Speaker 1: Hey, hey, Hey, I set up for a young woman
Speaker 1: that I met in Atlanta last weekend, she said, and
Speaker 1: make to day.
Speaker 2: Every time she hears that. So we're back and we're
Speaker 2: black and brown.
Speaker 3: I'm Tiffany, I'm Mandy, and this is brown and busy.
Speaker 3: Happy hump Day.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm super excited because we have an interview.
Speaker 2: In honesty, they're like the cutest couple in the world.
Speaker 3: So I was instagram stalking as I do, and I
Speaker 3: came across the story of this phenomenal couple from my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia. Hey,
Speaker 3: so in Atlanta, it's just an Atlanta themed episode today.
Speaker 3: Tiffany was that landa this weekend without me, But it's fine.
Speaker 3: And this couple, their names are Leo and Faith and
Speaker 3: they are twenty seven years old and thirty years old,
Speaker 3: just married last year, and they decided to spend their
Speaker 3: first year tackling one hundred thousand dollars worth of debt
Speaker 3: in twelve months. You know, no big deal. But I
Speaker 3: saw their story on Instagram because they had just celebrated
Speaker 3: paying off one hundred thousand dollars a debt. But what
Speaker 3: really struck me was that they were like, oh, we're
Speaker 3: not done yet. We have another one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to pay off next year. But they look so happy
Speaker 3: and joyous. And I reached out to them and I
Speaker 3: asked if they would come on the show and just
Speaker 3: share their story of how they managed to pay off
Speaker 3: so much debt and so little time being so young.
Speaker 3: And I love I love their interview. I think that
Speaker 3: they are really inspiring. I mean, you and I both
Speaker 3: talk about the issues we had early on our relationships
Speaker 3: getting on the same page with our significant others, like
Speaker 3: to tackle something like that, like if you're not going
Speaker 3: to be a team about it, it's never going to work.
Speaker 3: And I know that we've got questions from listeners over
Speaker 3: the over the years now we've been doing this podcast,
Speaker 3: asking you know, what do you do if your spouse
Speaker 3: isn't on board, not on the same money page and whatnot?
Speaker 3: And I think Leo and faith story is just proof
Speaker 3: of first how to solve that issue and then how
Speaker 3: to tackle your debt together as a team.
Speaker 1: It's just a great, great lesson that you guys are
Speaker 1: going to learn today because it's just it's not easy
Speaker 1: when you're it's one thing to make your own financial
Speaker 1: decisions and goals and choices. It's another when you have
Speaker 1: to this is not a boyfriend or whatever, like, you
Speaker 1: must consider someone else's feelings when you're tackling your financial
Speaker 1: goals and theirs as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, so excited to have them on the show. You
Speaker 3: guys are going to take a quick break and be
Speaker 3: right back with our interview with Leo and Faith. I
Speaker 3: can't even imagine what it would be like if I
Speaker 3: got married and then we sat down one day, did
Speaker 3: some calculations and realized we had close to two hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars of debt. But I wanted to bring on
Speaker 3: this week's guest to the show, Faith and Leo from Atlanta,
Speaker 3: because I came across them on Instagram and their story
Speaker 3: was so inspiring. This actually happened to them. They're a
Speaker 3: young couple from my home state of Georgia, and they
Speaker 3: got married and had their whole lives ahead of them.
Speaker 3: But when they sat down and really did the math,
Speaker 3: they realized, holy crap, we actually have six figures worth
Speaker 3: of debt. Now. What they didn't do is put their
Speaker 3: heads in the sand and freak out and say, you know,
Speaker 3: this is impossible. We can't achieve this. They sat down
Speaker 3: and said, Okay, how are we going to make this happen?
