Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk! I'm Bekkah! And I'm Ruthie! And today we
are going to be interviewing Bekkah
and her husband Joel about their journey
of how to
pay off student debt. Which fits into our
series on paying off student loans! So thank you
so much for being us
being here with us today, Joel!
Bekkah: Mostly Joel! I'm here all the time.
Joel: Good to be here! 
Ruthie: Good! I'm glad! So what is it that you guys did?
Bekkah: We paid off $120,000
in student debt. 
Ruthie: Dun dun duuuuhhh!! In how long?
Bekkah: What was it? The first
couple years
we paid off $20,000 and then we
started getting really serious about it
and we decided to set a goal. You should
tell them about that
Joel: Yeah so our goal was basically to pay
off the remainder of our student loans
in about a 14 month period of time.
Bekkah: 20 months. 
Joel: Oh, I'm sorry. 20 month
period of time.
Bekkah: It would have given me a heart attack if it was 14! It was 20!
Ruthie: So you paid off $100,000 in
20 months! I just a quick, little
tallying in my head. Awesome!
Wow! How did you do that? Or first, why did you do that?
Bekkah: Why we did it was because we had made a
commitment to one another that we
weren't going to have kids
until we paid off our student loans.
Then when we started looking at our
trajectory for when that was going to be
I was like I'm getting old! And I don't know if I'm going to like have
all the energy to have
children by the time we pay off our
student loans so we should probably get
busy on doing this!
That was the decision we made and we
actually
started reading that Dave Ramsey book.
Ruthie: "Total Money Makeover".
Bekkah: Yeah. It was a good one and we
decided because he in the book he
was like, "You should set a goal for like
20 to 24 months." I was like,
"Do you think we can do it in 20 months? We should do it!"
Then we calculated it out and we
were like, "That's like more
money than we make in a month, every
month
to pay towards student debt!" We're like, "I
don't think we can do that! But we're
going to do it anyway!" 
Ruthie: Okay so! How did you do that?
Bekkah: We have a whole list.
The first one was really hard for me. We needed to get out of "I need this just
in case."
Joel: Yeah, that was a really, really
difficult one to get through .A lot of what we had to do was
basically decide that we really
only need this amount of money and
for us it was around a thousand dollars.
For Bekkah that was really hard. It was really hard for her
because she wanted the security of
having more money in the bank account.
In order to really pay down your
student loans
quickly you need to be willing to
take that sacrifice and
pay it down as quickly as possible. 
Bekkah: I was literally like,
"Okay, but I did the
calculations and this is how much we
need to keep." And he's like, "I did the calculations too and you're
wrong." I'm like, "Dang it!" 
Ruthie: But Joel's a lot more tactful than
that. He probably
mapped it out and showed you. 
Bekkah: Yeah, he's very
gracious and
also like a spoon to the heart. Oh my
word. Painful. 
Joel: Plus what I found through all
this is she had
secret stashes of money and other bank
accounts. She's just like, "Oh, yeah. I've got this
bank account too. There's eight hundred dollars in this
one. I've got a Paypal account with $1,200
in it." And all this stuff and it's like,
"Yeah see we're totally fine for
you know this month until the next month.
Bekkah: Okay but for the record, it wasn't the first time he knew about
these bank accounts!
Ruthie: Surprise!
Bekkah: I do not recommend doing that to your spouse.
Ruthie: Keeping secrets bank accounts? 
Bekkah: Yeah he knew about
them. He had access to them. He just never
looked at them. 
Ruthie: I think one thing that you had
said to me was something that I do too! Not so much
anymore now that I've started
my aggressive loan payoff but
I'll put 20 bucks in a bag
and then if I find that bag later down
the road I'm like, "Oh! Wow! 20 bucks!
Good job thinking ahead! I saved
that for myself!"
So it was funny hearing you be like, "Oh, I
found 20 bucks in this bag I had!
And I'm putting it towards my student
loan. I cleaned out the
change container in my room
or my car
and I put it towards my student loans." 
Bekkah: It was literally like I had to strangle
something inside me every time. It was hard. It was hard work.
