A photo of a man wearing glasses looking at the camera and smiling, this is guest Brad Nelson
Episode 308 – Becoming debt free with Brad Nelson

Like many people, today’s guest, Brad Nelson struggled with living paycheck-to-paycheck, and dealing with the constant hamster wheel of never-ending payments for much of his adult life. After losing his home to foreclosure and his first marriage ending in 2012, Brad decided enough was enough and went on a journey to become debt-free. Clutter and debt are so closely linked so we invited Brad onto the podcast to share his journey into becoming debt free and share what he has learnt along the way that can help you.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
00:00
Like many people, today's guest, Brad Nelson struggled with living paycheck to paycheck and dealing with the constant hamster wheel of never ending payments for much of his adult life. After losing his home to foreclosure and his first marriage ended in 2012, Brad decided enough was enough and went on a journey to become debt free water and debt are so closely linked. So we invited Brad onto the podcast to share his journey into becoming debt free, and share what he has learned along the way that can help you.

00:36
You're listening to the declutter hub podcast, bringing you tried and tested no nonsense tips and advice from the leading experts in decluttering and organizing your home. Now here's your host, Lesley Spellman.

00:58
Hello, and welcome, listeners. I'm Lesley, we're delighted you're here to join us as part of your decluttering journey. So whether you're brand new today or have been listening for ages, we want to say thank you so much for being here. It means so much to Ingrid and I that you turn up every week to listen to and support us. While we talk all things decluttering and organizing. We'd love to help more people with their quest for a clutter free home and our podcast is a fantastic way for people to be inspired to take action, we have a favor to ask. If you like what you hear, be sure to hit the follow subscribe or like button on your podcast player. share us with your friends, or share your thoughts on the podcast by leaving a review. So Brad, welcome to the declutter podcast, I'm so happy that you're here that we can start talking about money because it's so important the decluttering world. So welcome.

01:48
Awesome. Yeah, I'm glad to be here, Lesley, it's gonna be great to have a good conversation with you.

01:51
So let's, let's start from the beginning. So we've already said in the intro, that you had had a journey with debt, which has now culminated in you having a podcast and a membership site to teach other people how to get themselves out of debt. So let's start at the beginning. How did your journey into debt start? How did it unfold?

02:12
Yeah, well, I think I had a similar story that most people have, where it was just a lot of mindless spending over consumption. And, you know, always wanting the latest and greatest things, not really prioritizing my finances, or really, my financial health at all, it was mostly just, you know, becoming this more of a consumer of all things all the time. And I was willing to kind of do whatever I needed to do in order to do that. So through my early 20s, in my late 20s, I made a lot of poor decisions, when it came to vehicles, vehicle loans, I think I owned about 13 vehicles in a matter of about 10 years, constantly, you know, selling and moving. And if you know anything about vehicles, they lose value very, very quickly. So, you know, you go upside down, and some of those loans, and I was constantly, you know, rolling that upside down debt into the next vehicle and just amass these massive payments over the years and same issues with credit cards, you know, just, you know, I remember looking at the credit card balance, and asking myself, like, where is all of this? What is this exactly? Like, what did I even buy, with all of these credit card debt, you know, and so, I think over the years, it just became something that became more and more stressful, it just became to be, you know, at first it was, it was minimal. And then over the years, even as I began to make more money, you know, I had that lifestyle creep of, well, you know, I should be saving more, I should actually use this extra money to pay down my debt. But instead, I just increased my lifestyle and by better things, you know, bigger houses, nicer cars, and it just was this never ending hamster wheel that I was on. And it finally just got to the point, especially after my first marriage ended, where I realized, like how much of a house of cards I had built once I had lost my home, and I had my two year old son, Noah. And it was just a huge wake up call to me, like, I've got to get this stuff figured out, I wanted to be a better example to him. I also, you know, had dreams of wanting to run my own business. At some point, I didn't know what that was going to be. But I also knew from a financial standpoint, there was there was just no way I was ever going to get there based on how much debt I had, I couldn't lose my income. And I could never take a risk to reduce my income because I needed to keep making money to pay all these bills I had racked up so those became some some of the big motivators to me was number one, I wanted to be able to start my own business number two be a better example to to my son and, and that's how I got started. And I just started consuming anything I could find about personal finance. I would read books, I would listen to podcasts, I would go to seminars, I would take classes, and I just started trying to figure out how all of these other people were handling their money. And to my surprise, I had it all wrong. And I started just practicing some of the simple things that they were sharing. And honestly some of the simple things that are are being taught free that we talk about often on our podcast and just practicing these things on a daily basis and it was amazing. wasn't to me how much of a difference it started to make with actually having less financial stress in my life, being more content not having to worry so much. And I started to make better progress with actually saving and and pay down my debt, it took me about four or five years to do it. And with that divorce in the middle, it did take a little bit of extra time for me. And I admittedly say, Lesley that I kind of failed my way there, you know, I just, I would try it, I would mess it up. And I go back, and I'd retry it to go back and mess out, you know, it's just this constant back and forth. And eventually, you just get there because I just wasn't willing to give up. And I've been debt free now ever since outside of my mortgage for 11 plus years. And it's, it's been incredible, incredible journey. Nor would I ever think I'd be on a podcast like this talking about this. Because that wasn't my intention. My intention was really just to improve my financial life not not really to start a business that would help other people do it. But that's the crazy thing called life and I get to do this job. Now. It's pretty cool.

