Half a Million Dollars in Debt Y’aLL!

Family-Pic-About-Me

I’M SHANNON! 

Saving money and living on a budget doesn't have to be hard! In fact, it can even be fun! Let me teach you how to be frugal and reach all your family financial goals by making simple changes to your life and money.

In four years we managed to knock out $579,000 of debt!

It’s so crazy to think that we had so much!  I never stopped to consider the consequences of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to school.

“Everyone has student loans”.  “Doctors are supposed to have debt”.  “I’m going to make a lot of money and pay it off fast, so who cares?!”

These are the things I told myself to rationalize going in to that much debt.

Cairns-Family-Doctors

MY HUSBAND AND I ARE BOTH DOCTORS. WE ARE PODIATRISTS…NOT PLASTIC SURGEONS.

We aren’t expecting to make millions of dollars or anything like that, but we would like to be able to comfortably provide for our 3 children.

We actually live pretty frugally.

We love a good coupon.  We meal plan to keep our grocery budget under $100 each week, and we alwayswait for a killer sale before purchasing fun things like clothing or electronics.

Why then, at the start of 2018, did it feel like we could barely keep with our bills?  We were living off of every drop of savings we had to keep our practice and family afloat.

Even more frightening, I never bothered ONCE to add up all of the debt until January of 2018.

Shannon-Cairns-Pregnant Shannon-Cairns-Baby

I WAS LIVING IN COMPLETE DENIAL AND FEAR.

I just couldn’t do it anymore.

In March of 2018, I gave birth to our third child.  A super healthy, adorable baby boy.

To save costs on childcare, I got to live my ULTIMATE dream and stay home with all three kids for 6 months.  Sadly, I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so bogged down by financial stress.

My money woes mixed with all those post baby hormones, turned into full blown post partum depression.

I felt like I couldn’t function.  I just wanted to give up.

How could I take care of my children and my patients, if I couldn’t even take care of myself?

I figured I had two options.  I could keep going down my path of self destruction, or use my story to inspire others who might be facing the same amount of debt, and feelings of complete hopelessness.

I decided to turn my mom blog, into a personal finance blog so others could follow along on our journey to pay off over HALF a MILLION dollars in student loan and practice start up debt.

I hope you enjoy following along, and maybe even find some inspiration along the way.

I’M HAPPY YOU FOUND ME! LET’S BLOG OUR WAY TO DEBT FREE!

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