Speaker 3: They took on extra jobs, they completely changed their lifestyle,
Speaker 3: and they manage to pay off over one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars in the last year alone. That's crazy amazing. So
Speaker 3: I saw them on Instagram totally random. I slid into
Speaker 3: I never slide into anyone's DMS. I don't really know
Speaker 3: what that means, like is that creepy? But I slid
Speaker 3: into Leo's DMS and I said, you, guys, do you
Speaker 3: want to I want to have you and your wife
Speaker 3: Faith on the podcast because I think people need to
Speaker 3: hear the story like this, because sadly, they're not necessarily unusual, right,
Speaker 3: like six figures of debt to twenty somethings, you know,
Speaker 3: two millennials getting married today, Like we all have debt,
Speaker 3: tons of student debt, and it's not like they did
Speaker 3: anything wrong. But what I find really inspiring is that
Speaker 3: they made a plan to actually tackle it and it's
Speaker 3: clearly working. So Faith and Leo, thank you for coming
Speaker 3: on Brown Ambition.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for yes, thanks for having me, thank you.
Speaker 4: We're glad to be here.
Speaker 3: How how wow did you do this, How did you
Speaker 3: well take us back to when you guys first met,
Speaker 3: when you got married, and when was it that you
Speaker 3: realized you were sitting on Was it two hundred something
Speaker 3: thousand dollars worth of debt?
Speaker 5: Yes, it was approximately two hundred.
Speaker 6: And eleven thousand, and we met in twenty fourteen. I
Speaker 6: moved from Boston for a job here in Atlanta, and
Speaker 6: Faith moved here for school. She went to Emory University.
Speaker 6: And a friend of mine invited me to a small
Speaker 6: to a young adult service at his church. And so
Speaker 6: I went to that service on a Wednesday night, and
Speaker 6: my friend wasn't there. He didn't show up, but I
Speaker 6: went anyways, and lo and behold, they were having small groups,
Speaker 6: and Faith and I happened to live in the same
Speaker 6: city and ended up being in the same small group,
Speaker 6: so she couldn't take her eyes off of me, and
Speaker 6: the rest is history.
Speaker 3: She didn't know about that. She didn't know about that
Speaker 3: debt yet though.
Speaker 5: In her in her mind she was like, I don't
Speaker 5: know about her, so.
Speaker 3: And y'all are newly would so you mean it's only
Speaker 3: been a year. Did you guys know about the debt
Speaker 3: before you got married?
Speaker 5: Yes? We sure did.
Speaker 6: We had premarital counseling with our pastors a few months
Speaker 6: before we got married, and we were forced to talk
Speaker 6: about everything, including our finances. So when we sat down
Speaker 6: with them, one of the sessions that we had was
Speaker 6: about our purpose and what was the purpose of our marriage?
Speaker 6: Why are you two together? What is it that you
Speaker 6: guys want to accomplish.
Speaker 5: So one of the things that we wanted to do
Speaker 5: as a family was be a.
Speaker 6: Family that gave, and not only financially, but our time.
Speaker 6: And the biggest thing standing in our way was our debt.
Speaker 6: So we decided to looking our accounts and total all
Speaker 6: of our debt up to see what we were up against.
Speaker 6: And there was the two hundred thousand who was leading.
Speaker 2: The charge as far as having the most amount of debt.
Speaker 7: Me, I, of course was So I went to private school.
Speaker 3: I know, I heard Emory you were in trouble.
Speaker 6: Yes, So I.
Speaker 7: Got both of my undergrad degrees from private school, and
Speaker 7: I also got my like graduate degree from private school too,
Speaker 7: And I just thought it was normal to call Sally
Speaker 7: May and I took out an excessive amount of student loans.
Speaker 7: I didn't apply for any scholarships. I was just like, well,
Speaker 7: Sally May is just going to get me through Emory
Speaker 7: and all of my schooling.
Speaker 4: So I was the one that brought in all the debt.
Speaker 3: I mean you had some help, yeah, help, don't take
Speaker 3: full credit and now you're a nurse practitioner and Leo,
Speaker 3: you are an occupational therapist. But how when was it
Speaker 3: that you realized, Okay, if we really want to tackle
Speaker 3: this debt, we need to take on extra work.
Speaker 5: Right away. There was no way we would be able
Speaker 5: to pay off.