05:55
Fantastic. It's such a story, really. And it's one that many times as a professional organizer working in people's homes, you know, as well as clutter comes debt, often because people are buying and overspending. And, you know, you said this overconsumption and so, quite often, people's paperwork is in a huge pickle, let's just call it that. Because that becomes an element of trying to ignore the fact that, you know, sorts of transparent heads in the sand a little bit and, you know, pretend that it's not all happening around you. And so one of the big things that I've certainly done as a professional organizer is open those envelopes. Look at what's facing you. So were you in that position where you would started to kind of a little bit in denial of what was going on?

06:39
Yeah, for sure. You know, I think I knew deep down inside, like, I was a, you know, financial train wreck, you know, I wasn't saving didn't have any money, you know? Sure. I guess I could say that I looked good on the outside, you know, had a nice house had a couple nice vehicles. And, you know, from from the outside, people probably thought, you know, I was successful and doing great, but on the inside, you know, there, there was a lot of financial stress going on. And I think there's a lot of shame with that, though. You know, where you look good on the outside, but on the inside, you know, you know that that's not the reality. So I think that's what probably took me the longest to own up to and want to face is more or less my ego and saying, like, I'm not doing as well as I think I am, I'm not, and I got to stop pretending and I need to be real about this and start actually facing this. And it's like, you have that breakthrough moment in your life where something happens that basically, you know, is your rock bottom. And for me, it was losing that house. And that was what really changed it for me is that I just I never wanted to put myself or even, you know, my children and my family in that situation ever again. So I knew I needed to do it different.

07:50
So where did you get started?

07:53
So where did I get started in my journey? Well,

07:57
yeah, well, so. So you, you went through a divorce, you lost your house. And so everything that everything seems to be getting derailed around you. And you were like, this has got to change. So the light bulb went on, you knew you wanted to change something. So where were those tentative, I'm sure first steps.

08:13
For me it was really all about just getting really serious about like you mentioned decluttering in my financial life is really where it started for me. You know, I have that why behind me, I had the reason why I wanted to do it. Now it was time to put the work in. And I think for me, what I what I suggest, even to my members to this day is doing the same thing is, is going through all of your envelopes, going through all of your mail, going through your email, start start looking at writing down what bills are coming in, what things do you have, you know, happening, I also recommend, I think it's a great thing I did it myself, I still do it from time to time, even to this day is really going through and analyzing your bank accounts and your credit card accounts or anywhere you're spending money, go back and print out the last, you know, three to six months or even 12 months of of statements from these from all of these accounts. And then get out some highlighters and really start figuring out where your money's going. You know, in today's day and age, a lot of things are just electronic, you may not even be getting envelopes in the mail, it might be coming digitally through email. Or it might be automatically being taken out of your account and you're not even really getting a notification that it's being taken out. So I think one of the best things you can do is to really kind of figure out where everything is and declutter, so to speak, is is to go through and figure out every single dollar where's that money going? And then where are the areas that were overspending and say using credit cards and things to you know, compensate for income that we don't have. And it's amazing to me, Lesley, that people who go through and do this how it's a very eye opening experience can be very scary. But if you take it just a little bit by little bit, it's amazing to me what people are able to find even in my own life, but how much money actually did have to start making improvements in my financial life to be able to start making better savings or paying down extra debt by really figuring out where my money was going and then saying Does this fit where I want to go now, and if it doesn't, it was, for me a much easier way to say no, I can get rid of some of these things, right, get rid of some of these expenses, because it's not helping me get to the goal that I want. So it's a really good process of just, you know, comparing your your why versus like, how you're actually spending your money, and you're never gonna be perfect at it. Because we're human, right? Even today, I'm not perfect at it. But it's a good way to kind of figure out, you know, get a pulse on where everything's going in your life,

