More Money Podcast - 055 Listener Series - How Amanda from Ottawa Paid Off $64,000 in Debt

Episode Date: September 8, 2016

For my first episode in my special podcast listener series. My first guest is Amanda D. from Ottawa. I originally interviewed her in June for my "4 Women Who Will Inspire You to Crush Your Debt" blog post, but I knew I needed to interview her for my podcast. She's an incredible woman who got into $64,000, then got herself out of it through sheer willpower, initiative and hard work.  Long description: For my first episode in my special podcast Listener Series. My first guest is Amanda D. from Ottawa who works as a Healthcare Professional. I originally interviewed her in June for my 4 Women Who Will Inspire You to Crush Your Debt blog post, but I knew I needed to interview her for my podcast. Amanda is an incredible woman who got into $64,000, then got herself out of it through sheer willpower, initiative and hard work. I know her story will be able to inspire, motivate and educate others going through something similar. And if you have a story that you think would be good to share on an episode on of Listener series, please email me! For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/55 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to Episode 55 of the Mo Money Podcast, and also the first episode of my special listener series that I'm going to be doing every Thursday for the next little while. Hopefully every Thursday, if I get enough awesome listeners to submit their stories to me. And if this might be you, maybe you have a great story. It doesn't have to be great. It just has to be your story. It doesn't have to be great. It just has to be your story. It's all about just learning from each other and talking about money. So if you want to be featured on this special listener series of the Mo Money Podcast, please shoot me an email, jessica at jessicamorehouse.com. And let's see if we can set something up.

So this episode is with Amanda D. She's semi-anonymous. But she has an awesome story just about how she got into debt and how she worked her way through it. It's a great story because she explains a lot of the ways that she did it, some of her mistakes, some of her successes. And I think there's just a lot to learn from her experience that I think you'll get a lot out of. So without any further ado, let's just get to the show, shall we? So thanks for doing this. I'm excited. I think it's so important for people to know the stories and just the experiences of other people besides just bloggers and podcasters. You know, when you find someone else just, you know, who is just like them and they hear,

oh, they're in the same situation. I think that's so impactful. Yeah, no, I agree. Cause yeah, like, I mean, I love reading the stories of the bloggers and, and podcasters and that, that I, do follow um I guess uh but yeah it's good to have like a variety of of stories out there like reading the article and the three other women that you um that you featured in the article like it was awesome to read because everyone is so has very different backgrounds very different backgrounds yeah different stories which is really cool to yeah to be able to see and to hear yeah no and that was um and that was really good to see because yeah like I was a little bit

like I I was a little nervous about doing this podcast but and I was a little nervous about doing the art the um article in the first place because I was like well I don't know if my story would resonate with a lot of people because I hear a lot of stories about like my debt repayment was different than like people who like, like, I can't honestly say I like, you know, scraped, you know, the bottom of the, of the savings barrel all the time. Like just barely getting by the skin of my teeth. Like I didn't have like, it was still a lot of debt to pay off. I just, I guess I just wasn't sure, you know, was my, you know, when people resonate with me or were they like, do people only want to hear the most extreme stories or is like mine something that's worthwhile sharing anyways? Cause you know, it was a significant debt. It did take me quite a

while to pay it off. And, and I guess like, also like, I'm'm not struggling like it's hard because I'm like not in the I see I find a lot of blogs these days focus on people who are struggling to find employment, which is a huge issue. I totally get that, you know, struggling to find employment to be able to pay off these debts. I would resonate with a lot of people because I'm in this subset. Just because of the type of profession that I'm in, I was very fortunate at the time I graduated to get a job right away and get a steady paycheck. So I don't know. I don't know if that sounds a bit too self-conscious. No, no. You know what?

