Welcome everyone. This is episode 7 of debt stories, real people beating debt and winning financially.

Today we'll meet Jennifer, a born and raised Chicagoan in her late 20s whose budgeting philosophy boils down to you've got to live a little.

For most of us the living part is easy. It's that little part that can get us into trouble.

So let's dive in and hear how Jennifer went from dropping cash on every

gadget that crossed her path to earning the nickname The Queen of Cheap,

a title lovingly bestowed upon her by a cousin after she started budgeting, not the Jennifer Minds.

As of this interview, she's paid off all of her student loans and most of her credit card debt and purchased her very first home in Chicago.

Yeah, I closed on the house in December, so I got it at the end of 2016.

Still trying to navigate and figure things out in terms of like what month to month can be like,

but I think I have a good good decent handle on things for now.

I work as an IT analyst for a hospitality company. I've been doing IT work for last seven years. My mom lives with me. I'm

single so it's just myself and her and we have a town home. Jennifer's still

feeling out the true costs of her new home.

The property tax was just raised twice this year,

so it's pretty expensive.

The tricky part is I bought new construction,

so you don't even know the actual property tax until your bill comes out in 2018 for this year's tax.

Homeownership in Chicago proper is relatively expensive and apparently streamed TV is too.

Cost of living is actually pretty high.

We have pretty high taxes.

We have strange taxes that probably other places in the country

doesn't have. We have a tax on Netflix and Hulu so instead of saying 799 like

...