Welcome everyone to another episode of debt stories real people beating debt and winning financially

today we meet Tanya who lives in Akron Ohio with her husband and their two and a half year old son

Like so many of us Tanya and her husband each grew up

thinking that debt is just an unavoidable part of life. But now, after paying off

nearly $31,000 in just 12 months, their attitudes and life have completely changed.

It just goes to show how powerful our thoughts are shaping our reality.

And Tanya has faced some difficult realities.

My husband and I were both from families that that was pretty common so we just kind of grew up thinking that was pretty common. So we just kind of grew up thinking that was the norm. I had

tons of student loan debt when I graduated college. We had credit card debt. We kept

trying and trying or thinking we were trying I guess to get out of debt but we

weren't really ever making any headway and then my husband ended up becoming disabled

and not able to work anymore.

So of course that was a big hit financially.

And then we were dealing with his student loans,

my student loans, we had fertility issues,

his disability, just so many emotional things that kind of got all tied up with the money.

So while we thought we were trying, it was like we were never really making it as much of a focus as we should have I think.

The stress of so many big life events was a huge distraction from their growing debts.

We had about 14,000 in credit cards, a $20,000 car loan, and almost $9,000 home equity loan,

plus our mortgage.

Thankfully, our mortgage is small.

It's only $47,000 when we really got focused on our debt.

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