I'm the same way, actually. I always struggled. Well, not as much anymore, but when I first started my blog, I always struggled. I'm like, am I that interesting? Do I have that, you know, would anyone care what I have to say? Because I don't have a crazy, you know,

lots of the bloggers and I'm friends with lots of them, they have the stories where they were in a boatload of debt and they were able to pay $50,000 off in two years. And I'm like, well, I don't have a crazy story like that. So I'm like, ah, am I boring? But it's like, you know what? It's every, I think if I boring? But it's like, you know what? I think if we just heard all those extreme stories, it almost feel, especially if you're in that situation where you are still paying off your debt.

You just hear these extremes. You're like, oh, so is that the only way that I can pay off my debt in a reasonable amount of time or whatever? It's just to live extremely frugally and just, you know, so I think having like stories from people who did it, you know, maybe over the course of several years and, you know, it's not so extreme, it's actually more helpful because people can be like, oh, I can actually do that. I can do what they did. Yeah. Cause I didn't like, obviously I didn't sacrifice huge amounts of things if I was able to take a couple of trips and that, but I guess, um, like the thing that I felt maybe that I could at least encourage is that, you know, if you do have the opportunity to like, like, like I said,

I could have paid it off faster. I don't regret some things, but there are some other things that now looking back, I'm like, you know, I really could have gotten this done sooner, but maybe not like eating ramen noodles every night. So I could pay 64 grand in like a year or something ridiculous like that, which would have been impossible. It would be impossible. Exactly. It's like, that's not healthy. Yeah, you could do it. But that's not that's not healthy. And I'm all about like, you know, being smart, you know, financially, but also don't sacrifice, you know, your basic needs, your health, your, you know, mental health, your emotional health, whatever. So it's, it's about finding that balance. And I think, you know, all those extreme

stories aren't necessarily good examples of what you should do. It's, you know, a crazy story of what someone did somehow. I mean, it's, it's, it's absolutely admirable when people are able to get through that. But yeah, it's, it's, it really isn't for everybody. So no, and not many people can do that, you know, especially if they have dependents, they have family, you know, that they have to take care of. It's like, they just can't do that. You need to figure something else out. Yeah, no. And I guess true. It's money life balance. Exactly. Yeah. How you advocate. So yeah, no. But yeah, so no, I really appreciate sharing my story,

because I really am very, like, passionate about personal finance., I really appreciate sharing my story because I really am very passionate about personal finance. I really became passionate and a big driver for that was paying this debt down. Yeah, that's awesome. Absolutely huge. It's very encouraging when you see your own net worth go from the red to the black. It's a huge weight off your shoulders. Yeah, and it almost seems, you know, I still remember, you know, when I moved out for the first time and had like no money and was just really starting, you know, my personal finance journey. And even though, you know, it was a tough first year, seeing that money grow, even though it was slow, was so encouraging. And you start to, all those things that you never thought you could afford or you could never do because you just couldn't, you know, like, oh, no, I'm poor. You know, all these opportunities start to be like, oh, no, you could actually do that

or you could go on this trip. And, you know, you're just your world becomes bigger the more you understand how to, you know, control your money, stay on budget, make more money and so on. So I'm excited to chat with you. So let's kind of jump in just, you know, of course, people have probably already read your interview on my blog. But in case you want to give a short little intro of who you are, Amanda. Yeah, absolutely. So I am a healthcare professional in my mid 30s. So I just turned 35 this year. Happy birthday. Thank you yeah yeah it was just about

a month ago and yeah so I was born and raised in Ottawa and I'm back here now in Ottawa. I've been here most of my life except for a few years when I went away to school and, yeah, in terms of growing up, I mean, I had a pretty, like, you know, I have middle class childhood. I mean, my parents did work a lot. So in terms of having discussions around money or personal finance, there wasn't really a lot that I can recall growing up. So I know my parents, you know, talked about, you know, how you need to, you know, save a little bit of money, but they didn't really specify what for. I just sort of felt like I needed to save it for the next big, you know, whatever, whatever not significant item I was saving for whatever toy or whatever video game or whatever thing

I was going to be saving up for. But and I mean, they did push me to get part-time and seasonal jobs, which I'm really grateful for because not just for the money earning experience, but also for the job experience because it really does work in your favor in the future. And regardless of the fact that most of those jobs don't have anything to do with what I do now. But, yeah. Sorry. I apologize if I ramble here.