The next thing was
we utilized coupons.
I seriously like mean this
wholeheartedly.
I tried the crazy coupon lady thing and
we'll talk about that sometime but like
this was utilizing the newspaper ads
and knowing what is on sale? What
are we going to make for the week? And we meal planned every week. I never used
to do this until I met Joel's mom
and then Joel was like, "You need to stop
buying copious amounts of food. We don't need all of this." I am way less
stressed after I do that! Because
then it's on the menu board and I know
exactly what we're having for the entire
week
and we're not wasting food or spending
excess money on it.
Every week I sit down and I
put together the meal plan of what we're
having. From there I know what to get
exactly at the grocery store. Also productivity tip: if you
organize
your list of groceries by
produce, dairy, frozen, and dry goods
it seriously will save you so much time
at the grocery store
looking back through your list.
Ruthie: That blows my mind. Bekkah can literally tell you what
aisle something is in in Walmart. I'll call her
and ask, "Where is this?" And she just knows. I will wander around Walmart for hours.
I do Walmart pickup now. I don't even go into the store very much anymore but
I just think that that is insane that
you can do that! So good work! Productivity hack! 
Bekkah: No, seriously! It's
such a time saver
to do that! I still go into the grocery
store because I
love shopping and it's one of my only
experiences to do that when you're on a
budget.
Another thing we did was that - also we love food. So just keep this in
mind that
mentally for me deciding that we can't
have lots of food was like a crazy thing. But what I started doing is every
time I would think, "Oh! I really
want to go to this restaurant!"
I would go, look at their menu, see it online,  and then
Google the names of the dishes. Then we would figure out how to make them ourselves.
Then I was getting exactly what I
wanted!
Which I also love cooking so it wasn't
really that big of a deal for me.
If  you don't like cooking you're
going to struggle.
You're going to really struggle. I also
learned that if you're picky eater
you're also going to struggle because
poverty
is not a friend of a picky eater. I say that because I have worked
with
a lot of kids and that is truth.
Be okay with eating things that are
different
not necessarily nasty but try to be
healthy in the food that you eat because
it's going to make you feel better,
you're going to have a lot more energy,
and then
you're going to pay off your student
debt faster. I'm serious. Completely
serious.
Okay so a cookbook I really like is "Good,
and Cheap."
You should totally check it out. I
believe the government manufactured
copious amounts of them. You can probably check it out at your local library or
you could probably go to your local food
shelf and ask them for a copy.
It's that available! The next thing that I would recommend
doing
is identify what makes you overwhelmed.
What is that
claustrophobic feeling that kicks in?
You should talk about that. Have an accountability partner. Joel
is my accountability partner, clearly. Knowing what is going to
make you feel overwhelmed
you need to talk about why. Because a lot
of the spending decisions that you make
or
choosing to save money is all wrapped up
in psychology.
Why you do what you do and where are the
moments that you feel like you're
trapped. A lot of times when you're on a
budget, when you think, "Oh, but I can't
spend money on this!" It
can be stressful! It's good to know
ways
to be creative with your budget in the
areas that you can spend if you save
in other places. But you have to have a
budget from the beginning.
Ruthie: What things made you feel claustrophobic, Joel, and then we'll go to Bekkah next.
Joel: I think that was the biggest aspect of getting over
the hump of being able to pay off our
student loans, the
the mindset of. "Okay, we're
committing to this and we're doing this."
But also knowing that there are creative ways that you can
use and utilize to at least feel like you're not being
constrained
to the budget that you have set out
and
that you can't spend money on anything.
Because that's really not the case. What I think the biggest
things for me especially were that
I started looking at what it
looks like to continue to replace things in our house or fix up
the cars
and do all that myself instead of having
to hire someone to do that. When you have work that needs
to be done on your car
that's sort of something that you have
to save aside
as an emergency fund. But you can also
utilize that money for being able to
fix it yourself. You save
quite a bit of money doing that. I think one of the ways that I
felt like I was not as much
in a box was the ability to be able to
do things myself and
be able to spend money on tools to do
those different things.
We knew that we were saving.
