A Force To Be Reckoned With
A Force To Be Reckoned With
235. Summer is Over, Now What? Life and Debt Update
It's been a while! Listen in to hear what we've been up to and how our debt free journey is coming,
We are at war and it's not against our neighbors, spouses, children, politicians or whatever else we feel like we're battling against.
Speaker 2:So the questions are who's the fight against, and are we winning or losing? We're the Adkins, and we are a force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 1:Are you ready to join the?
Speaker 2:force.
Speaker 1:All right, action, all right. Hi guys, you're gonna have to get the text how do you feel? A little bit rusty uh, yeah, what do I uh yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, you almost did the hand joke I. I know I was like I've done that so many episodes?
Speaker 1:Oh, not the Ricky Bobby hand joke again Unsubscribe. I'm out.
Speaker 2:How are you guys?
Speaker 1:How was your summer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when was the last episode that we had come out? Oh, hi guys, it's us again.
Speaker 2:Another unexpected May 13th dang three months, like three months sabbatical sabbatical it was not a sabbatical, it was an act sabbatical walking through the valley of the shadow of death deathical, I'm just kidding yeah. So sorry guys, here we are again doing the walk of shame. The talk of shame didn't mean to take a break on you well, I mean, we did, but not this well norm. What happened was we were like okay, next week we're gonna air our episode talking about how we're gonna take summer off and be intentional with the kids, and then we never recorded the episode and we just took a break.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and then we just we had what probably 1500 pieces of fan mail come in requesting us to come back on our bad guys are bad. No, you know what the you know what the mail was actually like. The fan mail was actually like Did you hear that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can hear it. Oh, I can't hear it.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's crickets. Hopefully they can hear it.
Speaker 2:The sad thing is, though, for real, when you're not consistent with the podcast, not only does it stop growing, people are like oh, I'll just find another podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll listen to some others. They've moved on. Oh, these people are smarter than them. I'm just gonna stick with them yeah.
Speaker 2:So, with that said, make sure you're you're following the podcast, send it to a friend, that's that. All right, two minutes in and we're gonna give you a summer recap, a life and dead update. We're gonna to give you a summer recap, a life and debt update. We're going to do our best to keep it within 20 minutes. I feel like we can do it because this has been the story of our lives where you saying we're only going to last 20 minutes has happened as many times as me saying that I'm going to do the Ricky Bobby hands and it never happens.
Speaker 2:First life and debt update is life has been crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, and we have been so much less social than we have wanted to be, and so when we do have the tiny pockets of time to spend time with our friends or our family that we're normally like regularly keeping up with, this is what it's like. It's like cramming in as much as we possibly can into two or three minutes while being interrupted with kids Somebody's crying, Another one's peeing in the rocks, another one just wrecked on their bike and you manage it.
Speaker 1:Peeing in the rocks is fine, though. They can do that, that's fine. That's an allowed one. Okay, right, I mean been a loud one okay, right, I mean so much life has happened since it has recorded.
Speaker 2:So go ahead, dive in what go ahead? Oh, carter broke his collarbone. That happened. That was happened in the very beginning of the summer carter's collarbone snapped in half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he's. Uh, you know football has started and all he's allowed to do is run.
Speaker 2:But you know what Natural consequences. We're very sad. We're not trying to be harsh parents or anything like that, but he did something he knew he wasn't allowed to do. He did it anyway. He broke his collarbone and as a result.
Speaker 1:Now he has to deal with the ramifications.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so do we.
Speaker 1:This is real life, life lessons.
Speaker 2:But anyway, overall it was a very good summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We hope that you guys had a good summer. What were you going to say?
Speaker 1:We adopted Crew.
Speaker 2:Yes, we adopted Crew.
Speaker 1:And that's his name, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:That was a great way to kick off the summer. Carter broke his collarbone A couple days later. We adopted Crew and then well, actually no we went on vacation before that. That was a great way to kick off the summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, butter did break his collarbone before vacation no, not before the first vacation yes, it was. No, yes, it was not before top sale.
Speaker 2:He didn't have a call it broken collarbone for top sale didn't he huh, oh, I thought he did no, anyway. So yeah, big thing, we, we adopted Crew. He's awesome, we love him. And if you guys are following me on social media. You see his face now. I actually haven't been posting as much as I normally do, but he's on there and he's super cute. So yeah, but overall we had a good summer. We went on two trips, we got to spend some time with friends and family. We enjoyed our pool a lot.
Speaker 2:And the biggest reason for that. The summer was drastically different than last, because we had babies, yeah, we had crew and we have what do we even call on her?