You are editing. No, this show is all about rambling. You're not rambling at all. I'm very intrigued by your story, so keep on going. Yeah, so anyway, but yeah, I know. So when I was 15, I started taking part-time jobs, seasonal jobs, so in the summers and throughout high school. But I didn't really make a huge effort to save a lot of my money.

I knew I wanted to go to a certain program at university and I knew I needed money. But for some reason it didn't register. Oh, yeah, I probably should save as much as I could because tuition is expensive. Well, you just don't have the concept of how much things really cost when you're in high school. Like I had no idea. I was very similar to you. I worked and I saved, but I didn't actually know how much I needed. Yeah, no. And I really, I really wasn't certain. Like I knew how much I needed to buy a pair of jeans or whatever, because you know, if I went shopping, but in terms of the tuition, it wasn't

until you got the tuition bill that you realized, Ooh, I probably should have saved more. But, uh, anyway, but, and my parents did, I had, I was very lucky. My parents were very generous in helping a bit, um, as much as they could. I mean, you know, middle class, you know, middle class earnings, they had four kids. It's, you know, you know, money can only go so far. And also, like I said, I went to school in Toronto, and the program I was in is a professional degree program. So that came automatically with the tuition was double a regular bachelor's degree at the time. And it's gotten even worse. Believe me, the tuition that I paid back then was a discount compared to the program what it costs now um and so there was the cost of the double tuition and then I lived in Toronto I lived in residence um for the whole time which

was very fortunate uh you know that I you know had a place to go back to every school year and I didn't actually have to worry about subletting apartment every summer or anything like that when I came back to Ottawa to work in the summers um but yeah it was still pricey enough with the tuition and also I'm a student in Toronto and I want to have fun so yeah you know I'm gonna spend money absolutely I couldn't imagine not doing that especially in Toronto when there's just so much to do oh my gosh when you're young yes yes especially uh as a student you just oh yeah you know the options are unlimited yeah yeah so uh get groceries delivered across the gta from real canadian superstore with pc express shop online for super prices and super savings try

it today and get up to 75 in pc optimum. Visit superstore.ca to get started. So how did you, so, you know, you seem like you made some good choices by, you know, working, you know, when you're in high school and in the summers when you weren't in school and then saving up some money. But is that kind of what led you into the debt? Did you eventually have to get student loans? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So my very first year of university, I was able to pay that completely. Somehow I had a bit of a moment of brilliance when I was a teenager and I had a GIC tucked away.

And back then the GIC rates were much higher than they are now. Yeah. Much higher. So I made some good interest. So I was actually able to pay off my entire first year of university. Um, but then I had four more years to pay off and because I was not really saving all of my summer job and a seasonal job earnings, I was, um, I, I did have to take out quite a bit. So I did take out OSAP. So Ontario, uh, student assistant, uh, program. I think that's what it is yeah I think that's what it is

yeah so I took out so Canada Student Loans OSAP I took out as well the bank being as generous as they are had a special loan program for people who were studying a professional level degree so very generous of them they offered me a loan and I took it. Of course. And yes, absolutely. And I took it for four years. I took loans every year from the bank on top of OSAP. And then also I did get a couple of bursaries from my school as well. But yeah, it was pretty insane how quickly it added up. And then... And did you have a concept of like, oh, wow, I'm really getting into debt when you were in school?

Or did you're like, I'll worry about this when I'm done? You know what? I didn't. All I worried about was making sure that I paid my tuition bills on time, which I did. I didn't care where the money came from, whether it was my own earnings or whether it was from the debt. I just wanted to make sure my tuition bill was paid so I could keep going to classes and everything was fine. But I didn't really have a good concept of keeping track of my money. In fact, and this is something that I still have some shame about to this day. So I had a student Visa card. That one's perfect.