10:27
it's definitely trying to put a jigsaw together, isn't it because if you, if you're cluttered as well, then that paperwork that you need may be scattered everywhere, like you say, it might come from various sources, it's gonna take a while to piece to put the pieces of the puzzle together. But I think in the same way that when you do on a decluttering journey, it's about bursting. So let's do an inventory of what's going on here. You know, so you need to have all the facts about what's been spent here, you know, where are my problem areas before you can start to make steps to try and fix that? Right. So first thing is, arm yourself with the tools of information that you're going to need. And it's must be very confrontational, I imagine. So, you know, is that sort of self confrontation with how many, you know, we do it in the decluttering world where we're like, gather everything together and look at how many of these things you have got, you know what I mean? And then it can be very confront, and it's very difficult process to go through. But it's an important one to make sure that you get to the crux of the matter, I think. So. So you started right at the beginning, you started going through your paperwork and sort of gathering all the information together. So where do you go next?

11:34
Well, once I had that done, then I could really start to kind of put together a budget, you know, and I think this is where people most people struggle with a budget is they they'll do the budget first without really knowing what their true expenses are. And so it's hard to do that if you don't know where all your stuffs going. Especially when you start thinking about things that don't come out every single month, when people think monthly budget, they tend to forget about things like, let's say the holidays, well, the holidays aren't all year round, right? It's just one time a year. So if you're someone who celebrates like Christmas, and you buy presents and things like that, you have to think about that, how does that fit into your monthly budget? How do you start saving now, so that way, when the holidays come, you're not having to put things on credit cards and take out debt in order to you know, pay for those things. So the next step is really all about putting together just a realistic monthly budget based on what you have found. And you basically are just going to prioritize that budget from you know, necessities first. So taking care of, you know, obviously your, your mortgage, or your rent your you know, your electricity bill, your heating bill, your you know, all of those things, prescriptions, medications, doctors, you know, insurance, you want to prioritize, obviously, all of your necessities first and then all of your wants come second based on what's left. And then obviously, you need to make sure you're prioritizing your liabilities as well. So we encourage people to get caught back up on their bills, don't be behind, like we want to get you caught back up, we want to make sure we get those things out of say maybe that are in collections or they're delinquent, get those things caught back up, so you can become on time and then eventually be able to make progress and pay stuff off. And budgeting does take time, this is probably something where we help our members the most over time. You know, it's it's, it's a learned habit, it's not something that, you know, you're going to be perfect at it in the first month. So we make kind of a joke in our membership, it's like, our goal for you over the first few months is just to have a crappy budget, because that takes the stress off of it, because we put all this stress that it needs to be perfect, but it's going to be 100% perfect all the time. And if it's not, I'm a failure. The reality is none of my budgets over the years have ever been perfect. But even if they're 90%, right, it's much better than not having a plan at all. And so you know, the goal is just to get the majority of it as best as you can. And we'll figure out the other stuff along the way.

13:45
Yeah, definitely. Because if you're looking for perfection, then it's never going to happen. This whole perfection and destination go hand in hand and you've just got to do something, you know, Done is better than perfect, Willie, I think that's the important thing. Just one thing before we go to a break, right, I want to talk about because obviously you're in the US, you in Wisconsin, right? So I think it's if somebody is in terrible debt, and really struggling, if they have to prioritize one type of payment over another in order to stave off the serious debt side of things. I'm sure there's a word for that. But you know, what would be your priorities in terms of paying down because you've talked about budgeting and I'm just interested to understand whether that would be different, you know, in the US than it is in the UK? Yeah,

