Welcome everyone. This is episode four of a new Wyanab podcast series,

debt stories, real people, beating debt and winning financially. In today's show we'll meet Daniel who, along with his wife,

paid off a formidable $30,000 of debt in just a little over three years. So let's go back to the beginning. In 2011, Daniel and his wife were married. In 2012,

they purchased their first home in Newburgh, a town just outside of Evansville, Indiana. And by 2015, they were greeting their newborn

daughter.

We moved down here in 2012 and very shortly thereafter we bought a house and did an

FHA loan which I think at the time was 3 or 3 a half percent down which we actually had to get from my wife's

family so colossal mistake number one there. A down payment of only three percent meant more mortgage to repay and therefore more time stuck with debt payments.

And it was at about that time that Daniel started car shopping.

We had already been talking about, you know, maybe having kids in a few years, so I sold

the car I had for, you know, barely what it was worth ended up buying a a sports car in

the guy lived in eastern Pennsylvania. He picked me up the airport in the car. I gave him the cash. He directed me to the highway and I drove back home.

Closome mistake number two there. He didn't actually have the cash and since the car was

older Daniel didn't qualify for an auto loan.

Instead, he had taken out a higher interest-bearing personal loan from the bank.

The total, I think on the loan was maybe 4,000. I got home, you know, made my first payment on that and that's about the time it dawned on me that I had made, you know, a mistake, a mistake.

So I kind of started thinking about, all right, how do I pay this off a little quicker?

You know, we were still kind of living paycheck to paycheck and not able to, you know, really pay any extra between a bunch of credit card debt.

I think we had, oh, close to 13,000 or maybe a little more in credit card debt at that time.

Can I afford to buy this car was never thought that really crossed my mind. It was a I need to have this car. I'll just make it work.

spoiler alert. I didn't need to have the car. I kind of carried on paying minimums on everything for a little while.

You know, always kind of in the back of my mind was we're not getting ahead we're

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