Debt Free Journey Summer 2020 Update

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Welcome to our Summer (June/July/August) 2020 debt free journey update!

Don’t forget to check out our debt free journey on YouTube as well.  I’d love to see you over there!

We are so crazy busy, but I wanted to finally get a debt-free journey update up for you guys.

Last time I made a video was at the end of May. I did our May debt-free journey update. Then it has just been craziness ever since.

New to our journey? Start here!

I’m really excited to bring you our summer debt-free journey update today.

At first, not a lot happened because we were in pause mode, emergency pause the debt snowball mode, because of COVID.

Read: How to handle your finances during an emergency when you’re deeply in debt

It has taken quite a few months for our business, our medical practice, to get back going.

Actually, this month has been one of our busiest months in a long time, maybe since December, because, in the medical world, things slow down anyways at the first of the year because deductibles start over.

People rush to the doctor at the end of the year. Then they slow down in the beginning when their deductibles start back over. So we were slow anyways. Then it was Corona. Then it was not good.

There were a lot of things in the CARES Act healthcare stimuluses — stimuli? — and all kinds of other stuff.

One thing that the whole Corona thing forced us to do was cut our expenseseven more.

I already thought we had done an amazing job at cutting our expenses. But, when COVID hit, we really had no choice but to get even more deep in our expense cutting.

We cut expenses both at home and at the office, and honestly, our finances at the office are better than they’ve been in a really long time. We have a full month ahead to pay all the bills and everything.

I’ve gotten in a really good rhythm of looking at our budget and paying bills at home and in the office on the 10^th and the 25^th of the month. Those are my days now.

I learned that budgeting method from the book Profit First.

I thought it was a really good idea to have two days where you really sit down and focus on your budget.

It’s just gotten me extremely organized.

Sometimes you just have to look for the silver lining. There have been some blessings, business and finance-wise, in this whole COVID thing.

I know a lot of people are struggling. It took our toll, but we’ve found ways to kind of fight through and regroup and really cut our expenses more. We are doing okay.

We had a huge milestone and finally broke $100,000 of debt paid off.

It actually ended up being $106,000 of debt paid off in about a year.

We made that first debt snowball payment on June 22^ndof 2019.

In that past year, we paid off $106,000 of debt. How are we doing, then? You know if you’ve been following that we started out with a little over $600,000. So that puts us on about five more years, if we stay at this pace.

Of course, COVID slowed us down a lot.

We’ve had some exciting things that have helped our income increase. I am optimistic that we will do $200,000 in the next coming year. I’m very, very optimistic about it.

That sounds like a crazy amount, but, as our practice gets busier and our expenses stay low, I think we can really do it. I’m excited to share that as we go along.

I’ve told you guys before that my husband covers call for another doctor once a month. A couple months ago, the doctor needed more help at the office. So he asked my husband if he could cover twice a week in office and also two call weekends a month.

It’s allowing us to live on that income and also chunk some cash on student loans and not even have to bring an income home from the office right now, which is really helpful because, since I’m not paying us from our office funds at the current moment, I’ve been able to catch us up and, like I was saying at the first of the video, get us a full month ahead on our business finances. That has been such a stress reliever.

Now I’m going to be running two separate debt snowballs.

So, instead of paying us, I’m just going to pay off debt at the office with any surplus each month. Then, at home, we’ll continue to work on our student loans with the income he’s bringing home and any other side hustle income that we bring home.

Once the office debt is paid off, then we’ll be able to bring home more money and then throw it on our home debt.

I know it’s all our debt, but this is really working for my brain really well, running the two separate snowballs.

An interesting fact is that — and I shared this, I think, in our May debt-free journey video— is that the Small Business Administration is still making our minimum payments on our small business loans for the office. So I’m just letting them do that.

There’s no reason in me trying to pay that off because they’re making those minimum payments right now. That is supposed to end, I believe, next month. Then, we would restart paying off debt there.

I know there’s talks of extending the CARES Act. I don’t know what that would look like. I have no idea. I’m just putting money on debt wherever I can right now and going with the flow and letting things figure themselves out.

During the biggest part of the whole shut down, I know I shared with you guys that we’ve been working at Amazon.

My husband had been DoorDash and has continued doing DoorDash.

He likes doing it, and he has this whole method now where he’s saving up. He’s making like 3 or $400 a week doing DoorDash and Uber Eats. He’s saving that money for fun or miscellaneous expenses. That way our entire normal paychecks, are going on debt and then our bills, like rent, electricity, and all that stuff.

Want a flexible side hustle? Sign up to be a DoorDash Driver here!

I’ve shared with you guys before that we do $100 a month in fun money. He’s using the DoorDash and Uber Eats to fund our fun money envelopes and this month’s school supplies and school clothes shopping. He used all that money to fund those envelopes. That’s been really big because our entire surplus, after our standard bills are paid, is going to debt now.

Read: How to use Cash Envelopes

This month, we’re probably going to put about 5 or $6,000 on student loans alone, which is really exciting.

When we were doing the Amazon and we had the debt snowball paused and all that stuff, we actually saved up $30,000 over the course of the Corona mess, shut down.

So we took about half of that and paid off a personal credit card and another $5,000 personal loan. It was about $15,000 altogether.

We took the rest of it to put towards our new office equipment that we need for our new office. It was really awesome to be able to cash flow expenses and pay off a huge amount of debt.

We have not moved into our new office yet. I know I have been talking about that forever. We were actually supposed to move in this week, today, August 14^th.

But you know how it goes with a new build. It wasn’t ready.

So we’re looking at moving in the beginning of September, which is totally fine. I’m just so ready for that to be done because it’s been such an ongoing drama, process and, also, expenses come up with moving and everything.

I’m just ready to be in our new office, start really growing our business. I feel like we’re really going to take off as we head into the end of the year.

I am a firm believer that, if you get organized, get your budget going, cut your expenses, then you’ll notice, all the sudden, you’re doing the right things, you’re organized. Then you’ll have the energy and the confidence to start growing your businesses or your income or asking for a raise, that kind of stuff, instead of trying to out earn your debt.

That’s so what we did when we started. We’re like, “We need to make more money. That’s the only way we’ll ever pay off debt.”

That’s a great way, obviously. But I do not think that all of these amazing opportunities and everything would happen for us if we hadn’t been intentional first and taking control of our finances and started working together and really fighting for financial independence and financial freedom.

So, if you haven’t started your budget, get on it. You can do it. I know it.

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