Half a Million Dollars in Debt Y’aLL!
I’M SHANNON! I’M A WIFE, MOM OF THREE, DOCTOR, AND BLOGGER!
But, I’m definitely not superwoman.
I eat too much ice cream, live on dry shampoo, and feed my kids way more McDonald’s than is truly neccessary. I’m a ball of stress, and a hot mess express, but I’m trying to improve every day with a little help from coffee and a WHOLE lot of Jesus.
My number one goal right now is to knock off the mountain of student loan debt I’ve been carrying with me for basically ALL of my adult life! Argh.
It’s so crazy to think about. I never stopped to consider the consequences of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to school.
It seems completely re-donk now. Who in their right mind let’s an 18 year old borrow that much money?
“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.
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.
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!
You can snag my free budget planner, and join my community of 145K+ subscribers by clicking the button below.
I won’t spam you, but I will offer helpful tips for frugal living, getting out of debt, and sharing every step of our debt free journey!