Couple Pays Off $125K Debt While Living in a Tiny House!

This couple paid off $125,000 of debt in 24 just months while living in a tiny house! Just a couple of years into their marriage, Marek & Kothney-Issa had found themselves in debt like a lot of young people who are just starting out. They had student loans, car loans, credit card debt, the cost of their tiny house, and more. To achieve their debt-free goal, they used Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball method, along with a lot of discipline and multiple side jobs.

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hey everyone in this video we're meeting a couple who paid off a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars of debt in just 24 months while living in a tiny house just a couple of years into their marriage Marek and coat Natha had found themselves in debt like a lot of young people who are just starting out they had student loans car loans credit card debt the cost of their tiny house and more to achieve their debt-free goal they used Dave Ramsey's debt snowball method along with a lot of discipline and multiple side jobs we're really excited to share their story with you so let's go meet up with them so we actually met in middle school we pretty much grew up together got out of school got married pretty much right after graduation and just celebrated five years I started working as a resident director at the school that I graduated from and he was working as a retail manager right off the bat like we were making a lot more money than we ever made in our lives and I remember actually talking to my hairstylist at the time and she was telling me about Dave Ramsey and I was like well that sounds like a great idea we could really get out of it quick he was like no we're young we gotta live it up and so that's what we did one ear and out the other yep it was ridiculous we were traveling like so much back then it was a lot of fun am I gonna say it was but we definitely could have made subtraction we just kind of just we're going through life you know charge/discharge that and didn't think much of it you know our spending was pretty much just wide open no real thought process to it no intentionality to anything that we were doing at the time I specifically remember like I would say things like man I can walk into a store sign my name on a piece of paper and walk out with what I want yep and I literally felt a sense of like power and control like I thought of that really meant something and it was just like I'm signing up for payments yeah I signed up for dead [Music] so when we first graduated from college I had about 32,000 not about I had precisely $32,000 in debt he only had about one you $12,000 yeah I had about 12,000 of student loans coming out of school and then his car which was about $24,000 bought it brand-new mm-hmm and then the depreciation lesson the hard way yeah and then several years later we bought my car brand-new for about $18,000 learned all about depreciation a second time the hard way we started the debt free journey in May of 2017 seventeen the number that I remember the most is one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars was the peak of our debt inclusive of the tiny oh yes which was fifty five thousand so I think the thing that really made us reevaluate our financial situation and decide to start a paying off debt was we actually received a settlement of around ten thousand dollars and I just really like literally got on Google I started doing research about you know what to do with a large lump sum came across Dave Ramsey and his financial principles and his YouTube channel and really just really just caught my eye like how direct he was and Frankie was with people and a lot of the things he would say it was like wow I literally do the same thing where I literally think that way and it's killing us financially and so I came home one day and I was super excited about this new guy Dave Ramsey that I had found and then I'm like tell me more come in here I only talked to him about it that first year and then I was like okay well if you don't think we should be saving that I guess let's just blow it off so she was already familiar with the plan and the process and we're just kind of waiting for me to get on board so that really helped you know that we both were on the same page because it's such a difficult process so the Dave Ramsey plan is basically what's called the debt snowball where you basically organize your debt in order of smallest debt to largest debt and you attack it with everything you got you know you throw every extra pin you can find at that smallest debt until it's completely wiped out and then you roll everything you were paying on that bit plus all the extra money you can come up with and you start attacking the second one and then you continue and continue and as you build momentum it really like motivates you to continue is there behavioral focus there's not so much as the math and what has the highest interest rate but instead it's wow I'm making progress with this I'm seeing positive results that psychologically motivates you to keep pushing oh my gosh this is really coming down fast what does he always say if it were about the math you'd already be out of it right so you wouldn't be in it in the first year right but before we did that we had to actually sit down and um create a budget it was a pretty expensive this is our stack of budget there are 24 in here but literally we wrote everything down every account we started with 12 accounts that we had to pay off it was a lot of work and then also our grocery budget it was pretty hectic because we were buying a lot of stuff that's already pre-made you know that stuff is a lot more expensive than buying stuff when you have to cook yourself after we saw started seeing like our account alone and we started having like only about four or five accounts left I'm sure he did too but I started to get really really motivated and I was just like okay how can we pick up extra jobs how can we like do more where can we get more money from so that we can start getting this debt knocked off even faster and I think probably the last eight nine months we picked up extra work I am a teacher I was teaching I was coaching I was also working at a restaurant I in and in the summer I picked up a light gardening job it was a lot of work so I had my full-time job and then at one point I was working three different jobs at a warehouse UPS Pizza Hut Domino's PF Changs so those five were five different places I worked during the two-year period but at any given time it was never more than three yeah a lot of people think that you know you have to have some massive income in order to get out of debt which ultimately I mean we did create a massive tank I working all those jobs but it's not like we had that you know the storm within our full-time job I had the time I was making like mid 30s and a teacher she was making like high but I mean we were both still in in the thirty thousand dollar range so no doctors and lawyers here yeah we just really picked it up and really got after with the side jobs with the pizza delivery and the restaurants and all anything we could pick up in order for us to cut cost it really just took a lot of discipline we decided listen this is our goal we want to be out of it so we need to stop all the spending once we put it on paper we've just decided we're gonna do this we kept each other accountable it did really feel like a punishment at first it's like damn we can't be wrapping it in leather it's our friend saw very little of us during this time but we just always kept the insight now one thing I'll say about the plan is like the structure is solid the intensity is up to the person that's working the plan so you can follow the plan and put your intensity on a five instead of a ten and it's gonna take you longer but it works and you'll still continue progressing and making progress so it took us exactly 24 months to pay off all our debt from start to finish I remember when we first started the debt free plan we were like okay we're gonna deal with everything except for our two-bedroom loft yeah downtown because it is just too nice yeah the more we started getting after the debt it was just like we've really had to re-examine that and at the time you know we were both kind of making progress in our careers and we're just like you know how do we keep Geographic flexibility while also putting our money towards ownership like she talked about while also having something that you know has a future resale value or rental value and we couldn't think of anything else you know but the tiny house and so the tiny house didn't necessarily help us get out of debt but it was more of like a forward thinking thing for like how we can stay out of it so like now we're out you know this allows us a lot more opportunity to save for a big down payment on a traditional house if we decide to go that route so it was more about like how do we remain that free once we get out with the tiny house and we have had that flexibility that we were looking for as well you know we've already lived in Florida now we're in Texas where the time could be having another move here soon you've been out a bit now for probably like five or six months so yeah our next step is three to six months emerges the funds set aside in savings and then we're going to really start working on our down payment for a traditional house if that's what we decide to if not yeah that's what we decided to do and if not we can repurpose those funds as far as making sure that our debt does a creep back on us we're still budgeting it's not on paper anymore but we sit down we say okay what it's not disturbing and a half here in a month how are we gonna be able to fit them into our budget what is it that we are like accomplishing this this month with our finances and things like that would you this month we are right spot on with our allowance budget so yeah we actually got rid of they didn't mention this before but we actually got rid of all of our credit cards shredded them all so we literally only carry debit cards in cash so that's one way that kind of helps them not creep back up but once you do something like that and pay that all off it's not even a temptation at all as though you don't you don't really turn yeah if you want to follow Maori can code nieces tiny-house and financial freedom journey you can find them on YouTube at living tiny with the bushes and on Instagram at tiny house lifestyle if you liked this video please share it thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next video