Speaker 6: All of our debt within a reasonable amount of time
Speaker 6: if we did not pick up extra jobs. So I
Speaker 6: started doing the extra working first because Faith was still
Speaker 6: in school when we started dating and courting, So I
Speaker 6: worked on the weekends, worked on pretty much practically every Saturday.
Speaker 6: So I was doing six days a week for as
Speaker 6: long as I can remember, still doing it now. So
Speaker 6: when Faith graduated and started working, she continued her part
Speaker 6: time job from from her master's program while starting her
Speaker 6: full time job.
Speaker 5: So we just said, this might.
Speaker 6: Have to be our life for the next couple of
Speaker 6: years so we can really attack our debt.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, was this a plan that
Speaker 1: you guys created before you got married or what did
Speaker 1: you kind of wait until after.
Speaker 6: It was a plan to pay off our debt, but
Speaker 6: we did not anticipate that it would be to this extent,
Speaker 6: to this extent and as intense as we have been
Speaker 6: going this past year. I think once the ball started
Speaker 6: rolling and we saw how much ground we were making,
Speaker 6: then we decided to just put our foot on the
Speaker 6: pedal a little bit more each month.
Speaker 3: How do you get to one hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 3: a year? To walk me through that, I mean, that's
Speaker 3: what twelve months in a year? Seventy five carry the one.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of money. Yeah, every month. I mean
Speaker 3: that's thousands of dollars you guys were saving each month.
Speaker 3: So I mean were you reducing your expenses? How much
Speaker 3: were you bringing in those extra jobs? I mean, I
Speaker 3: feel like you guys must never have even seen each
Speaker 3: other if you're working that much.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So, I mean we reduced pretty much all of our
Speaker 7: extra expenses. And so every single month we had a
Speaker 7: budget meeting and we listed out, you know, what we
Speaker 7: had planned for the month and what.
Speaker 4: Else did we do.
Speaker 7: We carpooled to work, so we both work in South Atlanta,
Speaker 7: so instead of taking two cars to our job. We
Speaker 7: carpool which saves us on gas and also miles on
Speaker 7: another car.
Speaker 4: And we rarely.
Speaker 7: Eat out as well, So I'm packing all of the lunches,
Speaker 7: i am making dinner.
Speaker 4: Every week, like we're rarely eating out.
Speaker 7: And that is what helped us save a lot of
Speaker 7: extra money, because if you think about it, if you're
Speaker 7: constantly eating out, you know, even if you get a
Speaker 7: meal that's like five dollars, after a while, it begins
Speaker 7: to add up. And we realized that we were saving
Speaker 7: so much money by packing our lunches, by making dinner,
Speaker 7: and also carpooling.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and we also don't have cable, so we have
Speaker 6: an antenna that we from Walmart so we can pick
Speaker 6: up the local channels.
Speaker 5: We have our firestick.
Speaker 6: I still till this date have the iPhone five S
Speaker 6: and I know they no longer.
Speaker 5: Make that apple. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So my phone bill is literally less than three hundred
Speaker 6: dollars a year because I'm on a family plan with
Speaker 6: a bunch of cousins of mine. So any little wiggle
Speaker 6: room that we could we found and extra money would
Speaker 6: go straight towards Sally May and fed loan servicing and
Speaker 6: great lakes.
Speaker 7: You should walk them through our weekend times of like
Speaker 7: with working.
Speaker 2: You get it.
Speaker 5: So Faith and I would go to work on Friday.
Speaker 6: Friday afternoon, I would leave my full time job and
Speaker 6: go to my part time job for about three and
Speaker 6: a half to four hours.
Speaker 5: Faith would be home sleeping. When I get back, Faith would.
Speaker 6: Be waking up to go to her overnight nursing job,
Speaker 6: and I would go to sleep. In the morning, I
Speaker 6: would be waking up and Faith would be coming back
Speaker 6: in and I would be leaving to go to my
Speaker 6: part time job on Saturday morning. And we did that
Speaker 6: for the past six or seven months as we got
Speaker 6: really intent, so it would literally be like, hey, oh, hey,
Speaker 6: see you later, Belkis and yep, see you in a
Speaker 6: little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But it was worth it though.
