Why Katie’s Kash

Ever since I was a teenager and watched my parents struggle with finances I have been interested in financial security.  My dad taught me early on to make sure I balanced my checkbook to match my bank account and if I was off by a penny (either for or against my favor) to make sure I found it!  A penny difference could cost $20 in overdraft fees!  I wanted to be financially secure and never deal with the weight I saw my parents deal with.

I was one of six kids in our family and we were expensive.  Between sports, dance, school, extra-curricular activities, medical, etc. I always remember my parents being so willing to make sure we could do what we wanted even at their own expense.  We never went without to the point we noticed anything amiss, but I was pretty perceptive and noticed the weight and overheard the conversations about “How are we going to pay for that?”

I never wanted to live like that.  However, I didn’t know how to NOT live like that.  By the time I was ready to start my own adult adventures I had never really had a job so I’d never learned to manage money other than just being a natural frugal person (I even felt guilty asking for gifts for birthdays or Christmas because I didn’t want people spending their money on me!).

I went to college with a little money from a lawsuit my family had won after I had been bit by a pitbull.  It was my “consolation” portion of the settlement and was how I was going to pay for my first year of college.  I did not get a scholarship (though, I didn’t try as hard as I could have back then), and my parents made “too much money” for any government help.  The only road I saw at the time was to get student loans to cover the difference between my small fortune and tuition + housing + books + living expenses (you get the picture).  Because that’s what you do.  My loans were small (I was somewhere around the $20-25k range) and wouldn’t come to needing payments until 6 months after I graduated!

My first year in college I came across my first “emergency expense” that I needed to break in my brand new credit card to pay for!  (I was in a group that wanted to do a Secret Santa and we wanted to have some of the best toys for our family we purchased for!)  My second biggest expense was getting a car (my parents actually put the car under their name but let me drive it so I paid the payments for them when I could).  So before I even had a real job I was around $35k in debt.

I really didn’t gather too much debt until I was out of college and couldn’t find a job.  I ended up using my credit card to live off of and did freelance writing to pay for the minimum payments on my credit card, student loans, and car each month. Any birthday or Christmas money went directly to bills.  When I finally found a job it was heaven! Even though it wasn’t my dream job, it paid the bills.  I am a natural worker so any extra hours offered I picked up so I could get back on my long-term goal of being financially secure.

Long story short I eventually met my husband Alex who had his own debts that needed resolving and I worked hard with him to start getting his finances in order.  Our first goal as a couple (I think this was more him supporting me) was to get out of debt as quickly as we could.  We were married in June of 2013 and had an accumulated debt of $28,120.13!  By January 2016 we were officially debt free! (Other than our recently acquired home mortgage).

Life has treated us well financially, but now we are ready to take the next step and start building wealth.  To do that we are going to work on paying off more recent purchases (2 new cars and a new heater/AC unit) that we unwittingly financed and then our mortgage.

My Goals

My goal is to walk at least one person through this journey and hopefully inspire him/her to figure out how to become financially free as I did.  I am a firm believer that you can have fun and money at the same time while still being generous, kind, and giving.  Together my husband and I donate around $5k to charities, have only 4 debts that we want to pay off, he is going to school (we pay for each quarter tuition out of pocket and get reimbursed later from his work), and we still can afford to take luxurious vacations like Caribbean cruises.  We keep up to date on modern technology (Apple isn’t cheap!), enjoy having some big Christmas purchases for each other, and still have (at the time of this writing) $30,379.59 between our bank accounts.  That’s an almost $60k swing in 6 years!  I want to share my knowledge with you.  I will share my journey, my tips, my tricks, my find anything-up-your-sleeve approach to help you find your financial freedom as well.

My Beliefs

I do not believe that money is the ruler, I believe that we are the rulers of money. However, you have to have the right mindset to be a ruler of money.  I believe that even the worst situation can be flipped around (at one point I was eating only poptarts because I didn’t want to waste money on food when I had bills due!) and no matter what you can come out on top of your financial situation and learn how to be the ruler.