033 Penny Pinchin’ Mom Shares Everyday Money Advice

On todays show, Tracie, The Penny Pinchin’ Mom, shares financial advice for real life. She talks about what she and her husband did to pay off A TON of debt in a very short period of time, while she was a stay at home mom.  Her down to earth advice and easy process turn ‘budgeting’ from a dirty word to something that sounds doable and fun. You can find out more about Tracie at her website here: http://www.pennypinchinmom.com/ Save Save Save Transcript: Welcome to The Art of Living big. My name is Betsy Pake entrepreneur, author and personal success coach. This is the show that brings you stories and small ideas to help you live a big life. I hope this once a week podcast will inspire you, motivate you and encourage you to think differently about what could be possible for your life. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let’s go live big. All right, I have with me today, Tracy phobes. Hey, Tracy. Hi there. How are ya? I am Awesome. Thanks for coming on the show today. Well, thanks for having me. So tell everybody about you. And I’m excited to get into this topic and start breaking it down. So tell everybody about you and what you do. Okay. Again, my name is Tracy fobes. And about, oh, gosh, nine years ago, my husband and I realized that we were tired of living paycheck to paycheck, the debt was taking over our lives. And to be blunt, it just sucked. And so we both sat down and kind of put our noses to the grindstone and decided, you know what, we are going to get out of debt. We are going to do this. And so through a lot of hard work, dedication, and, you know, the small victories along the way we actually did it. And it took us about 27 months, but we paid off $37,000 in debt on just his it was just his income. I was a stay at home mom. Okay, yeah. So during that process, what ended up happening was, you know, okay, you’re trying to pay off debt. Yeah, you only have so much disposable income after the bills are paid. So I thought, well, what can I do to make more money? So I started researching how to save at the grocery store, how could I cut back on our budget? And through that, I had a friend who said, well, you’re learning this do a blog. Can you share this with us? So you can help all of us save money, too. And what’s so funny is I didn’t know what a blog was. I had to actually Google what is a blog? Because I was clueless. Yeah. And so I’m like, Okay, fine. I’ll make one for my friends. That was how it started. And as they say, the rest is history. Wow, that’s incredible. I, so I’m really excited to unpack this because that’s a ton of money to pay off. Yes, it is. It really is. It was a challenge. And you know, a lot of tears, yeah. bloods, blood, sweat, so to speak. But we did it just a lot of person. A person. persevering, I guess is the word I’m looking for. Yeah, yeah. And so really, in doing that, and in accomplishing that goal, I’m sure you learn tons of stuff. So I’m excited to sort of get into it. Tell me though, like, as you’re doing this, you’re a stay at home, mom. So how do you have two kids? Is that right? Yes. At that point, we had two children. We now have three, when we began getting out of debt. She was a blip on the radar. Yeah, actually, she was we found out we were that she was coming along about two months after we started the whole process. So you know what that’s like when there’s a new baby in the mix that kind of throws the finances a little haywire because you’re going to have, you know, more diapers in the house to feed all of that. So