Yeah. So I had a student Visa card and's perfect yeah so I had a student visa card and oh my gosh I missed a payment and so I so that's how much attention I was paying to my finance I missed a payment yeah and I got a call from visa so it was visa and uh they said oh you know you are late on a payment and anyway I did my due diligence and I went and paid it right away um with some other debt money of course uh so I was in that debt shuffling mode at the time um so so I don't know I and I wasn't aware of how like they said it's going to affect your credit score and all this if you don't pay it I'm like okay I will pay it and fine although i had no concept what a credit score really was back then um i really was so clueless in university about

yeah i mean you know you and i think so many people because it's no one like unless you you know like you're doing now or and and other people listening to this podcast unless you kind of you know uh go out on your own and do your own research i mean there's not's not a lot of people aren't really talking about, you know, being smart with your money in university. Like no one talked about it when I was in school. No, they know. And I didn't really have a lot of guidance on how to do a budget and how to account for all these costs. Partially, it might have been partially due to the fact also, I was the first person in my household to go to university. So no one else had had that experience and was able to tell me, you know, you know, you want to budget for these kinds of different expenses. Like I didn't know I had to pay extra expenses

for like photocopying fees and like all these other things that were part of like when I was looking at the fee schedule, pay my tuition, it just, I didn't realize how many fees I had to pay. So yeah, exactly. Complete surprise. And, uh, but like I said, all I cared about, I paid my bills and then I got to move on with my studies and I was so busy with studying and then also just having fun as a student. Um, I didn't really care about finance. So yeah. And then when I graduated and I came back to Ottawa, I did an additional training year in my field. So I did make a stipend, so not very much money, but still it was enough to be able to get a small apartment and be able to live off of lots of pasta. So that's when I started knowing, you know,

learning a bit more about budgeting for rent and food and that kind of stuff. Because when you're in residence, you have a meal plan, you don't have to worry about it. But yeah, when you're living on your own, you have to worry about groceries and such. But I still had a lot of credit because of the profession I was getting into. The bank was more than happy to extend my line of credit to at some some point, upgrade my life. I think I mentioned that in the article. Yeah, yeah. So I did accept that line of credit. And, you know, and I still, and I do remember this at some point, as I was racking on all this debt, and, you know, eventually building it up, building it up to the, to its peak,

I thought to myself, you know, I know that, you know, I really will have to pay this off one day. But then at some point, I also thought to myself, you know, I'm just going to be in debt forever. So I might as well just enjoy it. Like that was the attitude I had back then. I was just completely... And was it because it was just like, there's, it was such a huge number you had to pay off. You're like, well, that's never going to happen. Yeah, I feel like I just was admitting defeat. Like, I feel like, you know what, I'm just, I'm just never going to be fully out of debt. If it's not this thing, if it's not the student debt, it's going to be a lot of credit or a car loan or a mortgage.

I'm just going to have to accept that I'm going to be in some sort of debt for the rest of my life. That was the attitude that I had back then. It was a really different attitude than what I eventually came to. So what I'm curious about, because I feel like that attitude specifically is very, very common. The people that are in huge amounts of debt, they feel just overwhelmed, and it just seems impossible. I know lots of my friends are my age, 30 have, you know, a lot of money to pay off for their student loan. And, you know, they've been out of school for like seven years and it seems basically like, oh, well that debt's never going to go away. It's just going to haunt me forever. But so,

but you, you know, eventually kind of turn things around. What what kind of changed everything for you where you're like, no right I'm just gonna pay off this loan over 10 years but in the meantime I'll probably like I said end up with a car loan mortgage all that kind of stuff in the meantime um so anyway so when I got so I had to start paying off um the student debt after six like so the Canada student loan six months after I graduated yeah but I still continue to pile on more debt. And the peak of my indebtedness happened about, um, two years after graduation. And at that point, that's when I consolidated my loans and had that nice big $64,000 debt staring at me in the face whenever I looked at my online banking. And so when it came to paying it off, so I think I mentioned first, I consolidated all my loans on the advice of a family friend of ours who's an accountant.