14:31
I mean, everyone's situation is is obviously going to be different. But when it comes to like what we call is protect this house, you know, we call it a you know, a certain amount of categories to protect your house, obviously, you know, food and all of that stuff is priority number one, your rent or your mortgage, you know, making sure that that's a priority, and then your transportation needs. So for instance, if you do have a car payment, you have to have car insurance, things like that. You do want to make sure that that gets prioritized because that allows you to make your income right if you can't get to work, at least here in the city. It's, you know, and I know like, depending on if you live in the city, you may not need a vehicle. So this may be not applicable to you. But here in the States, many people drive their cars to get to work, you know, and so you need to prioritize that now, could the car payment be causing a lot of stress? Yes, and we can address that. But right now we need to at least prioritize it because you need a vehicle, we can figure out a plan and a strategy to maybe get you into a cheaper vehicle in the future. But for right now, you got to prioritize that vehicle. So those are going to be kind of the bigger things, obviously, you know, making sure your medications and prescriptions and all that stuff are covered. And you know what, so you really want to just think, what do I need to have day to day in order to keep living? And then everything else comes after that, essentially? Absolutely.

15:42
Well, we're gonna go for a break, right, and then we're gonna come back, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about the organization of your debt and savings. So welcome back. I mean, one of the things that I was really interested in when you're talking about simplifying your finances during inventory, trying to prioritize budgeting, that kind of thing. And I just want to make it clear that even if you're not in the same position that Brad was back in the kind of 2010s, let's say, then this is still very relevant, you know, getting a handle on your finances, wherever you are, you know, has been serious debt for this to be very valid in your life. So yeah, you know, the information that was given us here is like, super useful. So let's talk a little bit about how you managed that debt, then. So how did you do this? I mean, that was quite an undertaking to get yourself from where you were to move forward to being debt free. And did you say five years or something like that? I mean, that's, that's an incredible turnaround.

16:34
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I think from an organization standpoint, like once you have your budget put together, you know, it's it's really one of the first things that we have our members do in week one, and it's, it's a big ask, and it's a big task to do, but is to total up all of your debts. So you know, find out what you owe on everything startup. So print out all of your credit card statements, if you have bank loans, if you have car loans, if you have a mortgage, if you have personal loans, if you have I mean anything and everything that you have debt on, we want to find where that is. And we want to write it down and get it on the list. And then once you get it all written down, then we start moving over to more of a worksheet, which is what we call is the Debt Snowball. So there's a couple of different ways that you can pay down debt that are taught, you know, all across the board Debt Snowball is probably one of the more popular ones along with the Debt Avalanche. And the reason I liked the Debt Snowball very much like you say, Lesley, when it comes to decluttering, we start small, we're gonna start small, we're not going to attack the biggest thing, first, we're going to attack the smallest thing first. So when it comes to the Debt Snowball, you're gonna organize your debts, except for your mortgage, we're gonna leave that one off, but everything else, we're just gonna, we're just gonna put on your debt snowball, and all you're going to do is list your debts from smallest balance to highest balance. So your smallest balance once go first and all the way down to your highest balances. As far as interest rates, we don't really worry too much about interest rates, generally speaking, when it comes to the Debt Snowball, because interest rates, like if we were doing math, none of us would really be in debt to begin with. Because if we looked at how much we were spending on interest on these ads, we would have been like, Heck, no, I'm not doing that. But again, it's a behavior thing, debt, and money is a very emotional thing. We're making purchases, we're doing things in our life that are more emotionally based. So we want to kind of use that same kind of psychology and getting out of debt using the Debt Snowball, because the Debt Snowball is focusing on psychology of actually checking things off and paying things off. So for a lot of people, and then again, not everybody, but for a lot of people they have what I like to call is like this low hanging fruit, right where it's easy to reach up and pick that fruit and check it off. And essentially, that could be like a small credit card balance. Maybe it's, you know, $150, or something small. And we can now attack that. And you can pay it off. And by checking it off, it shows like, Hey, I'm making progress. This is working, which motivates you to want to keep going. And so you want to use that psychology of winning. And using motivation, you want to see that progress. And this is probably where I feel like a lot of people fail in their own journey of getting out of debt as they don't take the appropriate amount of time to really track their progress and see the progress that they're actually making. And what tends to happen is you might run into, you know, a place where you stall out a little bit, maybe you're going through a life event, maybe something happened, where your health came in, or, you know, you got sick for a while you lost your income. And you might look at your progress and say, Well, I'm not really making any progress because you haven't been tracking it you haven't been actually seeing how much you've saved how much you've paid off. And it's easy to say this isn't working and quit, or as opposed to say someone who has been tracking and showing like on their debt snowball worksheet or their budget or their savings plan. Like if you're properly tracking it month after month, you can look back and say I've been making amazing progress. I just need to kind of weather the storm and I'll get back to it. So tracking, writing it down, organizing it. Again, lowest balance to highest balance and paying them off in that order is so effective. We've had members save and pay off 1000s of dollars within just a matter of three to six months. And they're like I came from a place where I didn't think I can make any Progress, like I was hopeless. And here they are making this tremendous progress now, and getting this momentum in a positive direction, it's pretty cool.

