. And it's really like what we cover today is going from a negative net worth and getting all your debt paid down and getting really back to zero. I think there's other opportunities and courses that can get you from zero to investing and things like that. But what I focus on is really just going from a negative net worth, paying down debt.

and not budgeting, really. So you're putting money in accounts, and when it runs out, it runs out. And I think that's the best way I can describe it in like 30 seconds. Awesome. And that's at WealthasmyWorks.com. One last thing, you have a spreadsheet that you've used that's very detailed for what you're doing there. Would that be something that we could share with the listeners,

a redacted version or something like that? Absolutely. So that is actually what I use for Wealth is My Worth for that course. I do sell it, but I can give it to people on here for free just because it's kind of like a side hustle thing. It's not like a main income thing. So we'll have a free version of Darius's in-depth net worth tracker as well at biggerpox.com slash money show 221 as well. So thank you so much, Darius. This has been a fascinating discussion. Wonderful to see your journey and getting back to zero and all that kind of stuff. So congratulations and all that success. And I'm really interested to see how the end of

20, uh, 21 plays out for you here and how you begin attacking the next stage of the wealth journey, the investing, um, grind that you're about to get going into, which is fun and exciting and, and see where you are in a few years.

Sounds good. Thank you guys for having me. I'd love to update you guys. Perfect. Thank you, Darius. We'll talk to you soon. Okay. That was Darius Smith.

Scott, I loved when you asked him for clarification on that, um, the mortgage forebeards. I think that really helped a phrase or frame the scenario that he found himself in and the situation that the circumstances that he found himself in. And he's taking advantage of something that's being offered that is, you know, it's going to change his financial picture a little bit. But in the immediate future when he didn't have a job and he wasn't sure what he was going

to do, it gave him the flexibility and the breathing room to try and figure something out instead of working from a position of franticness or, you know, desperation. Yeah. And I think that regardless of feelings about whether or not the government should pay off student loan debt, which we're not going to get into on the show, the choice that Darius is confronted with is if that is coming, do I put myself in a position to receive the gift or do I not? And I think that it's really hard to argue with the logic of why would you knowingly give up that gift right there to a large degree? And I think that that's a difficult position to argue with with there. And I think, I think again, like he's approaching his situation from a position of giving himself the best possible set of options and playing the wait and see game during the period of uncertainty that we're currently in. I think he's really thinking through his options and making choice. that could have the best financial impact on him personally.

From episode 221 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen saying swish, swish goldfish, which is hard to say really fast.