More Money Podcast - 145 Listener Series - Overcoming a Home Foreclosure - Lindsay VanSomeren, Blogger at Notorious D.E.B.T.

Episode Date: February 15, 2018

For this Listener Series episode, I'm joined once again by past guest Lindsay VanSomeren, also a blogger at Notorious D.E.B.T. Last time we talked she was about to finally get rid of her home from hell. But catching up, that's not exactly what happened (though there is a happy ending!). Long description: For my first "Where Are they Now?" Listener Series episode, I check back with Lindsay VanSomeren who was one of my first Listener Series guests. Lindsay, who also blogs at Notorious D.E.B.T., was featured on episode 57, and shared how her and her husband bought their first home in Alaska together but had nothing but trouble with it. You see, it was built on a foundation of permafrost and they had to shell out $30,000 in repairs (that they couldn't afford). Literally pretty much the same storyline as the movie The Money Pit. We ended off that episode with some good news though, because she had just received two offers buy the house. One of those offers would help them say goodbye to the home from hell, and stop getting into more and more debt so they could move on with their lives. Unfortunately, both of those offers fell through. So, they had to make some tough decisions. Either hang on to the home and continue to get into debt, or get some help. They chose the latter and contacted a credit counsellor to weigh their options. In the end, they decided to go with a deed in lieu of foreclosure. Once that was taken care of, they decided to move to Colorado for a fresh start. And now Lindsay is making a full-time living as a freelance writer, her husband is back in school, and they are slowly but surely building up their credit and saving up a downpayment for their next home in the future. I'm so glad Lindsay was able to share this update, because I think her story is fairly common. It started out with buying a property they thought was great, and taking advantage of a special Veterans loan program they also thought was great. But in the end, the property was not what they thought and a program that let's you buy a home with no money down can also have dangerous consequences. Luckily Lindsay and her husband have moved on, learned from their mistakes, and are on a better path now. So hopefully the lesson from this episode is that even if you feel like you are in an impossible financial situation, there is always a way out. There is a solution for every financial problem out there, but sometimes it means reaching out for help. For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/145 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 145 of the Mominy Podcast. I am your host, Jess Warhouse, and this is another listener series episode. And also, and this is kind of, I guess, good timing because yesterday's episode with Kate Flanders, that was kind of bringing a past guest back to see what they're up to now. And man, it's been up to a lot. And I'm doing the same thing for the listener series. I'm bringing back one of my first listener series guests, Lindsay Van Someren. And I think it's been about a year or so since I've talked to her. And she reached out to me because she wanted to kind of do a bit of a, you know, update because a ton of amazing stuff, good stuff, a lot of lessons,

uh, that she would learn along the past year and she wanted to share on the show. Um, but I'm like, hell yes, I would love to do, uh, where are they now kind of situation. And so I've got Lindsay back on the show. Um, she also has her own, uh, personal finance blog called Notorious D E B T, uh, Notorious Debt. And I was lucky enough to actually finally meet her in person a couple FinCons ago in San Diego. So that was two years ago. And then I met her, saw her again at this FinCon. So it was lovely just to put a face to a person and all that kind of stuff.

And I also just now have the time to really sit down and chat and find out what's been going on with her in the past little while. So I know you are going to love this episode. If you want to maybe stop and listen to our previous episode, you can. That episode is number 57 and we recorded it back in September of 2016. So wow, a lot of a long time has passed since then. That's pretty crazy. So you are definitely going to want to make sure you've listened to that, then listen to this to kind of get the full story. And again, if you're listening right now and you're curious about potentially being on an episode of the Listener Series, please reach out,

jessica at jessicamorehouse.com or visit the show notes for some more info, but always looking for other listeners to showcase on the show. So without further ado, here's that interview with Lindsay. Thanks, Lindsay, for joining me once again on the Mo Money Podcast. This is my first listener series where it's, where are they now? I love it. So let's kind of remind everyone who, and I'll of course link your, uh, episode in the show notes for people to check it out. But it is, I think one of the first listener series episodes I recorded, which is a cool, um, so when we left off, I had this house that was up in Alaska. We moved away from it. The problems with the house were that it was built on permafrost, which put all kinds of screwballs into our plans. There was a septic tank that was giving us a lot of problems, like things like we had a porch that was sinking into the ground. It was this huge hassle. We were renting it out because we couldn't sell it. We were looking for buyers and renters constantly at the same time. And that went for about two years. And we had to pay about $30,000 in repair bills over these two years. And I was just starting out in my career