Speaker 7: I mean, we have a poster that we have been
Speaker 7: tracking how much debt we've paid off, and even though
Speaker 7: we spent like a few months of our life not
Speaker 7: really seeing each other, it's been really worth it to
Speaker 7: see how much debt we were able to pay off.
Speaker 7: With a lot of discipline, a lot of self control
Speaker 7: and just deny it delayed gratification.
Speaker 4: We were able to do all of that.
Speaker 3: How did you prioritize the debts too, because you don't
Speaker 3: have just student loan debts, you have some credit card debt.
Speaker 3: I think you said you had a home improvement loan.
Speaker 3: Like a lot of people have different you know, piles
Speaker 3: here and there. How did you prioritize them?
Speaker 6: The credit cards were from wedding expenses, so we got
Speaker 6: rid of those fairly early. It started with me a
Speaker 6: month before we got married attacking those, so we prioritized that,
Speaker 6: and then we transition to the loans that were under
Speaker 6: my name, which were my student loans because Faith was
Speaker 6: able to qualify for a loan repayment. So we were like, oh,
Speaker 6: let's just try to get rid of my loans because
Speaker 6: we don't have that option for me.
Speaker 3: So what do you mean loan repayment?
Speaker 6: So she has the option and we haven't done this yet,
Speaker 6: but she has the option at the end of I
Speaker 6: think at the end of next year where she can
Speaker 6: apply for loan repayment through her job in exchange for
Speaker 6: two years of service to continue working in an underserved population.
Speaker 6: See yeah, so she has that as a nurse practitioner,
Speaker 6: where as I don't have any of those options as
Speaker 6: an occupational therapist, so we decided to attack mine first.
Speaker 3: Okay, right, Yeah, A lot of people don't realize. I
Speaker 3: was going to ask when you said you were a nurse,
Speaker 3: because nurses, I think, doctors, even teachers. There are these
Speaker 3: lone loan repayment assistance programs you can look into. So
Speaker 3: that's excellent that you found that. How much how much
Speaker 3: are you able to get forgiven or repaid through that
Speaker 3: program once you apply, So for.
Speaker 7: An exchange of two years as working as a nurse,
Speaker 7: they could give you up to fifty thousand dollars. Wow,
Speaker 7: which is fantastic.
Speaker 5: Yes, And we we.
Speaker 6: Were speaking to our financial advisor, and we have the
Speaker 6: option to have I guess the government or these loan
Speaker 6: repayment programs pay off the remainder of our loans, but
Speaker 6: it would take us six years to do that because
Speaker 6: you know, fifty thousand and then I think it's fifty
Speaker 6: thousand for the first two years, and then it goes
Speaker 6: twenty thousand for the next two years and then ten.
Speaker 6: So we have the option to do the loan repayment,
Speaker 6: but we don't want to be in debt that long.
Speaker 4: No, we're ready to be done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you do have just some debt left that
Speaker 1: you're still paying off.
Speaker 5: You have over one hundred thousand left, Okay, just a
Speaker 5: little bit. Okay there, I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna say, so, what's your timeline? What do you think?
Speaker 2: How long do you think before you knock it out totally.
Speaker 6: We're hoping by the end of twenty nineteen that we
Speaker 6: would be done, and that is.
Speaker 5: If we apply for the loan repayment.
Speaker 6: So they just have to be at her job for
Speaker 6: another two years starting next year.
Speaker 2: Okay, Wow, you guys are goals as far as like
Speaker 2: working together.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's my question because people ask me this,
Speaker 1: how do you get on the same page financially with
Speaker 1: your partner?
Speaker 2: How were you able to do?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 1: Was there somebody that took a little longer to get
Speaker 1: on the same pintial page or was it something that
Speaker 1: you know, it was easy for you guys to come
Speaker 1: to a consensus.
Speaker 7: So Leo, it wasn't easy for me to come to
Speaker 7: an agreement with this. So Leo is the one that
Speaker 7: is very determined. He gets a goal and he just
Speaker 7: runs after it. Me, on the other hand, I am
Speaker 7: not like that. And so when I saw how much
Speaker 7: debt we were in, it just to me, seemed impossible
Speaker 7: for us to get out of.
