In 1997, after being in the workforce for 4 years and using my French degree working for a finance company dealing with Canada, I attended graduate school to get my Masters in Business Administration (MBA). I worked during the day and then attended classes at night. I graduated in 2000 from Georgia State University. In working full time, I was able to not only get some tuition reimbursement from my company, but also pay for each semester out of my salary without incurring any additional debt. I was not a big spender and had up to 3 roommates the entire time to help keep expenses down. Still having undergraduate student loans, I definitely didn’t want to incur any more debt. At that time, I was paying the minimum amount (which I’ll definitely advise you later NOT to do). However, I did continue to live very frugally with roommates, buying a used car, and living below my means. For the first time, I had the opportunity to participate in my company’s 401K retirement program. I decided to contribute the maximum amount where my company would match it. The money came directly out of my check, so I never really missed it.
My husband and I got married in 1999 and started our family in 2001. We had always planned that one of us would stay at home with the children and our family would live on a single income. In theory this is a great concept, but when you’re accustomed to living on two incomes, it’s definitely harder than you think. While pregnant with my first child, we decided that I would continue working in a job that I loved and my husband would stay at home until he found another option or opportunity since he hated his job and was looking for a change anyway. On the day I was supposed to go back to work after maternity leave, I was brought into my boss’s office and told that my job was being eliminated. Needless to say, I was floored and was completely unprepared to be in that situation. In addition, my husband wasn’t excited about staying in a job that he hated. Previously, with double income and no kids (DINK) we didn’t really have to watch our finances too closely at that point. Even though we weren’t excessive spenders, we did have additional money for any extras that we wanted. We took nice vacations to different countries, enjoyed going out to eat, and loved going to movies. However, now was time for the family to be more even careful with our spending. The things that I thought were necessities now became optional. I had to reevaluate my spending habits and those of our family as a whole. At first, I just worked on the small stuff, but searched out avenues to make additional cuts and earn more money for our family.
We didn’t get new cars, we didn’t go on wonderful vacations, I cut the children’s hair, we bought gently used children’s items, etc. Simply, we lived below our means. I also tried to pick up extra jobs working part time that I could do around my growing family. Hannah 2001, Brynn 2003, and Gage 2006.
In 2007, my husband decided to take a huge risk to quit his job and go back to school to become a Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant (think Physician’s Assistant, but for Anesthesia). This would make us a family of five with no income for almost 3 years. After looking at all the options, we decided it was still important for me to stay at home with our children since I had an infant, as well as a 4 and a 6-year-old. The cost of daycare alone would exceed any money that I could earn working full time. We rented out our home in Georgia and moved our family to South Florida so my husband could attend school at Nova Southeastern and rented a place there. We spent almost 3 years with no full-time income living off of student loans and being more frugal than I ever thought possible. In 2008, we were told that his second year of his schooling would be almost all clinical rotations with some other classes online that he could do from anywhere. Because of this, we racked up another move back to Georgia returning to our home until he finished school. If you’ve ever moved, you are aware of the extremely high costs of moving, and all of the logistics that come with it. During this no income time, our debt increased as well as the age of our children and prices of items. Upon his graduation, we came out of school and the experience with over $200,000 in student loan debt, encompassing a total of 21 loans. YEP! 21 loans. He graduated in 2009 and we’ve had many financial ups and downs in which I will speak about in greater detail later in this blog.
My childhood and my early experiences in adult life paved the way for me to embrace a very conservative financial mindset. Even now in 2021, I mostly continue that life and it doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice anymore. If someone would have told me twenty years ago that I would be doing some of the stuff that I have done and continue to do now, I wouldn’t have believed them. Maybe I was just a simple woman who had been hiding in the life of a high maintenance persona.
Some of my suggestions that you will read may seem extreme to you. How far you will go to make adjustments in your life will depend on how much you need to “earn” for your family or yourself. You may not embrace all of my suggestions, but even using some of them can add income to your bottom line. Start by making the small easy adjustments and work up to the more extreme options. The most important thing that you need to understand is that price does NOT always equal value. Just because you buy the most expensive item, does not necessarily mean that it’s the best. Please remember this point when reading through this blog as well as when you are purchasing items.
**Here is a picture of my family in 2007 in the Florida Keys while we living in South Florida and my husband was attending graduate school
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