after graduate school. And that was my entire salary for a single year. So we went into debt a lot for that. We got two offers on the house. And I think that might have been right where we left off last time. Yeah, I was like, I think we ended on a hopeful note. Yeah, I know. We're like, this is gonna happen happen. It's going to be great. It's going to be just fine. Yep. Things tanked from there. What happened with those offers? So the first one, he had a special financing plan. He was a native Alaskan dude and the financing just fell through. It didn't work. So we went a few more months and then we got a second offer and we're like, great, this is our chance. This is our time now to finally get rid of this thing. And they did a home inspection

report and it showed that the septic tank, the septic field, all the pipes, everything had completely failed, even though we'd spent $30,000 on patching up this system over the last two years. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So they said that the house basically would need a completely brand new, fully redesigned, custom engineered septic system because of the ground it was built on. And they estimated it would cost like 40, $45,000 for this whole system. Oh my God. Yeah. And when I heard that number, I just about had a heart attack. I was like, there's no way. I don't have that money. No way I can come up with that. It's not happening. And at this point in time, we didn't have any renters in the house. So we

were paying the mortgage and rent in our new place in Colorado where we're living now out of the same paycheck every month. And the numbers just weren't working out. We were going further and further behind into debt. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like the movie Money Pit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It was terrible. It was so bad. So that second deal fell through and then we were stuck at a point. We couldn't afford this $45,000 repair to make this fancy new, you know, space age septic system on this house. And we couldn't sell it because of this repair issue. And because of the septic tank also, we couldn't fill it with renters because it was non-operational at that point.

Like it just wouldn't work. And so we were stuck. Like we, we couldn't pay them. We can't, we couldn't have continued paying the mortgage. So we were just stuck at an impasse and we didn't, we didn't know what to do. And I, we don't have like a financial advisor or anything. We're just kind of doing this all on our own, like most people, you know, and I wasn't comfortable making any decisions without getting a second set of eyes on our situation to give us advice and say, yes, this would be what you should do or consider this. So from there, we called up a credit counselor from the NFCC, National Foundation for Credit Counseling. I think they just opened up a branch in Canada

as well. There's definitely some credit counseling organizations up here. So that's awesome that you made that decision. That seems like a smart move. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want to go to just like any Joe credit counselor. Some of them are kind of shady, but if you find somebody who works for a nonprofit, they're usually really good. And they helped us out a ton. They spent like two or three hours on the phone with us just going over like our budget, which I was into personal finance by that point. So like I had all the numbers right up in front of me. And I was like, I can prove to you, look, this is not working out. I don't know what we should do from here. And eventually they

suggested that we do what's called a deed in lieu of foreclosure. And basically what this means is we take the deed of our house, we give it to the banks or essentially giving the bank our house and in return, they will absolve us of the mortgage. They'll just like dissolve the debt. And this worked fine for us because we didn't need the house anyways. Yeah, exactly. You're like, I don't want it. Take it. Yeah, you guys take it. It's your problem now. Go for it. Have fun. Okay, cool. So what does that mean in terms of your credit and your credit rating? Because it's not the same as like a bankruptcy or anything like that. But foreclosure, I guess, still does negatively affect your credit. Yeah. And I think it reflects a little bit more positively than if we had done a full foreclosure, if I'm remembering right, because we're working with the bank to make this

as painless on everybody as possible. My husband was the one who had the mortgage in his name. The mortgage wasn't in my name at all, so it wasn't even listed on my credit report. So after this happened, the final mark on his credit report happened in December 2015, and his credit score dropped by about 100 points. He wasn't mad, but I was mad because it was $799. It was like one point away from getting into the 800 club. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, no. Oh, no. Oh, my gosh. So, wow. Well, that sounds like you made the best decision for you. I don't know what I would do in that situation. Probably something similar because, yeah, you have this basically albatross around your neck and you need to get rid of it. I'm terrible with sayings. I can't remember if that's the proper saying, but it's like something to do with an albatross.

It's a wildlife thing, so it works for me. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. So that's awesome that you sought help. I bet if you didn't seek help, you probably wouldn't have made that decision because you may not have known that was an option. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't know what I would have done. I probably just gone into full foreclosure and that would have hurt our credit score even more. Exactly. So you did this, you no longer have the house, but you no longer have to pay the mortgage. You don't have to make any other payments on it, right? Nope. It's completely out of our life right now. We don't have anything to do with it. We're

completely cut off. Okay, cool. So now you're at this point where now you're living in Colorado, you're living your lives there. I guess, what are your next steps in terms of trying to improve your financial situation and also build up that credit because it did go down? So his credit has increased a little bit over the past year or so. Year? Yeah, a year and a half or so since this all happened, this went down. The mark will stay on his credit report for the next seven years, and his credit score will continually go up a little bit over time. I was not impacted at all credit-wise.

