Honestly, I never had a desire to become a personal finance expert. I mean, has anyone ever said as a child that they were going to grow up and become a personal finance expert?
My passion for personal finance came after I fell flat on my face when it comes to managing money.
In 2008, my wife and I were married and we both had great jobs. I was a full-time firefighter and my wife Andrea was actually a television news anchor in Phoenix, Arizona. Together we both had a really great income and life seemed pretty simple.
Since we made good money we figured we would spend good money too.
After three years of buying new cars, taking lavish vacations, wearing name-brand everything, racking up debt on credit cards and making minimum payments on the student loan — we hit rock bottom.
On February 23rd, 2011 we went completely broke. We had been living paycheck to paycheck, we didn't have any cash set aside, we had maxed out credit cards and we were facing $52,000 in consumer debt alone.
The good news about hitting rock bottom is the only place you have to go is up. We created a budget and stuck to it, cut our lifestyle way back, and paid off $52,000 in 7 months. And when you pay off that amount of debt in such a short amount of time — people notice.