#15 How Chris Paid Off $50,000 in 4 Years

Chris and his wife paid off $50,000 in 4 years plus find out if he thinks you should invest or pay off debt first.

Chris Browning is the creator and host of the award-winning, short-form podcast, Popcorn Finance. Each week he discusses finance with amazing guests in about the time it takes to make a bag of popcorn.

Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance with an emphasis in financial planning and still maintains his position as a financial analyst specializing in revenue analysis.

Website: www.PopcornFinance.com
Social: Instagram/Twitter @popcornfinance

Resources mentioned:
Debt Snowball Bundle
Dollars and Sense by Dan Ariely(affiliate link)

Full transcript:

Welcome to the money mindset podcast where you will find the inspiration and motivation you need to manage your money better so you can stress less and live the life you want. I'm Ashley Patrick with budgets made easy and the money mindset podcast. Today we are talking to Chris Browning who is the creator and host of the award winning short form podcast, popcorn of finance. Each week he discusses finance with amazing guests and about the time it takes to make a bag of popcorn. He does hold a bachelor screen finance with an emphasis in financial planning and still maintains his position as a financial analyst specializing in revenue analysis. So today we are going to talk to him about his debt pay off story and also I did want to get his opinion on whether you should invest or pay off debt. And so we will jump into that here in just a minute before we start his interview.
I do want to mention, uh, for you to go get your free debt snowball bundle. This has worksheets and spreadsheets to get started on your debt snowball today. Uh, you can get that for free. A budget's made easy.com/debt-bundle. So go ahead and go grab that to get started on your debt snowball and paying off debt in this new year. And now we will talk to Chris about how he paid off almost $50,000 in about four years. All right. Today we are talking to Chris, the founder of popcorn finance. And today we're going to talk about his debt pay off story, which is pretty neat and how he loves tiny homes. So before we jump in and get started, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of, you know, about how you started on this journey?
Ah, yeah. Well thanks Ashley. I really appreciate you having me on. And uh, yeah, so about my, my journey, specifically my debt free journey or just the podcast journey in general,
uh, just about yourself in general and then how you started paying off. What, um, kind of motivated you to start paying off your debt.
Oh yeah. So, uh, for, for me, I didn't have a lot of debt growing up, so, you know, right out of college I got a small credit card, but it ended up paying that off relatively quickly, mainly because they wouldn't give me a high limit.
Yeah.
It's all kind of forced me not to be able to go that far into debt. But then when my wife and I, uh, got engaged and we were getting ready for the, uh, the wedding, that's kind of where the debt started to pile up. We didn't really have much saved up. And what ended up happening was when all the bills started rolling in, we had to take on himself. That's really the ourselves and it kind of spiral from there. So it was combination of a wedding. Dad went on a honeymoon, uh, getting into our first place, a behind furniture and some school and medical expenses, all that together, piled up and put us in about $27,000 worth of credit card debt.
Ooh. So did you have like an aha moment that was like the breaking point, you're like, something has got to change.
Yeah. You know, I, I knew that the debt was piling up. I wasn't really tracking it or adding it all up, but one day, I don't know why, I was just like, you know, let me just look at this and see where we're at. And that's what I saw, how high the balances got into, cause it was spread over about three cards. And that's when they kind of hit me. And it was, it was really the stress and anxiety of knowing that I had this huge sum of money that we owed. And at the time I think combined, we're making somewhere between 40 to $50,000 combined. And so our debt was over half of our actual income or our before tax income. So that's when the stress where they set in and I was like, we have to do something about this.
Wow. That. Yeah. That's pretty amazing. So, and you have a degree in finance, right?
Yes. And that made it all worse because I should have known better and I knew what I should be doing. But it's one thing to know and it's a completely different thing to actually implement those, those practices. And those, those, you know, routines in your life that'll he...