Speaker 4: So I struggled with that.
Speaker 7: But then I think that the thing that helped me
Speaker 7: in that process is realizing that this is just a
Speaker 7: temporary season, Like this isn't going to last forever, So
Speaker 7: let's just sacrifice right now so that for the next
Speaker 7: I don't know, maybe fifty years of our life, God willing,
Speaker 7: we can live that debt free. So this is just
Speaker 7: a season, and so we just have to sacrifice and
Speaker 7: do everything that we can right now to get out
Speaker 7: of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and for our conversation that we had, you know,
Speaker 6: we would dream about what we wanted life to be
Speaker 6: like five years from now, ten years, three years from now,
Speaker 6: and that helped us, you know, sacrifice the now for
Speaker 6: what we wanted in the future.
Speaker 5: And we knew.
Speaker 6: What it was like to sacrifice in order to go
Speaker 6: to school, so we had already experienced life in some capacity,
Speaker 6: so hey, why not do it for a bigger goal?
Speaker 5: Why not do it for our family? Why not do
Speaker 5: it for generations after us?
Speaker 6: So that's what really kept us motivated once we knew
Speaker 6: what our why was.
Speaker 1: So I love that that was smart. You guys are
Speaker 1: honestly You guys are really really inspiring. And I love
Speaker 1: that that teacher dreaming helped you get on board Faith,
Speaker 1: because it is hard sometimes for people to because it's
Speaker 1: hard you feel like you work hard and you don't
Speaker 1: want to sacrifice your life away, but when you realize
Speaker 1: it's not really an eternal sacrifice, is just a temporary one.
Speaker 7: Right, definitely, And that's what helped me be able to
Speaker 7: get through it. And then also having the visual helped
Speaker 7: me as well.
Speaker 4: That we created.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we started off doing the.
Speaker 6: We started off by doing the highest interest rate because
Speaker 6: mathematically that made the most sense. But Faith wasn't really
Speaker 6: a fan because most of our high interest rate that
Speaker 6: was the highest amount and it would take us forever
Speaker 6: to pay those off.
Speaker 5: But once we switched to the debt snowball, she was
Speaker 5: a lot more.
Speaker 6: Forgiving and on board when she was able to see
Speaker 6: us cross off you know, one or two loans every month.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's why studies show the snowball works,
Speaker 3: because it's all about that, like motivational, like the psychological
Speaker 3: impact of a little smell. It's like when you whenever
Speaker 3: I took a test in school, I always put my
Speaker 3: name on the paper first, because I was like, well,
Speaker 3: I did that right, and then I'll move on to
Speaker 3: the hard stuff. I think it's yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: it's really smart just to I mean, and it also
Speaker 3: helps establish the rhythm and the habits so that by
Speaker 3: the time you get to the bigger debts, you guys
Speaker 3: are like, oh, we know how to do this. It's
Speaker 3: just a little bit more the what we were doing before. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what does the future look like for you guys? I mean,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of millennials today, I'm sorry for
Speaker 3: saying millennials, I know, but people in their twenties and
Speaker 3: early thirties who are in your shoes right so much
Speaker 3: debt it can feel impossible. It can feel like a
Speaker 3: pipe dream, just even small things like starting a family
Speaker 3: or you know, buying a house someday. Talk about how
Speaker 3: your goals feel to you now when you know you
Speaker 3: also have this, you know, other one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: hurdle in front of you coming up.
Speaker 7: So even though we still have the one hundred thousand
Speaker 7: dollars left to know and to reflect back on the
Speaker 7: past year, like when you really think about it, this
Speaker 7: year flew by and we were able to pay off
Speaker 7: one hundred and four thousand dollars in twelve months, and
Speaker 7: so even though we still have the next twelve months,
Speaker 7: what are the next one hundred thousand dollars left?
Speaker 4: Like, it seems extremely doable to us.
Speaker 7: And I mean our plans are we plan to start
Speaker 7: a family soon in the near future, would be really nice.