And you did that to get a lower rate. To get a lower rate, yeah. Because at the time when I was paying off my Canada student loan, my rate was prime plus 4.5%. At that point, prime was 6%. So I was paying a 10.5% interest rate on this Canada student loan. Yeah, that's high. It was pretty high, yeah.

And then on the line of credit was around 6%. So then I was able to consolidate for prime plus half so went from ten and a half to six and a half percent so huge difference still a large number of you know a large number to pay off but so this was in around 2007 was when i did this consolidation um and then we know what the financial markets did the following uh year um and then after that point, that's when interest rates started going down, down, down, down, down. And I had a variable rate on my interest rate on my loan. So in a way, you know, and I didn't realize at the time, to be honest, I was completely oblivious to what the markets were doing at the time. I just knew that the interest on my debt had gone down for some

reason. So I was happy. But unfortunately, the rest of the world wasn't. I was, that's how much I was oblivious to money and finance. Like I was just, anyway. Um, so yeah, I, so I paid off the, I was starting to pay off more of the, more of the principal every month. And then, um, so eventually, so eventually so i was uh dating my boyfriend at the time now my husband uh we've been together for 10 over 10 years now we um so anyway uh we uh decided to move in together so i had this big massive student debt student slash consumer debt i have to be honest it was a lot of consumer debt in there as well um so we moved in together. I moved in with him because he owned a place. Well, still have a mortgage on it, but he owned his condo I was renting. So I moved in with him. And so this is one thing. So I've read different opinions as to, you know, when you move in and

combine your finances, you know, how should you handle the debt and I I know there's like different opinions on this my personal opinion was that that was my debt that I racked up I racked it up through my own education and my own consumer spending habits so I never once asked him to help me with that debt so I actually paid off that debt with all just my my own money um because I felt it wasn't really a shared debt I know some some people will argue, no, when you share your household, you share everything. But I just, in my mind didn't feel right asking him to help me with that. So I focused on, you know, we split our common expenses equally, you know, because I was living here, I helped with paying the mortgage as well. Uh, and I took care of my debt myself so yeah um along with moving in with

him so this is where i'm going to get to what got me you know gave me the kick in the pants that i needed to pay it off faster he had cable tv i didn't in my apartment um so one day i was sitting watching whatever um shows i was watching flipping through and i I came on to Gail Vazok's show. Love Gail. Yes, that's where I met Gail. Yes. The next time was Tildet Dua's part. And I just got so fixated on it.

And really it just made me realize how much this debt was holding me back from moving forward in life. So, I mean, a couple of things, like it was holding me back from feeling the freedom that comes with being debt free. It was holding me back from being able to save from the future. I mean, I have also unfortunate that I do have a pension with my work. But, you know, I plan like a pessimist, you just never know what pension funds are going to do in the future. So it's still important to have savings. I still fully think that I need to have my own savings. But I wasn't saving. And also, I was taking a risk having this much debt, because if something were to happen to me, and this was something that came up a lot in Till Debt Do Us Part, you know, if something were to happen to, you know, these, you know, say it's like a couple of parents with kids and they have huge amounts of debt, something were to happen to them, what's going to happen, you know, to their home, to, you know, to their children, you know, like, so all these scenarios that she was talking about, and I was thinking to myself, oh my God, what would happen if something happened to me and all this debt is not been paid?

