Welcome everyone. This is episode three of a new one-ab

podcast series debt stories real people beating debt and winning

financially. Today I want to introduce you to Melissa and Andy who live in the southeastern United States.

Andy is a pastor and Melissa is a stay-at-home mom.

Like with many couples, Andy and Melissa haven't always seen eye to eye about how to handle money,

and it wasn't until their debt reached $30,000 for the second time that they finally got on the same page. Today we're going to hear

how they paid off their debt and the surprising secret ingredient to their

success, a jar of basil. Now let's flash back 12 years to when Andy accepted his job in their

current city.

Yeah we live in the southeast and we're kind of blessed to be in an area that has relatively high incomes and low cost of living.

When we came from Southern California, we lived in a much smaller house because that was all we could afford and we actually

Made a lot of money coming out of Southern California. We we didn't hit the very peak of the market but we were just after the peak when we left and so we owned for two years and

made a pretty good chunk of change but when we got here we kind of got wide-eyed

because they were taking us around to houses and looking at houses.

Oh man, this is incredible.

Andy and Melissa were blown away by how much more they could get for their money and as you can

imagine extra square footage was enticing to their family of seven. We have five

kids. Our oldest just started college, she's 18, 116, 113, 1 9, and 1 6. So we have a first grade to freshman in college.

They bought their first home in the southeast, and bit by bit

begin to rack up debt on their home equity line of credit. That debt was ultimately what attracted them to

whina. Hey, maybe debt can be a good thing. Oh, wait. Of course, living beyond their means wasn't exactly a new problem.

I would say for us throughout all of our married life, which is over 20 years now.

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