So if we did need to take out any loans, although we really, really hope not to, if that ever did come to pass, I would probably be able to with my name. But in the meantime, we're just trying to save up as much as we can to not be put in a situation like this in the future. We do want to own a home again eventually, and that's not going to be very likely for the next seven years while this mark is still on his credit report. But that's totally fine for us. Like that's probably going to take us that long to save up for a down payment anyways, you know? So yeah, we're okay with that. We do not want to get in this situation again because one of the reasons why we couldn't like lower the price on the house enough to where like you know

rock bottom where somebody would take it even though it had this huge repair was because we didn't put a down payment on the house when we first bought it so we we were kind of limited in how low we could go because we didn't have enough equity built up in the home that's right do you want to kind of uh share again how you, because from a Canadian standpoint, it's like you cannot buy a place without down payment. The lowest you can go is 5%, but then you need to get mortgage insurance. And then the only way to not get that mortgage insurance is if you put over 20% down. So how were you able to purchase a home without a down payment? It works pretty similarly here in the States too. But my

husband, when we bought the house, he was in the army and there's a special loan program for people who are in the military or who are veterans called a VA loan. And basically the VA, I think they like guarantee a portion of the loan should you ever default. I'm not really sure how that all fell down when we actually did go through this process with our loan. But one of the biggest selling points of this program for veterans and military folks is that you don't have to have any down payment on the home at all. And there's also no PMI. So it's for people who don't have a down payment, it's a good way to get into a home, but it's also a good way to get into problems down the road like we did. Yeah.

Like it sounds like it could be good for, yeah, people that want to own. But also, I mean, in my mind, I'm like, oh my gosh, purchasing something like that without a down payment. It's, you know, yeah. As you personally experience. You're just setting people up for failure. Exactly. Exactly. You're just giving all of this debt to someone.

Yeah. So it sounds like maybe not such a good program after all. Yes, I agree. Yes, indeed. So I guess through this process, what are some of the biggest things that you learned that you want other people to know? Hmm, that's a good question. I think if you're in a situation where you're with a spouse and something like this comes up or other really huge financial challenges, I think the biggest thing that this taught us was that we work together as a team. This would have been very easy to get into a blame game where it's like, oh, you bought this house and now we're in this situation. So all of this is your fault. We never felt that way ever. When we bought the house, we both wanted it. We both were on board with buying the house and we viewed it as this monster that we were supposed to face together.

And I think that ultimately, if there's any good things that came out of this, like teaching us to be better with money was one of them. But another good thing was that I think it helped solidify our relationship a bit better because once everything was said and done, I think our marriage was stronger as a result of it because we'd gone through this horrible financial thing and we'd came out on the other side intact and stronger than before. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think it's so important. I think a lot of people don't really realize this. When you are in a long-term relationship or a marriage, I mean, being on the same page financially can really make or break your relationship. And although sometimes I'm like, oh, what does money have to do with, you know, relationships?

Because sometimes I think people get a little, it's more just coming from the perspective of lots of people that believe that once you're married, you have to pull all of your financial resources together and, you know, be like one kind of unit in, you know, one bank account and all that kind of stuff, which I don't really agree with. But when it comes to talking about money and your financial goals and making those decisions, you absolutely have to be on the same page and do it together. Otherwise, yeah, you will play the blame game. You will argue. You will, you know, there will be some resentment and it's just, it's no good. It's no good. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree.

We do have our finances combined, but I don't, I mean, whatever works for other people, but I think you're right. You should, you should definitely be on the same page in terms of where you guys are going together as a couple. Exactly. So also a lot of things have changed in your career. Cause I think when we last talked, you were working in kind of the science field, but did freelance writing as a side hustle to earn extra money to kind of help with paying back your mortgage and all that kind of stuff. Where are you now? animal caretaker when I first started freelance writing because at that point we were in the midst of all this stuff trying to sell the house and paying for all these ridiculous repair bills and I was just like I need to make extra money somehow even if it's like a dollar I need to figure out how to do this and so I started I started freelance writing while I was working at the job and I also