Speaker 4: What else do we plan on doing? Just vacationing.
Speaker 7: We're going to Costa Rica, enjoying restaurants in Atlanta, and
Speaker 7: spending more time with our friends. So we're just really
Speaker 7: looking forward to the time that happens when we're debt free.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, we love to share our story because,
Speaker 6: like you said, many people don't think it's possible to
Speaker 6: pay off debt.
Speaker 5: And that being in debt is normal.
Speaker 6: And I don't know anyone who is okay with paying
Speaker 6: double or triple what they bought or purchased. And that's
Speaker 6: what we do when we stay in debt all of
Speaker 6: our lives, Like we're paying triple the price or the
Speaker 6: value of our product. So we just want to encourage
Speaker 6: folks to you know, list their dead, see what it
Speaker 6: is that they owe, and create a plan. It doesn't
Speaker 6: have to be twelve months. It could be five years,
Speaker 6: but if you have a plan, that's a start. So,
Speaker 6: you know, I think about you know, our parents are
Speaker 6: in their late fifties, early sixties, and we want to
Speaker 6: be in a position that, hey, if they weren't able
Speaker 6: to take care of themselves, at least we've made the
Speaker 6: decision to be in a better financial state in order
Speaker 6: to take care of them. We want to be able
Speaker 6: to say more yes is to our children than knows
Speaker 6: just because we can't support them financially.
Speaker 5: So that's what drives.
Speaker 6: Me and that's what keeps me going, and that's what
Speaker 6: we're looking forward to in the future.
Speaker 3: Were there any moments this year when you guys kind
Speaker 3: of hit the wall and looking ahead to next year?
Speaker 3: Will will you go at it as hard as you
Speaker 3: can going on it now? Because I know when you
Speaker 3: and I spoke before, you had talked about you know,
Speaker 3: getting I mean, it can be really really draining. This
Speaker 3: is keeping pace like this, and it can start to
Speaker 3: take a toll, you know, on you individually together as
Speaker 3: a couple. Are there any lessons you've learned this year
Speaker 3: that you might do things a little bit differently with
Speaker 3: your approach coming up this year?
Speaker 7: So I'm really tired, fair enough be very tiring. So
Speaker 7: I think that even though we spent a lot of
Speaker 7: our time not seeing each other, the thing that helped
Speaker 7: in our relationship was constant communication with one another. And
Speaker 7: I felt like we grew in our relationship because it's
Speaker 7: almost like we were forced to communicate. We had to
Speaker 7: see how each other was doing, and that is what
Speaker 7: helped us get through it. Realizing that I had a teammate,
Speaker 7: someone that was there wanting to accomplish the same goal
Speaker 7: as me helped so much. And then and looking to
Speaker 7: next year, I personally don't think I can continue as
Speaker 7: much as I've been doing right now, Like I'm tired,
Speaker 7: So I'm getting a break right now, and then hopefully
Speaker 7: we're going to start back up again pretty soon, pretty soon.
Speaker 3: When you say break, do you mean taking on less work?
Speaker 7: Definitely less work. So I'm still, of course doing my
Speaker 7: full time job, and I'm still doing some overnight shifts,
Speaker 7: but definitely not as much as I was doing before,
Speaker 7: because I was literally doing like my full time job
Speaker 7: along with like five to six overnight shifts each week,
Speaker 7: and so now I'm probably doing maybe about one overnight
Speaker 7: shift a week, which is a drastic change.
Speaker 1: Well, I think a lot of people listening might say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in a similar position.
Speaker 2: Where do I start? Where would you suggest?
Speaker 1: Like, if they're with someone and they're married now, and
Speaker 1: they're just like, okay, both want to admit that we're
Speaker 1: really in debt and we're not sure what's the first step?
Speaker 2: What should we do?
Speaker 5: I would tell them to dream together? Okay.
Speaker 6: I think going straight to the numbers may not be
Speaker 6: the best way for some people. So talking about where
Speaker 6: you want to be in the next three five years.
Speaker 5: What do you want your life to look like?
