My background is in music. I was a professional vocalist for 15 years! I’ve performed in 92 countries alongside my husband, who’s also a musician, which sounds pretty cool until you add in the fact that we had almost half a million dollars of debt. $460,052 to be exact. Yikes.

Sam and I got married in 2007, one week after college graduation. We had $280K just in student loans! We also had credit cards, two cars we couldn’t afford, and a small townhome to round it out. This was a big problem (which we were blissfully ignorant about).

But in 2008, we started listening to The Ramsey Show and learned all about the Baby Steps and what we needed to do to become debt-free. It took us a while to shake our old habits, but once we truly got fired up, we did whatever we could to earn more money—from teaching voice lessons, to designing websites, to hosting jet ski tours, to working at a vinyl tint and lettering garage. We even sacrificed by getting roommates (10/10 would not recommend doing this as a married couple).

(And here’s a playlist we listened to that helped motivate us on our debt-free journey.)

But I was determined that we weren’t going to sacrifice when it came to food.  See, when I was a kid, no matter what hard times we faced, my mom always cooked an amazing meal. We almost always ate together as a family, and for me, that was peace. I remembered what that meant to me and decided I could do the same, so I started couponing and ad matching and buying whatever was on sale to make the most delicious meals I could. That was our reward for a day well done. This eventually led me to share my recipes online and start building a community with other people who were also trying to live the debt-free lifestyle.

The more we worked, the more God gave us opportunities to work.  And then one day in 2015, He gave us an idea for a business we started without using debt, and it grew like crazy. (It was a good thing too, because our car was literally falling apart.)

In 2017, our business had a great year, and we were able to pay off the last of our debt: a 91K student loan. Then, Sam and I were able to go on The Ramsey Show and do our debt-free scream!