Speaker 1:I don't know and we have. What have we been calling her?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but we have another baby.
Speaker 1:Baby M.
Speaker 2:And there's a 13-year age gap, and so that's been challenging. Yeah, because.
Speaker 1:And it's not even the 13-year age gap either. It's having two, two babies, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like you can't really do much, where last year we were out? Um, you know, if we wanted to go ride our bikes on a trail, we could do that. If we wanted to go out on our friend's boat, we could. We could do whatever we wanted. We had independent kids and we're more, more.
Speaker 1:What's the fluid?
Speaker 2:but we had the old ball and chains this year. They're cute ball and chains, but they're ball and chains and so we were kind of homebound a lot yeah.
Speaker 1:And now that we're like saying this out loud right now, just how critical was it that we got our whole pool area done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the timing on that was definitely.
Speaker 1:That was perfect.
Speaker 2:God made it work, worked it all out, because we did. We spent a lot of time at home and also even at home. It was like sometimes we were so tired just from managing our family life right now that we didn't even really. I mean, we did host a good amount, but we didn't host as much as we had originally planned to yeah, and it was kind of like last minute.
Speaker 1:Most of the time it wasn't like some planned out thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah so but yeah, overall it was good. We did our summer bucket list first official. We always like try to do that, but we never had it written out on poster. I actually stole that from my sister-in-law whitney. She does that, has done that for as long as I think she's been a mom that's where you got the idea well, we always do the list of things, but she writes it out on a poster every year yeah, that was smart yeah, so I took that from her.
Speaker 1:Thanks wit hung it in the hallway where you could see it all the time it wasn't pretty like hers is.
Speaker 2:It was just very, you know, very, bethany yeah you just get a white poster board and have the kids write it everything's kind of crooked crooked. That's terrible. I just know some people who are listening to this right now and thinking yeah I can visualize it but I love her anyway.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, we did our summer bucket list. We didn't cross everything off the list, but we got. We got a lot done and I will say we, I'm doing one for every season. I'm going to do a fall one which we're actually going to talk about that next episode.
Speaker 1:So but it's a good idea because it made us honestly you have this visual in front of you. We had this list of things that everybody wanted to do and it was like a reminder and it made us do some things when we maybe wouldn't have normally have done something. Yeah, and the cool thing is I was listening to this um like podcast, uh, the other day, and they were talking about how most of your core memories from a kid are when you do things outside of your normal daily routine, and so that's why a lot of your people's core memories are going on a trip or something like that, because it's outside of your normal routine, and so by doing a summer bucket list, it makes us do things that are outside of our normal routine.
Speaker 2:So I guess we'll find out in 15 years or so if any of these end up being a core memory for the, for the kids, but at least increases the opportunity for that for sure made us be way more intentional with them than we probably would have I agree completely and I will say, like, for the little things it did, it forced us and we, we got them, we did them and that's why I really want to do it for every season, which, again, we'll talk about that more next week, so you'll have to come back. So, yeah, summer bucket list it did help us to be more intentional. I feel like we made lots of memories. My well, I don't want to say it was my favorite, because we did. We did do like a lot of fun little things this year.
Speaker 2:A common theme on this podcast is that we both struggle with, not struggle, but yeah, we're constantly working on intentionality and I again, that was the theme this summer. It's just like, I think, having a 13 year old and then having babies already when you have, when you go into those teenage years, it like kind of makes you have a pit in your stomach, like holy crap, we have a teenager no, how did this happen?
Speaker 2:but then when you have babies too on top of that, you see the contrast and just how fast it goes like it truly has felt like a blink and we have a 13 year old and I just think there is something I've always kind of feel.
Speaker 2:This like it's just this time is so fleeting, but I felt it even more this summer of like man, we have five years left with him. I was just talking about this with a with a friend, um, this week or I don't know recently, and that's not that long, and so we really got to make it count. We we've said that so many times on this podcast, but just being more intentional, that's, that's what the theme.
Speaker 1:What sunk in for me when you think about this stuff like that, is that so crew when he graduates high school? Let's just say it's in 17 years I might be dead by then, oh my gosh. Can we not talk about that again? Um so 17 years, I'll be 55 old carter will be 30 that's insane liberty will be 27 there that's insane and Liberty will be 27. There's a very strong likelihood that we'll be grandparents by the time Crew graduates from high school.
Speaker 2:How did this happen? We never intended for this. It's wild. This is also something I've had to remind myself in this season of life, and especially this summer. And there's not going to be many takeaways in this episode, but if there are any, one, do yourself a favor and if you have kids, just make a bucket list. Doesn't have to be pretty, you can do it on a note card for all I care. Two, oh gosh, what was it? What were you?