20:07
It is. And it's so similar to a decluttering journey, because it is, you know, a lot of people will want to start big and start in those areas that really difficult the ones that bother them the most. And so, you know, it'd be the big that's in your, in your instance. And, yeah, and it's hard to get there and like, you know, you're not going to get there quickly. And then, you know, accountability is everything. And so, to share what you're doing, we have people in the membership, who once they've sort of started to clear the clutter and started to get controlling, and more looking at resets and routines and maintenance, do spend, you know, no, spend months and things like that. And, you know, just to be able to write down, I didn't spend, this is what I would normally spend, this is what I didn't spend, I mean, you know, it's incredible progress is so motivating towards that big picture goal. I mean, we we definitely need a big picture goal, I think, and I'm sure that's probably you know, with a debt situation, it's probably quite difficult to get there because ultimately, you want to be out of debt. And that's your big picture goal. But, but why do you want to be out of debt? And what's that? What's the life that it's going to create for you. And so it's exactly the same thing as sitting in our world, it's like, well, I just don't want any more clutter, but you need to be more specific than that. Because that's gonna be the thing that motivates you. And this low hanging fruit that you're talking about is the thing that's gonna go you know, I did that, I did that. And I can do that again. And also equally, because you're in a community and your membership, people can see the progress of other people and say, I can do that I can do that, you know, what I mean? And how simple it was, and stuff like that. So it's so so important to start small. So important. So okay, so, next, this is great, all great stuff for people. So we're using the Debt Snowball. Is that what it was called? Sorry, yeah, the Debt Snowball. So we're gradually gonna so so I've got a gathering momentum with this snowball and the snowball effect is happening. So when so what comes next?

21:55
Well, once you have your debt snowball working now it's just a matter of the hardest part of getting out of debt is the consistency and the discipline to keep doing it. That's it because it takes time. And this is where I think the power of accountability and support really comes into play with your journey. And I think this is where most people really struggle, when it comes to actually successfully reaching the majority of their financial goals is it begins to get boring, because it loses its fondness, right. And so what ends up happening is that we all of a sudden start getting distracted by the shiny objects that are over here, or what these people are doing over here. And it's easy to kind of fall off the path. So I think for a lot of people, the thing that you need to question and ask yourself is is what can I do in my life to make sure that I am remaining consistent that I'm remaining disciplined, and I have the accountability to keep doing this, because if you don't, all of that work is really just going to be wasted, because you'll wind right back up into debt. And I only know that because that was the struggle that I had, in my journey of getting out of debt. It wasn't that I didn't know what to do, I knew what to do. It was just being consistent with it. That's why it took me four or five years to actually do it. I mean, today, we have members, Lesley that are paying that off within a matter of 12 to 24 months, it's incredible. Like they're making that much progress. And the big reason for that is it's nothing secret, it's just we're providing support and accountability, to help them and keep them on track with that. So if you're someone who wants to, you just need to ask that. And it doesn't have to be our membership, it just needs to be you need to have something to keep you on path. And then eventually you need to think long term wise to, you know, when it comes to saving, and when it comes to investing, when it comes to things like retirement and big picture goals, like you mentioned, you have to have the same type of commitment to those two, because that all takes time, and will take time to save up to and invest towards and be committed to so you need to kind of figure that out your life is what is going to be the tool or the system that I'm going to use to kind of stick with it.

23:53
So interesting, because we were talking about I think that exact thing a couple of weeks ago in the podcast, I think it was so exactly what you've been talking about having a structure having accountability you need you don't just need the knowledge, you need all of the other things as well to help you make progress because it's not easy to keep on this. What might feel like a treadmill for you know, it's for years and years and years. And it can be the exact same with clutter. And I'm interested to know, Brad about your relationship now with stuff so obviously had an overconsumption you know, you talked about cars a lot and things you know, so what's your relationship now? It's stuff do you buy stuff do you not buy anything? Do you how do