did not like the job very much yeah this is great for some people but not not for me and I wanted to get into science work um specifically wildlife research because that's what my degree was in I have a master's degree in wildlife biology and conservation yeah and I I couldn't there's like one of the weird things about the wildlife profession is you kind of have to work in a lot of seasonal jobs before you can get like a full-time permanent biologist position. Right. That's just the nature of the game to get a job. And I wasn't ever in a position since graduating where I could have done that. Yeah. Because I had to have the steady paycheck, even though it was low, I had to have that steady paycheck so that I could have done that because I had to have the steady paycheck,

even though it was low, I had to have that steady paycheck so that I could afford to pay for these house repairs. And so once I started freelance writing it, it took off after a little while and I realized I could probably afford to take the leap into a seasonal wildlife job if one came up. Because if I got dropped off at the end of the season and wasn't continued on, then I could at least, you know, do freelance writing. And that's actually what ended up happening. There was a position at the USGS that opened up. I saw it listed. They were looking for people to do vegetation surveys across remote areas in Wyoming while driving a trailer behind the research vehicle. And that was like exactly, exactly what I did, except up in Alaska for my graduate research. So it's like, oh, like the stars open up, like the sun shine down.

I was like the hollowed position that and I ended up getting it. I was so thankful and it was a great job. I loved it. And they were trying to hire me on as a term position, which would be for four years, I would basically be guaranteed a job almost. And that was right during the time of the presidential election. They were trying to hire me on and they were trying to get the paperwork through before the new president took office, before Trump took office, and it didn't get through in time. And so he came in and shut down all the hiring and my job that they were trying to get me on for, it just evaporated overnight. It was like so close. So close. Oh, that's terrible. so what happened after this happened and i assume

that that means that you were laid off and had to figure something else out yeah yeah it was a temporary position i was working under during that time so once the job ended it was that was that was it and so i i just started going full-time freelancing like I had planned on and thank thank god I had that as a backup because if I hadn't I would have just been totally totally screwed I would have had to crawl back to the lab animal caretaking job like with my tail tucked between my legs like will you guys take me back I promise I don't hate this job as much as I said. And forget what I said on my way out. Yeah. I was like, man, I hope they don't hear like some of these podcast episodes.

Oh, I hear you. Yeah. It's one of the reasons I feel like I've always had a side hustle and why I'm always preaching to people that is so important to have a side hustle. If you, if you want more kind of financial security, if you feel like something could happen, if you're in an unstable kind of work environment, whether that means you work contracts part-time or you just feel like, I mean, for me, like I have a terrible history of lots of my, um, the companies I've worked for going bankrupt. So yeah, lots of them have just like shut down. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. It's not good. So because of that, this has literally happened like over and over, or I just had a lot of contract jobs. So it was always kind of, I knew I needed to prepare myself for like a situation where there, you know, I'd be unemployed for a little bit. I always,

now I'm like, I need to always have something extra. I mean, now I'm just full-time employed, but still the mindset's still there. So I'm always like, I need to have several different streams of income. So if something dries up, I have something to focus more of my energy on because there's nothing worse than life happening

and nothing to do with you. It's just like a situation happens and you have to find other work. And so it's always nice to have something extra that you can kind of, okay, well, at least I've got this. Yeah, yeah. Get back on my feet. That's something that I really advocate for people trying to get in the wildlife field too is that you always need to have a side hustle because dealing with seasonal jobs like my experience is tough but the funding for these kinds of things is going down a lot now yeah the new administration is

not very friendly to science yeah yeah so um these jobs are probably going to become a lot more sporadic and job hoppy in the future it It's going to be tough for people. But even though I'm freelance writing now, I'm at a weird point in my career now. So I'm earning enough money to help us actually start getting ahead for the first time in my life. I'm earning more now than I ever thought I would at any point in my career, which is crazy to me. I can't give that up right now because we're like so far behind paying off our debt and saving up for retirement and all that. So I don't know if I would be able to take a seasonal job at this point just because I'm not willing to give up that security. I've been burned so many times before that I don't want to put myself in that situation. And even if I was in a stable job, like I'm,

I'm just too scared now. Like I always need to have like one foot, you know, and in another pot. Absolutely. Oh yeah. I mean, for,

for the time that I was in the kind of corporate world working a full time, I always had a side hustle because, well, I worked at again, a lot of companies and I'm like, I feel like they well, I worked at, again, a lot of companies. And I'm like, I feel like they're going to go bankrupt any day, like working at newspapers. They're not doing so well. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this other thing at night just to make some extra cash. And I did that pretty much.