Every time I did a project we'd maybe
save like
five hundred dollars on fixing the car
ourselves, with maybe $100
of that $500 for whatever tools I needed to do that
activity I could go out and purchase those
tools. That was kind of a fun
opportunity for me to be able to
purchase things.
Bekkah: He loves his tools!
Joel: It's like, you know, you don't have to feel like
you're in a box. You really don't. I think what I would encourage
you to do is to
go through all those things that
are causing you
to have apprehensions about
paying off student loans and really
focusing on that and write them down.
Write every single one of them down and
start to
talk about it with your accountability
partner with your spouse
and start to become creative with "how can I make way for these things?"
Because that's a big part of it! There are really a lot of ways that you
can be creative
in being able to allow yourself to do
those things even within
paying off your student loans.
Bekkah: Oh my goodness! I'm just going to say Joel's way better at
that than I am in terms of
listening and finding creative ways, but
the communication is important. Joel would be like, "Okay, what are you
overwhelmed about?" And I'd be like, "Oh, well, I'm so upset because of blah blah blah blah," And then I
would just like make up something. I mean I
seriously was upset about something! But then he would be like, "Okay,
how can we help you
feel like you can accomplish whatever it
is?" Then we would have to strategize the
solution. It would push me from
like pity party to
actually like creative solution mode. Then we would come up with something
and it would be like, "Oh, okay, I can do this
differently here."
I mean that happens so many times. Seriously, we still do this even
though we've paid off for student loans.
I'm totally somebody that's like, "We
could just hire somebody to do this.
I do not want to do this myself. We
should just take the car in." And Joel's
like, "No, I'm going to fix it. I'm going to fix it.
I'm going to research it and find out
how and then I'm going to fix it."
Then he does! And I'm like, "Wow! Yeah! You're right! We
just saved like $2,000! Thanks for doing that!" And then when I'm
like, "Can I buy this shirt
at the at the store." And he's like, "Yeah,
you can! Do you know why? Because I saved you $2,000!"
He's a very gracious man because
he
makes room for my budget. Within that
you have to do that for yourself.
Especially, if you're by yourself. Think
about, "Okay,
I'm going to do this here. I'm going to
make the choice to cook my own dinner
because
it's going to give me room in my budget to
do this other thing. Go to a movie with my friend or whatever."
But you have to
you have to give yourself that! You have
to sweat a little
to have room in your budget to do those
fun things because otherwise
you're not going to have any fun and
then you're going to be upset.
Ruthie: When we were talking about
this earlier one thing that I
really admired about you guys is that
whenever there's something that
comes up, I rarely hear you guy or
heard you guys say the words,
"We can't afford that. We just can't do
that." It was,
"Oh, that's not in the budget right now. We
could put that in the budget. We can plan
for that!" You were just very strategic
about the things that you prioritized
and the things that you really set money
aside to do. From the outside looking
in it wasn't like, "Oh, they're just like
never doing anything. They're eating
like rice and beans constantly." You
guys ate well because you prioritize
that. That was something that was
important to you and you just were very
strategic and
intelligent about how you went about
planning for those things. Actually, giving yourself the ability to
still do things that you loved
but just planning for it and
implementing that in your budget to
prepare for it.
Bekkah: When we talk about really
liking food -
I mean, okay, we love food!
Ruthie: Bekkah just made
a Facebook group chat or group
page?  What am I trying to say?
Bekkah: Facebook group.
Ruthie: Facebook group! Thank you very much, about like being foodies and stuff
like that and there's different things
on there that she's been posting.
Bekkah: Because I love food! But here's the
thing!
I believe wholeheartedly in the ads
because we could eat
steak like nice steak once in a while
but the
way we did it is we waited for the ad
because sometimes it's $5.95 a pound.
That's like two dollars more than
hamburger sometimes! Especially with this
meat thing! I don't know what's up with this meat crisis. Everyone only
knows how to make hamburgers so then
suddenly like that's really expensive
but all the other cuts are really cheap. Knowing how to cook things is
important but utilizing the library for
cookbooks! Oh my goodness! That was like
my best friend because I never had to
buy cookbooks
and it was easier for me than looking
everything up online and risking
spilling something on my computer.
