My Debt Free Journey
- Sonia Gante, Bakersfield Home Organizer
- Sep 20, 2019
- 2 min read
Ohh man. Should I be sharing this?
Let me say first that I share my story because I want to help women and men get out debt. Especially women. Why?
Because those are my clients and my clients are only women. I share not to brag, but to inspire someone out there, hopefully you reach your goals. And if that is get out of debt, I have lots of experience.
This might be a long one. Brace yourself.
I want to start off by saying that growing up I did not belong to an affluent family. I got financial aid to pay for my schooling.
When I applied to colleges, I got accepted to some colleges here in California. Some were in Los Angeles and some where up North. Since I lived in Bakersfield, CA I was in the middle of colleges in Los Angeles and in between Fresno. I knew if I chose LA I would have a higher cost of living and it would be more expensive to live in LA rather than up North.
So, I decided to go to Fresno State.
Being frugal and always trying to spend the least I could, I was able to pay for my schooling with only financial aid besides that one small $3,000 loan that I co-signed with my mom.
In my Junior year I did work part time until I graduated, so that helped a lot.
In the end, I was able to obtain my Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies and Chicano Studies. And only in debt with $3,000 which I look back now and it wasn't a lot compared to my peers.
Fast forward. After I graduated I decided to get into consumer debt when I bought my MacBook Pro. And, oh yeah, I forgot that I also got into debt because during my college years I got laser surgery to correct my eye vision. Great decision, however, I got into debt with that and since I did not pay it after some certain time, I owed double on it a year later or so.
Not great.
So, when I decided to start buy a house with my husband which was after college, I had to have zero debts in order to get a home loan.
That's when we got straight to saving and paying off the loans and negotiating.
Finally we were debt free. But, not for long.
The mortgage is a loan.
But we were happy with a mortgage loan because we had a home. It's the American dream. For me it is.
We had our home. But, then we decided to get a car loan. Worst mistake. But I learned from it.
Fast forward, we got into more debt. But this time it was like $25,000 or more. I felt like we were drowning in debt.
But after two years or so we were able to pay off the debt. It has definitely been a journey.
In another post maybe I can get into details, but for now this is all I want to share.
I hope this helped or at least you see that people go through things, but we should always try to give grace.
Talk to you soon.
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