And then I started my own blog, my own kind of side business. And so I've literally, I think, since I worked full time, always had a side hustle and it made me feel safe and secure and definitely helped propel me forward quicker than if I just worked a full time gig. And also it's nice to do more than one thing. I think that's the thing. I don't think I'd ever be able to just do one thing and then go home at night and just, I don't know what I'd do with that free time. Maybe I'm just a workaholic, but I'm like, I don't know what I'd do. Yeah. I don't, I don't remember what I did before. I know. I know. It's like, I don't know. I don't, I must've wasted time. Like I wasn't, I don't think I did anything great. Probably just, yeah, I watched TV. Though I watched enough TV that I'm like,

I don't know how I could watch anymore. Oh my gosh. So, okay, so now you're freelancing full-time writing. How did you kind of, I think we did talk about this in my previous episode, but how did you actually get started in that kind of line of work? How did you find like your first client

and get your foot in the door? I had started, I originally like, it was a, it's a weird progression. So I was working at this job as a lab animal caretaker. I was able to listen to like music all day because I was just working by myself. And this was also at the point where we were dealing with all these repairs. And I was like, man, I really suck at money. I really need to like learn how to do this better because like we were still going out to dinner like, you know, two or three nights a week and spending all of this money just accumulating massive piles of crap. And it was we were not managing our money well and I knew it, but I didn't know how to do better. So I started listening to podcasts during the day to kind of educate myself. I was like, I bet there's maybe one or two podcasts about how to manage your money that might be interesting. And little did I know that there's this whole world of podcasts out there that can teach you everything you need to

know. Totally. Because it's not that difficult. And I kept hearing all these people talking about side hustles. I started listening to Smart Passive Income and they were talking about, you can just do this stuff at home and start a blog and all of that stuff. So I started a blog about knitting. It was like, I'll become like a knitting empire and I'll have all these affiliate links and I'll make so much money. And that just never worked out. Surprise. Yeah. And then I decided to start a personal finance blog about my journey after that because I just wanted to share with people like how, how this thing was changing my life and how it was making things so much better. Like I was, I was actually like stuck in a depression while I

was working at this job. Like I had to go see a therapist. It was really bad. And learning how to manage my money brought me outside of that. Like it lifted me up and now I'm like so much better. Yeah. It's amazing what you're like learning how to manage your money can do for your mental health, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so after I had this personal finance blog, Notorious D-E-B-T, it's still up today. I still, still manage it. I started reaching out to other blogs and websites and just trying to start freelance writing because I'd been writing on my own blogs for a little while. And I got clients surprisingly fast. There's a lot of demand out there, especially for people in the personal finance field. And it pays really, really well. Like good, really well. And it just took off from there. I started working for a couple of clients and then I got another one and then I

dropped to the lowest paying one and picked up a higher paying one. And that just continued on like that over the last couple of years to where I'm at now. That's awesome. So really, it's just a matter of doing your research and then just pitching yourself, which I think sometimes people think is just terrifying. Myself included. I hate pitching myself. Yeah, I know. I was so scared and I'm still like so scared. I'm like such a weenie with this kind of stuff. Like, but I, I've specifically started doing things because they make me scared because that was like the thing that was holding me back for so long from, from trying to better myself is just, I'm like too afraid of people. Like what if they, what if they better myself is just, I'm like too afraid of

people. Like what if they, what if they think I'm just like some weirdo? Like what are my qualifications? I don't have a finance degree, you know, like all this, all these things, there's a million things you can tell yourself about why you shouldn't do something that you want to do. It's true. It's so true. But yeah, I'm, I'm the exact same way. All the things that I delayed in trying or just like didn't try at all, it was all because of fear. And when you really like think about it or note down some of your fears, lots of them are just so, like you look at them and you're like, that's just crazy.

Like who cares if they say no, then move on, you know? Like then it doesn't mean it's no forever or no from everyone. And I think that's also the thing. Lots of people are afraid that if they get a no from one person, that it'll be a no from everybody. But sometimes you have to just knock on a ton of doors before one opens, and then you're like, oh. And then it's easier after that.

