"I'd Rather Pay Off My House First So I'm Not Homeless Again"

Brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. >> Between my wife and I, um, we've got approximately 250 or under $250,000 in debt. Um, most of it will resides in our mortgage and her student loans. Is it I'm I'm I had a weird childhood, so I'm kind of really terrified of being homeless again. >> Mhm. >> Is it stupid to pay off the mortgage before the student loans? I know you can't like bankruptcy the student loans and you can sell the house and that kind of stuff, but >> it's not stupid. I I would not categories categorize either idea of paying off the debt as stupid. I think it's smart that you're thinking in those terms of being debtree. Can you tell us uh how much of the 250 is the mortgage and how much of it is the student loans? >> Um they're honestly are both about 108. >> Okay. >> And then we've got um I've got a small personal loan cuz my mower on my business kind of crapped out so I had to spend a bunch of money so I could fix that. >> Got you. >> Um that's about 2900. >> Okay. Um, we're trying to sell the trailer that we were living in, but we've got about 700 left on the personal loan for that. >> Okay. Where what else do you have? >> Like 4,000 on the card. And that's >> what you were living in a mobile home before. >> Uh, yeah. >> Okay. And what what is it up for sale for? >> Um, we're trying We have it up for sale for 40 right now. We haven't really had too much interest. They're talking to uh 40. A lot of the play trailers in the park that we're going for are selling for like 66 60 to 66. >> What do you owe on it? >> Um we only owe 700 more on that. >> $700. >> Um we still have >> Yeah. >> And how long has it been for sale? >> Um two or three months. >> Okay. Have you had nibbles >> in October? So roughly then >> had nibbles. >> Not really. No. I also don't think our realtor is really trying too hard to sell it either. >> I think you need a new real estate agent. I think you need a realistic price. And I think you need to get rid of that dad gum thing yesterday. That cleans up a whole bunch of stuff. Man, even if you took 30 for it. >> Mhm. >> It puts 30,000 towards all this debt, right? >> That's kind of the goal is to get it. >> What What's your household income? Um, my wife's is consistently at about 60. Uh, my business kind of fluctuates. So, I'd say roughly between like 25 uh and 25. >> What kind of work? What kind of business? >> You make $25,000 a year. >> Meet every dollar budgeters Christy and Steve. They used to fight about money. >> I'm the spender. >> I'm definitely the saver. Now that they budget with every dollar, they're on the same page. >> Money is definitely one thing we do not ever fight about. >> Having the budget gave me the permission to spend. >> Knowing that the money is in each category, it just allowed us to work together better. >> Now that's what we call a win-win. >> Now we just have to pick paint colors. We can't help you with that. Every dollar create your free account today. You make $25,000 a year. >> Uh I I do. Well, that's just with the business because it runs um just partially it's lawnmowing. So then during the winter I was doing snow plowing last year um but my truck for the plowing kind of crapped out on me. So now um I just got a job >> um for the winter. I'm looking for another job right now >> also, but that that job's only like 15 an hour. >> Okay. So you're You're making$25 or $30,000 a year and she's making 60. >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. And and your business is not doing that well. >> Um, no. This year was a little rough and weird. My sole employee, his sister, got married out of the country. He told me about it a while in advance, but um, just because the time period, I couldn't take on more work. So that way I didn't destroy what reputation I had by not showing up. But by the time he >> Yeah. So hire somebody and fire him if he's not going to be at work. >> Get somebody get somebody comes to work. >> Well, it was only for that like >> Well, it destroyed your business. >> It was your business is that freaking fragile. Don't defend it. The guy don't come to work and it messes up your whole summer. You got to get somebody to come to work, man. You got to get through you got to get this thing in gear. you your business sucks. You are not making any money. You're starving to death. You're making a dollar an hour and you're working your legs off. So, you got to get that profitability up this coming year or you got to go get like a real job and shut this thing down because you're not making any money. So, let me ask you this. So, can we classify the fact that you were homeless as a child as trauma? Would it be okay to call it that? >> Yes. >> It was traumatic, not just dramatic. >> Yeah. So, so that's what makes you think about losing your home and wanting to pay it off before you pay off all this other stuff, right? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Well, what happened when you were a child has no bearing on what happens to you as an adult unless you repeat exactly the same patterns. And so, Dr. Deloney says, he does a lot of trauma work. John Deloney that's on the air here with us. He says, "When you've had trauma and your body starts thinking you're right back there again and your your shoulders raise up and tense, you get tense across the neck and your heartbeat changes and your your eyes start to dilate because it feels like it felt when you were a kid, but nothing like your when you were a kid was going on, then you need to stop and say, "Facts are your friends." The facts are that you two make close to $100,000 a year in Flint, Michigan. The facts are you only have $108,000 owed on your mortgage. Very reasonable. The facts are you've been struggling at your business and it's not doing great, but you do have a good solid income. You're not going to be homeless. That is an irrational fear. And we don't act on and we don't make plans based on irrational fears. That's not wisdom. So no, you need to list your debts smallest to largest. Pay minimum payments on everything but the little one. Kick your business in the butt and get it running. And if you don't have employees that show up and don't work, get you some more and get this thing going. >> And and let's you know and and let's get the truck fixed and snowplowing. Let's get the the the lawnmower fixed without going into debt to do it. And let's keep this stuff going. Let's start making some money. Start stacking some cash and knocking this stuff out left and right, left and right, left and right. And being proactive and playing offense and playing for the Super Bowl instead of going, "No, I think we're all going to die. We're not going to die." >> Brett, do you have a budget? >> Nope. Then we'll send you one today. Okay. We're going to get you started with every dollar because you're going to need that in order to know how much margin you're putting at the smallest debt, which looks like it's 4,000 on credit cards. That's your first one. But you're not going to do it if you don't know how much to put towards it. And every dollar is going to help you do that. >> What I would do, Brett, is this. When Sharon and I went broke and lost everything and filed bankruptcy and the electricity got cut off and the water got cut off and the house was in foreclosure, it was terrifying. And what I the way we chose to look at that was we will never be here again >> because we are going to analyze how we got here and repeat exactly zero of those steps. Never again. That became our mantra. We wanted t-shirts printed. Never again is American Express going to call my house unless it's a wrong number. >> Right? >> I hate those people. Never again am I doing business with a large bank, one of these super banks. They will slit your throat and watch you bleed out and call it sport. Never again am I going to be beholdened to idiots and buttholes like I was. Never again am I going to be So that's what you do. You look back at your childhood and you go, "Never again. And I'm going to get on a budget and we're going to get out of debt and we're going to work like maniacs, work six jobs, we're going to sell so much stuff the kids think they're next. Never again are we even going to be close to homeless and quit borrowing money. It puts you back in that mode again. Never again." And you know, you can use the trauma, use the terrifying experience as fuel to never be there again. And so, or you can sit and go, we're doomed to repeat this. Now, you're not doomed to repeat it unless you repeat, you know, the same unless you repeat the same habits that put your parents there. That's right. Which, by the way, was borrowing a bunch of dad gum money was one of the things they did. >> Well, that's what I was going to say. The reason he's feeling that way, it the the the reason those alarm bells are going off is cuz he is he's doing things that he knows he shouldn't be doing and he's starting to feel the effect of it. So, he needs to listen to what his body is telling him, which is, "Dude, you're running you're about to run off a cliff." >> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's a warning sign. >> Yeah. Stop it. Never again. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your