And I just, I don't know, I didn't want to fathom that any further. So anyway, so in her words, I decided to stop being a total dope and decided to actually get serious about paying this debt off faster. So I started reading her books. And then her books, so like things like Debt Free Forever was the first one I read. Never Too Late. And then I've read a couple of her other ones. I'm just plugging Gail Vazox late on this show. I love Gail. So the more that yeah, that's totally cool with me. Your podcast with her. Amazing. I love that. Oh, that was a dream come true. Oh my gosh. That was, that was amazing. So yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so her, her work really was very inspirational and then her work led me towards other,

um, resources. So I just started reading everything I could get my hands on. So I started reading personal finance books, articles that I found in like Globe and Mail, Financial Post. I started, I was watching Gail shows religiously. So Till That Do Us Part and Princess. And then I started also doing other things at the same time. So like I said, I was paying down my debt faster. So I actually doubled up my payments every month. And I also added lump sums wherever I could. So I really cut out a lot of spending because as I was doing the 10 year repayment plan that was originally prescribed, I was still spending money on frivolous things. And so what I did was cut out, I did cut out a lot of frivolous things,

not everything. I still, I still, you know, we still ate well, you know, still live very well with each other. I mean, it helps, it helps, um, I guess, uh, having, uh, you know, combining a household. So we have more, yeah, it really does help. Let's be honest. It does help when you're not paying as much because you're not living on your own. It is a lot easier for couples to put their finances together to live as a single person and pay all these things as well. So yeah, I did everything I could. And then at the same time to help motivate me further, I did open an RRSP account and a TFSA account the same year. So I started putting away just a little bit automatically from every paycheck was siphoned off. So I could plan for that to be siphoned off every single paycheck, you know, a certain amount of the TFSA, a certain amount of the RRSP.

And then I also learned about the emergency fund. So I opened up a separate savings account and put money in that. And my goal was to get about, I know that there's varying opinions out there, to get three months of my gross income into that account. And it took a couple of years, but I did end up getting that finally put in there. So it just doesn't feel good. Like I feel just so much more secure in my life. I've got an emergency fund. I've got an emergency fund. And when I use it, I'm not paying interest on it because that was the other. Yeah. Like I, you know, I read some finance articles recommend, oh, you don't need to put away that much cash. You should just have a line of credit. Well, no, I at this point, I was so motivated to get out of debt and stay out of debt there was no way I was going to take out a line of credit for emergencies because I became I just I turned somehow in this whole process psychologically I turned myself around from just accepting blindly accepting that I'm just being debt for the rest of my life so I might as well just get used to it to finally being like no I never want to be in that kind of debt again. I mean,

yes, I totally get like with house prices being what they are. Yeah. You got to have a mortgage if you want a house. Yeah. You get a mortgage and that's like real realistically. Yes. But I don't want to have any debt that is not a mortgage, you know? Yeah. That is preventable. That is preventable. Exactly. So yeah. So like it's just complete like 180 on my attitude around debt. So that's awesome. Yeah. I hope that answered that question well. Oh, yes, it did. It did and more. Excellent. Perfect. No, I think so many people can relate to your situation, especially like I mean,

this sounds exactly like me when I started getting interested in personal finance. You get kind of not addicted might be the bad word, but you just like really you're like, oh, my gosh, this whole world of information that's going to help me. You know, really, it changes your life once you understand the core principles of personal finance and what you can do to get rid of your debt, stay out of debt, you know, progress in your career, make more money, invest wisely and all this stuff. It really does make the biggest difference in your life. It really, it really truly does. It really does. I can't say enough about how much, how much all of these resources that I found. And it's great because it's great because this personal, the personal finance sphere

has just exploded in the past few years like i started on this personal finance journey really back in 2009 and there was a lot back then around yeah um you know gail um i mean other ones that i used were like uh other resources i used were like um dave chilton's wealthy barber was a fun the wealthy barberalthy Barber and The Wealthy Barber Returns, both excellent books. I was reading articles in the Globe and Mail. I was, I found Mr. Money Mustache, who's also really fun. I'm just gonna like plug some of my favorites here. Yeah. But even since then, there's been like a huge wealth of new ones. You know, there's this podcast called The Mo Money Podcast. It's a great podcast it is a