You just have to get over that first kind of hump. So props to you because now just taking that step, now you have a full-time job doing it. How crazy. Yeah, yeah. It's so weird. I think dealing with rejection, like you were saying, is one of the hardest things because I do get rejected a lot. And that's something that was really hard for me at first to deal with and it still is for a lot of things. It'll always be hard for everybody always because you want to be accepted. Rejected, even if it's just in a work capacity,

you're like, is it me? There's this book that I haven't read. I'm so fascinated by it. This is the second podcast I brought it up in, but it's called Rejection Proof, How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. I heard this on a podcast,

and it's about this dude who was just like us. He was afraid of everything and that held him back in his business. And so he, for 100 days, did these little challenges that were just completely ridiculous. He would go up to Costco and ask to sing a song over the loudspeaker for the entire store or just knock on somebody's door and be like hey can I play soccer in your backyard just like crazy things that were designed for people to say no to him and through that through specifically getting people to say no to him like he he immunized himself it's like um the therapy where like they you know like if you have you're afraid of spiders they'll gradually like introduce you to spiders very slowly so that you're not afraid of them anymore. It's like

that exact same concept. I was just like, whoa. I will never do that spider thing though. I actually am terrified of them. And I think I just like die. There's no way. There's too many legs. Yep. Yep. That's what I have a husband for. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, Josh, there's a bug. Please take care of it. I'm terrified. I know. I'm the worst, exactly. I'm like, Josh, there's a bug. Please take care of it. I'm terrified. I know. I'm the worst biologist. I'm like, bugs, no.

That's too funny. Okay. Well, that is a great book recommendation. That sounds totally up my alley because I feel like with most people, it's not so much that we're, you know, the things that we want are because we're not talented enough. We don't have the education, the credentials. We're not good enough. Literally, it's because we're too afraid of what could happen. And sometimes it's even the fear of what if it does work out? I don't know if I'm ready for that.

What if these people say yes? Oh, shit. What do I do? Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. Well, it has been a pleasure. I'm so, so happy that you reached out. And I'm so, so happy that you reached out and I'm so, so happy that you're doing so much better than our first chat though. We ended on a good note. So it's nice to know what happened in between and that you're doing way better. And then you have kind of more of a handle on your finances and you're doing well in your career. And that makes me really, really happy. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a wild ride, but it's been interesting.

Yes, that's what life is. It's interesting. And you'll never be able to predict what will happen, will you? No. No, definitely not. So before I let you go, where can more people find out

more information about you? You can find me on my blog that I was talking about a little earlier. It's www.notoriousdebt.com. I'm also on Twitter, my handle's at Notorious DEBT and Pinterest and also on Facebook. Fabulous. Well, thanks, Lindsay, for taking the time to give me a recap recap i definitely want to reach out to some of like my earlier listener series from back back when i first started it to see where they're at because i'm hopeful that they'll be like you and they're like i'm doing great yeah that's a great idea yeah all right all right talk to you later yep thank you and that was episode 145 with Lindsay Van Someren. You can, of course, learn more about her

and what she's up to and read some of her blog posts on her own personal finance blog called The Notorious Debt, Notorious Debt. And of course, I will be linking to all that good stuff and some articles she's written in the show notes, which you can check out at jessicamorehouse.com slash 145. So in yesterday's episode, I mentioned a couple important announcements. If you missed it, I'm just gonna tell you what they are again, just so you know. So one of the biggest announcements

I would have to say is I'm finally opening up my financial counselor practice. I've finished doing my financial counselor training. I am now a fully-fledged accredited financial counselor in Canada. But that doesn't mean that I only counsel people in Canada. No matter where you live, if you've got an internet connection, I am happy to work with you no matter where you are in the world. Now, if you want to learn more about what that all is and if this financial counseling makes sense for what you're looking for in terms of helping you with your finances, book a free 15-minute discovery call with me. It's super easy. Just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash discovery call. Book a time and I'll give you a call and we'll chat for 15 minutes and see what's

going on. Another announcement I made is I am going to soon launch the Rich and Fit website. I've been in the works for a little while, but beyond that, so we've got the Rich and Fit bootcamp, me and Jacqueline Phillips, and we are going to split basically the bootcamp into two parts for those of you who want to maybe just do one or the other one after the other. So you can look forward to some new courses from me. It'll be Rich and Fit Financial Foundations and Rich and Fit Fitness Foundations, or you can still sign up to do the Rich and Fit Bootcamp if you really do want to get, you know, kind of an intense bootcamp, really whip your money and body into shape at the same time,

because that is what life is. You don't really do one or the other. You do it all at the same time, right? It's got to be part of your lifestyle. So again, more information can be found about how to enroll in the bootcamp at richandfitbootcamp.com. All right, that is it for me, but I will be back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode you are not gonna want to miss. See ya. This podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network find out more at women in media.network