24:36
I do unfortunately I have to have some relationship with a to a degree because I have kids I can't really quite get rid of them although there are days when I would like to. But I think today I think the way that I go about purchasing items is is more of a through a filter that I've created. And for me, I have you we've we've talked about why you know My why is to I have more time freedom in my life, I want to have more time to be able to do the things that I want to do. So if if I don't want to work as much one week, I want to be able to have the freedom and flexibility in order to do that. So when, when I look at a purchase, I always ask myself is, provide me more time in my life to do things? Or is this going to provide me with less time to do things because obviously, the more things that I purchase and consume, the more money and resources it takes in order to earn the money to be able to buy those things. So I really put it through that filter and say, Does this fit into my why, and it's for me so much easier to say no to a lot of purchases, that don't, but then, you know, there are things that I will spend a little bit of extra money on, and sometimes a lot of extra money on and I pay cash for those things, and I save up but you know, something that I'm really passionate about, like I love to cook, I like cooking food, I like to make good food. So I bought a you know, a grill or a smoker not too long ago, and it took me six months to do it. I was like I found the one that I wanted. And then I really spent those four to six months like really considering that purchase before I pulled the trigger and bought it because I really wanted to make sure that it was going to be something that fit the need that I wanted. And I eventually bought it. And some people might look at that and be like, I would have never spent that kind of money on that. But I also don't spend a lot of money on a lot of other things that a lot of people spend money on. See, I've began just to focus on what are the things that I willing to spend money on. And it's easy to say no to a lot of the other things that you know, I used to emotionally just be impulsive and say, Yeah, I'll buy it. But it really didn't kind of fit into the life that I want.

26:34
Yeah, I love the idea about having a filter. You know, that's kind of what we call intentional spending, I guess and just taking that moment to leave something in Amazon basket or to kind of look at something new or to go back around the shop and come back an hour later, or or all those things. Because online shopping in particular makes it so easy to click buy these days, you know, it's an absolute nightmare. So we're big advocates of like, take out your saved payment details, just so they just got this little extra step that's required before you make that purchase. And so just little hints and tips along the way that are going to stop that by that impulse to buy and we all fall foul of it when all of it, no judgments here. Yeah, and

27:14
I think that's what I do want to mention, I am not perfect, you know, I do mess up at times, it's because it is such an emotional thing. So I will say one of the things that's also helped me is just also giving those purchases time. So if you're feeling impulsive, or you're feeling that urge, because marketing can be so good to get you to buy things, give it 24 hours, just say I'm gonna give it a day. Just don't buy it now. It'll be there tomorrow, right? And 95% of the time, I never go back and buy that thing because the motion or that need or that impulsivity is now gone, and I'm on to something else. So it's amazing how much less stuff you'll buy just by giving those things time. Absolutely.

27:53
So now we were talking before about big picture goals and what what being debt free has allowed you to do? So do you want to tell us a little bit about your journey since 2012? And, and how that has unfolded and how being debt free has been pivotal in your life?

