While your money is limited, to a degree, there are people out there who, out of the sheer kindness of their hearts, are ready and willing to give you more money...all you have to do is sign on the line and promise to pay them back...with just a LITTLE bit of interest tacked on.
Well, early on in my adult life, I took them up on their kind offer. I remember buying my first car when I graduated from High School, and after I signed the papers, my dad said, “Welcome to the world of debt. You’ll never be able to escape!”
That should have been my first warning sign that this stuff should be handled with care! But in my mind, this was just normal. It’s what everyone did. I thought, if you want anything, you have to borrow money for it, or put it on a credit card, and try to pay it back. You base your standard of living by the monthly payments you’re able to afford. And so, that’s what I did. And, that mindset is especially dangerous when you buy into the lie that your quality of life is directly related to your standard of living. That, if you get more or newer or better, then your life is going to improve. So, that’s how we lived.
And all of this got Amber and I into a place where we were both making decent money, we were able to pay our bills...like, we didn’t default on anything, we just weren’t getting ahead. Most of what was coming in was going right back out to pay our bills. We didn’t have much margin. There were even a couple of times we wanted to give to something, but we couldn’t, or we couldn’t give as much as we wanted.
While we weren’t necessarily strapped for cash, our hearts were strapped by cash. I think it’s fair to say that we weren’t making the most of what had been entrusted to us. What we needed were new habits. So, we started making some small changes that would add up to make a big difference in our lives and financial health.
(Click the above video to watch more of Shawn's story!)