About Me
The short and long story
The short story...
I’m Carrie, a busy wife and mom of 3. Six years ago I was working as a full-time teacher and my husband had just started his own construction business. We found out we were unexpectedly pregnant with child number 3. The cost of daycare for my 3 kids was more than I made as a teacher so I had no choice but to quit. Our income dropped to $30k a year for our family of 5. We made it through, and we thrived. We figured out how to stretch our cents and truly began to feel richer than ever even though we were making less money. Now, I’m excited to partner with other families and help them learn to stretch their cents too
The whole story of our financial journey...
Our financial journey has been a roller coaster and defined by several major life events.
Our story really starts with my husband’s story. After high school he came from Indiana to Virginia to attend a private college funded fully by student loans. After one year he realized, he didn’t want to do college and dropped out to work as a roofer during the day and sing in a band at night…which is how I met him. I was in school at another college and used to go listen to him play in the band.
We started dating, I graduated college, started working as a teacher and we eventually got married and bought a house. Zack was still working as a roofer from sun up to sun down. We started to realize that working as a roofer until age 65 probably wouldn’t be physically possible. After much thought, he decided to go back to school to become a PE teacher. We took out student loans and the plan was that he would teach during the school year and roof in the summers to pay off all the loans.
Well, 4 years and 2 kids later Zack graduated only to discover there were NO open PE positions in our area. He decided to go back to roofing until a job opened. He was an awesome roofer and quickly was making more money than he would as a teacher! We started paying off the student loans and financially were doing great. Then my son got sick.
We discovered my son had a rare autoimmune disorder that caused him to get high fevers every 30 days that lasted 3-5 days. This meant he couldn’t go to daycare 3-5 days every month which also meant one of us had to take off 3-5 days of work every month. I quicky ran out of sick days, and Zack’s employer quickly got frustrated with him taking off so much time. We needed a new plan.
The most logical plan at the time was for Zack to start his own business. This would allow him to work 3 weeks out of the month and be home with our son 1 week of the month. Starting a new business was very expensive (truck, trailer, tools etc.) but it was doing really well. We had enough money with my teaching job to cover the bills and knew the business was growing and would soon start making us money. Then we had another surprise…
In December of 2015 we found out I was pregnant with baby #3. He was due at the end of August which as a teacher was the worst possible timing. I hadn’t built up enough sick time yet to take a paid maternity leave, and if I returned to work after a maternity leave the cost of daycare for 3 kids was more than my take home pay as a teacher.
We wouldn’t have enough money if I quit teaching, and we wouldn’t have enough money if I kept teaching. After lots of prayer we decided I would quit my job and stay home with the kids.
It took a few weeks but I eventually got excited about being a stay at home mom. I quickly realized that God had a better plan for my life.
Our income dropped to about $30k. We qualified for Medicaid, WIC and money was incredibly tight. My husband and I made a deal that he would work as hard as he could at making more money, and I would work as hard as I could at saving more money. Hopefully the budget would balance. The crazy thing is that despite on my “math” and worrying over how we would make ends meet, the budget balanced every month.
We learned to live in much simpler way. I learned to cook cheaper and better meals. We found free activities we could do together as a family. Most importantly we had so much more time together as a family. I had missed so much of my 2 older kids lives while I was working. Now I could be present for every moment.
We found ourselves no longer worrying about money. Not because we had so much, but because we trusted that this was God’s plan for us. We felt richer than ever!
Since about 2012 I’ve kept a blog all about how we found ways to save money. In 2021, I decided I wanted to turn the hobby into a job. The next step for me to was start the Ramsey FCTM course and become a financial coach- So I could get paid for all the free help I’ve been giving! (Don’t worry- I still give tons of free help on the blog and through social media!)