28:10
Yeah, I think sort of for me, number one, I mean, like I said, I never had any dreams or aspirations of starting and running a business like this. But as I started getting out of debt and sharing my journey and sharing how good it was helping my life, people just began to host me asked me for help. And I just got this crazy idea that maybe I could do this for a living. And because I was debt free, I could take that risk finally and say I don't need to make as much money as I'm making it my job I can go actually do something that I'm more passionate about and really love to do. And amazingly enough, I replace my full time income within about seven months of doing it, which is crazy. I never anticipated that. Yeah. But it was it was a pretty exciting and a really a really a blessing that that happened that I was able to do this. And so today, you know, I live exactly the life that I've always planned and tried to live. But it doesn't come with a lot of the challenges. You know, just because I live debt free doesn't mean that I haven't faced a lot of challenges in my life that we've had overcome. One of those was coming up on about six years ago, my wife at the time, we were told that we weren't going to be able to have any more kids. I had one from a previous marriage and my wife Sarah was told that she would never be able to have kids in her life. But amazingly enough, she got pregnant, which is crazy. And we we were surprised to welcome Avery into the world. And unfortunately Avery had some complications during birth where she had lost oxygen and ended up suffering anywhere between 24 to 30 seizures within the first 24 hours of her life. And she she suffered a pretty traumatic brain injury where they later told us within about it was like three or four days later that they told us that, you know she's going to live a really different life. She's going to likely have a lot of complications and a lot of disabilities and you know, likely going to have you know, cerebral palsy and maybe even epilepsy and a lot of things that are just as parents with a completely healthy pregnancy to find out like, Hey, we're going to have a baby. And literally four days later, it's our life has turned completely upside down was a pretty scary place to be. And one of the benefits of obviously doing all the work that we had done with our finances and becoming debt free and being able to control my own time and work from home as we were able to focus 1% on a lot of her therapies for since day one. And we spent a considerable amount of time working with her, you know, at that age, when they're young, you know, the therapists really are training us as her parents to do the therapies with her every day, because obviously, they're not doing therapy with her all the time. So we began to do those therapies with her all the time, every single day, because we worked from home. And because we were able to focus and give our family so or give her so much attention. She is actually today doing amazing, she is a miracle she is walking, she is talking, she is doing all the things that normal five or six year old would be doing, she does have some delays in speech. And she does have some complications with some CP and her left hand. But any typical person outside of maybe her speech delay would look at her like, she's a normal girl. She's She's, she's everything that they said that she wouldn't be. And I gotta say, as a parent, I feel very grateful that she is where she is. And because to be told that she would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, she'll never be able to dance, she'll never be able to play sports, she'll never go to a normal school. She's doing all of those things today. And I contribute not everything. But I contributed a lot of that just because we were able to focus so much of our attention and energy into getting her the help that she needed into, to make sure she had everything she needed in order to be successful. And I continue to be committed to that to this day. And and a big part of that is because financially, we were in a good place in order to do that, if this would have happened when I was in debt, I can't say the outcome would have been the same because we wouldn't have had been had had access to the resources from a financial standpoint, be able to do the things that we were able to do.

31:57
Well, absolutely delighted that she's doing so well. And you know, life is a journey and things happen along the way down there to test and trials and how amazing that you were able to spend that time with your daughter to bring the beautiful girl that she is today. So thank you so much for sharing that story. Brad, thank you so much for being so kind and giving with your information today. So much good information. If you are struggling with debt, if you're struggling with paperwork, we can help you our project paperwork course is available that will take you step by step through all of the types of paperwork that Brad has been speaking about today. And so just wanted to kind of slot that in as we've been talking because it's such an important course to get your ducks in a row. And so the project paperwork course is there as a standalone course or obviously it's within our membership as well. So do check that out. And we will put that into the show notes. So Brad, tell people where where they can find you. Because you've got you've got a podcast, we've got a membership. Tell us all about where people can find you.

32:56
Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the best places maybe hopefully, this conversation, got some light bulbs to go off. And you can kind of see you know, the parallels and obviously the connection with decluttering and also decluttering your finances but one of the best places you can get started is right on our podcast, which is called the debt free dad podcast. The cool part about our podcast is we are all normal everyday people I'm still a normal person I live in a normal house, I drive normal cars we're we're we have normal life challenges on the show. And we're we're speaking to it. And from this financial standpoint, we're speaking to it with the same types of things that you're experiencing, and just how we're handling our finances differently. So we share a lot of fantastic ideas there. We're also have five of us on the show, which means that all five of us have different backgrounds and, and what's helped us get to where we are we have single people, we have people who live in different countries we have, I mean, we have a really good widespread of people on this show that can show you like no matter what your situation is, you can get out of debt, you can make better progress, that's a great place to start. But if you want to take it a step further, yes, we do have a membership. It's called Roots of personal finance, very inexpensive membership to get to be a part of but like I mentioned, support, accountability is a big thing and your journey. It's not just learning what to do, but it's having someone support and hold you accountable to doing it. That's a big part of what we do in our membership. And that's why I call it more of an accountability membership, less of an education membership, it's more of just hey, we're gonna be here to hold your hand and to be there with you every step of the way. So if you want to take that to the next level, and you're looking for that, or memberships, a great place to get started with that too.

34:21
Of course, all the information will be in the show notes for you. So all that's left for me to say about this. Thank you so much. I really really enjoyed this conversation, and we hope to see you soon.

34:31
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

34:38
Thanks so much for listening to the declutter hop podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to us in your podcast player so you don't miss an episode. And we'll see you next week.
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Episode 308 – Becoming debt free with Brad Nelson

Episode 388 – Start as you mean to go on – plan 2026 for decluttering success

Episode 387 – Our 2025 year in review – the big Declutter Hub round-up

Episode 386 – 10 Tell-Tale Signs that you need to Declutter your House

Episode 385 – Life Skills for Kids with Katie Kimball

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