pretty great podcast yeah no i i've become very hooked on podcasts this is one of my regulars uh budget sense has also been an excellent one um yeah and uh there's also like some youtubers as well um actually there's there's one youtuber just sorry i'm gonna yeah i'm sidetracking here a little bit no it's good but i just you know really thinking a lot about uh the psychology around uh personal finance and investing and getting out of debt because there is a huge psychological component to all of this um there's this uh blogger by the or vlogger a blogger by the name of canna campbell i don't know if you've ever heard of her uh she's Australian. Oh, okay. I'll check her out. Yeah. So her website, so her website is called sugar mama.tv. I know it sounds really

funny, but, but she does explain why she, in one of her videos, but she does these videos where she herself is actually a financial advisor in Sydney. But she has videos every Monday and every Thursday. And she talks about things such as getting, I get there was this really impactful video I saw of hers called getting out of mental poverty. So looking at like the psychology of people that she sees in her workplace, that are like people are coming to her for investment advice and how she sees the difference between their financial situations depending on the mindset they take towards their financial situations like the ones who just sort of like give up and just sort of say oh I'm just going to accept my lot in life that I'm just

never going to be rich they tend to languish and just never really get very far. Whereas then there's people who even if they come from, you know, very difficult, financially difficult backgrounds, if they take an attitude of, you know, that they're going to, you know, they work hard, they save, they, you know, do everything right financially, I know, it's not always perfect, but she sees, generally, they tend, they do everything right financially. I know it's not always perfect, but she sees generally they tend to actually flourish quite well. I'm not doing this video justice whatsoever. You have to look it up. Okay. No, I for sure will. No, I absolutely agree. And that's just like a good lesson for life. If you're more positive in life, even if

there's struggles and it's not always easy. I feel like when I'm in a positive mindset, I get more accomplished and I just feel better about my situation. Whereas if I'm negative, yeah, of course, everything's going to be crap. You know, like if you're negative, have a negative money mindset or always being like, well, yeah, but I can't afford it or I'm poor. It's like, well, you don't have to be, you know, you may not be wealthy or like crazy rich in the future, but you can get to a point where you're financially comfortable. Yeah. And like she said, it's mental poverty. You know, these people, you know, these people who like I can say from my own experience, like if I had stayed in that state of just like accepting accepting that I was going to be in debt the rest of my life. Like I, I don't even want to imagine

where I would be now, but just changing that mindset and making the decision, making the conscious decision to change my attitude towards my finances, towards debt, like just has made such a huge difference. I feel, you know, like if an emergency happened tomorrow, like, like say, like, um, the car, well, I guess car broke down. People will say car is not necessarily emergency. I don't know. I need my car to get to work. But yeah, if you actually do need your car for work, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, like the car broke down or like a pipe burst or something, we need to call an emergency plumber.

We have it covered. We don't have to worry. And just that feeling alone was worth all of like the work that I put in to get to this, to get to this point. So making the effort to, to work hard to, um, you know, set the money aside and to, and to cut back on spending on things that really were not adding any value to my life. So, um, but yeah. All right. So yeah, old enough there, but, uh, yeah. So, uh, no, that's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your great piece of advice. I think honestly, the best way to learn about, you know, something, uh, new or just to, you know, get better at something is to learn, to learn from someone else's experience. So thank

you for sharing your experience with me. You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. And that was episode 55 of the Mo Money Podcast and the first of my listener series Thursday episodes that I'm going to be doing for the next little while. I've got a few recorded, but I absolutely need more, guys. So if you've listened to this episode and you're like, hmm, I would love to share my story on this show, guess what? I want to hear from you. So please shoot me an email at jessica at jessicamorales.com and maybe we can set something up. Maybe if you're the right fit, we can chat and have a grand old time. Make sure to check out the show notes. I'm going to talk a little bit more about what this episode

was all about. I'm going to also include the link to the original interview, the blog interview I did with Amanda. So I want to check all that out. And thanks again for listening. If you haven't subscribed on iTunes yet, make sure to just hit that little button. And if you like what you heard, please be so kind. Send me a review. Give me a review on iTunes. I would really appreciate it. And I will give you the shout out, a shout out on a future episode. So please, please, please, please give me a review. And until next Wednesday, have a lovely rest of the week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.