Obviously we're talking a lot
about these simple things
and and I think a lot of people are
probably like, "Well, get to the meat!
What did you actually do to pay after
student loans?" But it's actually
all of the small choices! Every small
choice. And that's not to be overwhelming
but
it's a psychological shift that you have
to make
about what you're doing. We're
talking about this so much on the
psychology aspect because that is
literally the number one reason why
people cannot
stay in a budget and pay off debt.
Ruthie: Because they can't give themselves to permission to just say "no".
Bekkah: The last thing we wanted to
cover before we're going to move into
our gawk, but don't worry we have
a couple more episodes on this at least
one more so stick around because there's
a lot of stuff that we learned in a
20-month period! Have a goal!
Make sure you have a timeline goal that
you're sticking to. Even if it's
astronomically like there's no way. You
guys, we did this and I was like, "There's
no way we're going to do this! But you know what?
We are going to trust the Lord to do it
with us."
I'll tell you, somehow in the last
month we were able to pay off like
$19,000! I have no idea how we did that!
But it all came together and it was like, "Whoa. We did it!
In the timeline that we thought we were
going to!" Which I
seriously to this day I don't know how
it. Anyways!
Take every opportunity to make money. We did stuff that was ridiculous. We went
out
and we shoveled off Joel's grandpa's
roof
and he paid us to do it!
I remember I literally sealed
somebody's driveway with a tar coat
once. 
Ruthie: And sold like everything in their
house
Bekkah: Oh yeah we went through we
went through our stuff
and we said, "Okay, this whole
mentality of 'I need this just in case'
totally applies to me in like some
hoarding things." So
I learned how to sell things on the
internet and on Facebook Marketplace
lots of different things! I
would not recommend garage sales. They
are way not profitable.
Ruthie: And a lot of work. 
Bekkah: Oh my word. Yeah do not
do that. The return on investment you
could work at Hardee's for the weekend
and make more money than at a garage sale. Okay we're going to get into
our gawk portion. Today Ruthie's gonna tell us a
story because
she was telling me a little bit about
beforehand and i have not heard this one
yet so
it's gonna be new for everybody um so
our the sister that's between
becca and i is rachel um and she
also known as Rophel the waffle or just
Roph we call it Roph like raphael or
like you know from teenage mutant ninja
turtles
anyways so we call her Roph and
um she is an animal person. I am a
holistically not
an animal person. I can tolerate them
they're fine i just they're not my
favorite thing. Anyway i feel like i should expand more
on that i i appreciate a good animal but
from a distance
um she's like wow look at that stay over
there yeah
yeah um so but rachel had trained
this outside cat that we had that
whenever she would go out
into the garage to like give it its food
or whatever she would pat
her back and then bend over and it would
jump onto her back
and i was not privy to this knowledge
and then we were about to leave for to
go somewhere
and i was in the garage and my mom would
ask me to help her back up because
there's a bunch of stuff on the side so
i was backing up
and i was like motioning with my hands
like
hey back this way and then i started
being a dork and was like dante
you know like just waving my arms like
crazy but still doing that motioning
hand motion and the cat was like you
want me to jump on your back
and then but i wasn't bending and so
then
he launched himself up at my face
and grabbed onto my shirt and then
leaned
up with his paw and clawed my face
like all five of his little claws stuck
in my cheek
and i'm like spinning trying to get him
off of me and he's hanging on by my
freaking
and then he finally like flew off and i
was like oh my word like this is why i
don't like
animals and then what happened is i went
to this event that we were going to
and there were the i was i don't know
how old it was but i had these five
pock marks on my cheek and little boys
made fun of me
and so yeah there's my traumatic
cat story thank you very much for
joining us
i could cringe inside well i i thought
it was funny i hope that nobody is
scarred by hearing that
well thank you joel for joining us this
week and we will
have another interview with you uh
coming out soon
um because seriously this is not enough
time to talk about 20 000
what was it yeah 120 000 is due to death
yeah
all right see you next week
you
