Today is a Special Day

As I write this, my heart and memories go back to eighteen years ago today.  It was then I married my friend, my sweetheart, my soul mate, and my true love.  At that moment many friends and confidants shared with me that the love I cherished for my new bride then would only shadow the love I have for her years down the road.  Those words are truer today than I could have ever imagined.

If you’ve been reading our site for any length of time you know that our time together as been fraught especially with financial problems from the start, even on our honeymoon needing to get a loan to check out of our hotel – something that still makes my heart race a bit from time to time with just the memory.  I wish the story of our financial difficulties ended there but in many ways it was just the beginning.  It would take a few short years but when we spent ourselves into over $100K of consumer debt we finally realized we had a problem.  A HUGE problem.  

We paid off all that debt in just seven years, struggling the first 3.5 years to pay off just $15K until we came up with the plan we share today to ultimately pay off the remaining $90K in just three years.  And that’s where The Thrifty Couple was born, a vision we have to help other families with wherever they start financially to meet their financial goals.

I share this on today of all days to let you know first that we are a real couple.  We love each other deeply but have our own struggles and issues we work through together.  Sure we paid off that debt but we still remember the pain and struggles we dealt with, not knowing if we would ever see the light at the end of the tunnel, let alone pay off all that debt in the end.  But even with that we still work through things together and learn along the way to ultimately be an even better resource to you.

We love to answer questions and providing encouragement along the way.  We mentioned in our upcoming book that one of the keys you have in your hands is that we are real people, a real couple, with ears and hearts set on helping you.  Please feel free to use us as a resource and know that we mean every word of that.

I want to finish with where I started.  Eighteen years ago we traveled to the Oregon coast on our honeymoon, ending with the terror of not knowing how we would check out of our hotel.  For our anniversary a year ago we made the same trip, to the same hotel, but as a couple that has learned a few things along the way.  We were now a couple that had budgeted, had planned, and even saved along the way.  No, we didn’t have to get a loan this time.  And as mentioned before, we stayed as a couple even more deeply in love than we were so many years before.

You may wonder at the picture at the top of this post.  Back in January 2015, we started the 90-Day Weight and Health Challenge (click on the link to see that you can still participate and get emails every day to walk you along the way) where I lost almost 100 lb and am still running and living healthily today!  So last year we decided to add another level of fun together with Cassie and I running the Spartan Sprint near Portland as well (I had run another loop earlier as well).  It was such a blessing and fun time for us to have as a couple, just showing that we are real.  Trust us, our bodies knew well and good just how “real” we were the next day with new bruises and scrapes we earned on the course. 🙂

Again, feel free to reach out to us and let us know how you are doing, the struggles you are having and even your little victories you experience along the way.  We are cheering you along as you write your own story – each step of the way.