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Always where there is a desire everything is done. That’s the saying that personifies Brandyn Rodriguez and her journey to pay $ 137,000.
All this debt was made up of medical bills, daily payments, credit cards. No one had previously learned how to manage money. The only thing she knew how to do was to spend relentlessly.
When she became a mother she realized she needed savings. At the church where she went, found out about Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University where she enrolled.
She says “When I first started the journey, it was just an eye-opener: I do not have to live with debt, that I can pay these things off. But it did not last long,”
Initially, the steps were small. She paid some bills and bought a small house. In 2014 after she got married, she and her husband Dj started having problems. Things got even more serious in 2016 with the birth of their second daughter.
“Why not pay it off and keep this money or invest it for our future, for our daughters?”
The Rodriguez family joined forces and started following the debt snowball method and a zero-based budget.
But what is this method?
With this method, you list the debts from the lowest to the highest. Initially, it pays the small ones and repeats the process in the same way. Thus a “Snowball” is formed until it redeems them all.
“We had 25-plus debts that were listed at the time.… When we started the journey, we were at $ 90,000 in debt and again, life happens, so we accrued more debt. In the end, we completed $ 137,000 over 59 months, says Rodriguez.
To pay as soon as, the two started second jobs. They just wanted the debts to be paid off. For almost a year they worked hard for payments.
She was helped by the oldest daughter. Today she is 16 years old. After a year she left the second and third job she had started online.
At the end of September 2020, all the debts are closed. “When I hit submit on that final payment, I had ‘N Sync’s’ Bye Bye Bye’ playing, and my family was recording me and I danced,”
For others starting to dive into their debt, Rodriguez recommends three key strategies:
Don’t look at the big numbers and break them down into smaller goals.
Make a plan that works best for you and tackle that plan.
If you get tired or exhausted, take a break.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a break. It’s going to take time and it does not matter what the timeline is.