Speaker 6: And then once you guys come up with a common goal,
Speaker 6: write down how much you owe visually seeing the amount
Speaker 6: of debt that you owe, what your lending institutions are,
Speaker 6: what your interest rates are. I mean, the government is
Speaker 6: hiking up the interest rate quarterly, it seems. So writing
Speaker 6: down all of that information and having a visual and
Speaker 6: creating a budget that lists your income and your expenses,
Speaker 6: and where you can reduce some expenses, either by cutting
Speaker 6: something off completely or just you know, switching from Planet
Speaker 6: switching to a Planet Fitness membership instead of La Fitness.
Speaker 2: Yes, come to playing with that nine that's the Planet
Speaker 2: that's awesome advice. Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 1: This has been so like I mean, I wish I
Speaker 1: would have when I first met Superman that's my nickname
Speaker 1: for my husband.
Speaker 2: But now now he's on board.
Speaker 1: But in the beginning, oh boy, it was like everybody's
Speaker 1: not a bunch of nisan.
Speaker 2: What he was, he was not impressed.
Speaker 1: But but what did help to your you know, to
Speaker 1: your point on face is that when we started talking
Speaker 1: about the life that we wanted and we wanted to
Speaker 1: buy a home and some other things. So once once
Speaker 1: he saw that, you know, that what we were working
Speaker 1: toward was going to make that happen, especially when we
Speaker 1: started home shopping.
Speaker 2: Then he was like, Okay, I totally get it.
Speaker 1: And now that we have a house, he's so excited,
Speaker 1: and we're closing on a second one for investment purposes.
Speaker 1: And now that's why, yes, that's why when I said.
Speaker 2: What do you want to do for our honeymoon?
Speaker 1: You know, do you want to go on vacation and whatever,
Speaker 1: that's why he was so quick to say no, I'm honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm fine. Because now he's fully on board because he
Speaker 1: can see the fruits of our labor, right that's great.
Speaker 5: That's it.
Speaker 6: And I don't you know, aside from you know, buying
Speaker 6: an investment property cash and receiving all of the rent
Speaker 6: to your pocket, I don't know anything in our case
Speaker 6: that would have put you know, eleven hundred plus dollars
Speaker 6: back in our pockets from paying off our one hundred
Speaker 6: thousand dollars of debt in the last twelve months. So
Speaker 6: when we look at how much was coming out of
Speaker 6: our pockets and going straight to those lending institutions, it
Speaker 6: gives me that much more motivation to be like, hey,
Speaker 6: we can have twenty five hundred dollars of month remaining
Speaker 6: in our pockets if we got rid of all of
Speaker 6: our debt.
Speaker 5: So we're just super excited.
Speaker 3: Thank you all so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: We'll be following your journey. Tell us everyone if you're
Speaker 3: if you're gonna be, you're gonna be sharing your journey
Speaker 3: on Instagram, right of course, awesome whether you're what are
Speaker 3: your Instagram handles so the folks can follow you if
Speaker 3: they want to follow Leo?
Speaker 4: What's yours?
Speaker 5: Mine is Leo, that's l e O J dot L.
Speaker 7: And mine is Faith Underscore Jasmine, which is J a
Speaker 7: S M.
Speaker 4: I N E.
Speaker 2: And the number five.
Speaker 3: You guys are too cute. I wish you both the
Speaker 3: best newlywed gold. I mean, go for a nice dinner
Speaker 3: for for your for your anniversary coming up right, Yes
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 6: I sent Faith the menu and we're going to a
Speaker 6: place that has sixty dollars steaks.
Speaker 5: Faith face, I am not on board with that.
Speaker 7: Thanks, stay Justice one time, Faith, It's one year Justice,
Speaker 7: one time, live it out, Faith, just this one time.
Speaker 2: It's okay, this one time. I give you budget, these
Speaker 2: the permission.
Speaker 1: Wow, that, honestly was such a great interview. I feel
Speaker 1: like that even if you're not married, there's just so
Speaker 1: many great takeaways of of what you can learn from
Speaker 1: from both Faith and Leo As. My biggest takeaway was
Speaker 1: that before you do like the tangible work, to really
Speaker 1: work on the emotional and mental work by just dreaming
Speaker 1: about what.
Speaker 2: Life could be like, and that's what's going to motivate you.
Speaker 2: What about you, Mandy? Would you take away?
Speaker 3: I love that they did pre maoral counseling and they
Speaker 3: did it through their church, which is really smart. Husband
Speaker 3: and I did pre marital counseling too. We found we
Speaker 3: just I mean I think I just googled family therapists
Speaker 3: pre mariital counselors in my city with my zip code
Speaker 3: and just found, you know, a highly rated one, and
Speaker 3: we did that for I think we had maybe four
Speaker 3: or five sessions with our therapists before we got married,
Speaker 3: which was helpful. It helped us just get in the
Speaker 3: right headspace. We didn't have as huge of a financial burden.
Speaker 3: But just like the act of sitting down with an
Speaker 3: objective person and talking about how you are as a
Speaker 3: couple and reminding yourselves that's really about the two of you,
Speaker 3: it's helpful. So I love that they they did that
Speaker 3: as a couple because otherwise it didn't sound like Faith
Speaker 3: was going to be too quick to want to talk
Speaker 3: about her debt. So I wonder if they hadn't done that,
Speaker 3: how they would have. You know, we get that question
Speaker 3: a lot. How do I, how do I, you know,
Speaker 3: get my spouse on board paying off debt? And sometimes
Speaker 3: it's hard for you to do it right. It was
Speaker 3: hard for me to get my husband to tell me
Speaker 3: his credit score or you know, talk to me about
Speaker 3: his finances in the beginning. But once we had like
Speaker 3: an objective third party person, he and I did this
Speaker 3: even before we long before we got engaged, to this
Speaker 3: like couples and finance one hour class that was I
Speaker 3: don't know, like twenty bucks or something, and that was
Speaker 3: a start for us.
Speaker 2: It was a huge breakthrough.
Speaker 3: Because it was someone but that wasn't me, that wasn't
Speaker 3: so close to him to us, you know, asking those
Speaker 3: types of questions and that helped break the ice and
Speaker 3: release set tension.
Speaker 2: Well that's good.
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't do a pre pre marital counseling,
Speaker 1: but that would have been helpful. I guess it wasn't
Speaker 1: like I will say, though we like we you know,
Speaker 1: we were together for a while, but we didn't have
Speaker 1: a huge like as it relates to personal finance, because
Speaker 1: by the time we got married, we'd work through a
Speaker 1: lot of like the financial differences we had fake goodness.
Speaker 2: He didn't have superman, didn't.
Speaker 1: Have any debt that made it super easy. Quite honestly,
Speaker 1: it was just some habits that I thought, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we could do better as it relates to this, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have like you know, there was no credit
Speaker 1: card dead, there was no student loan dead, there was
Speaker 1: no mortgage, there was nothing. It was just like, m
Speaker 1: that's probably not the best way to go about that,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But now we're on the same track.
Speaker 1: So I hope you guys enjoy today's episode. To me,
Speaker 1: it was really inspiring and I hope the biggest thing
Speaker 1: you took away was service and that if you can
Speaker 1: dream it, you can do it.
Speaker 3: If you can dream. Okay, r Kelly. Oh we should
Speaker 3: take back that song though. Can we just take back
Speaker 3: that song without without giving him any kind of royalties?
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I just I mean, it's such a shame because it
Speaker 1: is a great song, but he is the most terrible
Speaker 1: human being on the face of the worst.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well let's end on that note. That's cool. I
Speaker 3: like to bring it back to sexual predators at the
Speaker 3: end of every show.
Speaker 2: Yo.
Speaker 1: If that is that so bright a bush, such a
Speaker 1: lovely time, We're like, huh yeah, let's bring some terribleness.
Speaker 2: Up anyway, all right, mandra until next week.
Speaker 3: Love wait, love you, I love you. I'm so tired.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh you didn't stay back. Oh no, oh,
Speaker 3: my gough, I'm fine.
Speaker 2: Mandy