Speaker 1:just talking about how he's gonna graduate in 17 years will be grandparents likely. Carter will be 30, liberty will be 27 I lost it.
Speaker 2:Let me go back. All right, guys. Sorry, there's so much pressure, there's so much to say.
Speaker 2:I've had to remind myself that this is the family that God has given us, every single one of our kids.
Speaker 2:They came in God's timing, from biological down to adoption, through foster care down to foster care, and so we we not like okay, so just deal with it. But like, this is the family god has given us, so we need to steward it well and also be thankful for that, for the blessing of that and the complexities that come with it and the hardships that come with it. I've had to remind myself of that when we get invited to go do something and the crowd, the friends, the things that we used to do last summer we have had to not take steps back from, but we just haven't been able to do. It's made me sometimes feel resentful in this season of being chained down. But instead of having that feeling of resentment, I need to be more appreciative and just like look at the babies, and time is so fast and like also this these babies are such a blessing, and so are my big kids, and so there is good in it too.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I don't know, just like shifting that perspective yeah, I mean, it does really change the dynamics when, like our friend groups, don't have babies yeah, it's been really hard.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, for me I would say emotionally, and you too it has been hard. Yeah, I mean you're not crying over there like I am, but it sucks. I'm asleep and I think it's okay to acknowledge when sometimes family dynamics suck.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'll be honest, it sucks sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but through hard things is how we grow and get better, and yeah, yeah. So, anyways, are we going to move on to? Are we gonna move on to debt?
Speaker 2:yeah, so with that move on to debt.
Speaker 1:We'll be on your 20 minute schedule.
Speaker 2:Maybe for once I think we can do this. So with that we mentioned we took trips this summer, yeah yeah, and we did take trips and we did get our pool done. Shout out to. Who are we giving a shout out to?
Speaker 1:John J Robinson.
Speaker 2:John Jacob Jingleheimer Robinson. Seriously, we love our pool. It's still like half done. We have so many other pools.
Speaker 1:It's not half done.
Speaker 2:Okay, like 75%. There's so many things that are driving me crazy about it but, we also wanted to enjoy the pool and not be doing projects all summer, so we made it functional and we're saving some of the other projects I mean it's more than functional yeah it's. It's nice. We love our pool. We got it done. It was done by Robertson Concrete and we're so thankful.
Speaker 1:Just to clarify it's Robertson not Robinson like Will Robinson. It's Robertson like the Duck Dynasty people. Yeah, and I will tell you no relation that I'm more of.
Speaker 2:They're good friends of ours but we are not singing their praises because they're good friends of ours. John James Robertson, he is a man of steel. He doesn't even listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, he listens, he just won't come on.
Speaker 2:He won't come on. No, he doesn't. I know he doesn't. He that guy, guy, I love him, he will get it done and he will get it done right and he is very anal, and that is a good thing when you're getting your concrete board.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it is. It's not a good thing when you're on his boat but it is a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm scared of him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you're on the boat he's like was that a crumb?
Speaker 2:yeah, he's one of my closest friends, but he'll send me to bed shaking in my boots like I am scared of him oh, and heaven forbid if elisa's driving oh boy the boat and he doesn't like because she's off by 0.01 miles per hour he shakes that weight just isn't perfect never been more ashamed. But anyway, yeah, we got our pool done and we took trips, and the whole point of tying this into the debt is the pool was a like.
Speaker 1:We saved for that for a long time while we're giving the shout out, though, I do got to give an another special shout out to joe griffin, who works with jj, because he killed it with the our roof. Yeah, thing, yeah, and the whole crew. We love you, joe, joe yeah, the whole crew did an awesome job on everything. Hey, can you?
Speaker 2:imagine if you heard me call them JoJo. Hey, JoJo.
Speaker 1:Hey, JoJo Griff.
Speaker 2:Hey, joey, and you know what, while we're at it, we're going to give a shout out to his other guy, jeff. What are the other guy's names? I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:No, they all did an awesome job. They hustled.
Speaker 2:They sure did.
Speaker 1:And it turned out great.
Speaker 2:But if you want concrete, you better get on his waiting list for 2028, because he's backed up, bro, um I demand when you're good at what you do. You got a lot to do, but we saved for the pool for years yeah and so I I just got finished reading this book, the slight edge.
Speaker 2:I've mentioned it before. It's one of my like reading it now, 10 years into reading personal development books, it's still really really good. It's very simple, but I remember reading it back in 2015 and I was like this is mind-blowing, this is so good and it's still like the principles are so good and it was great to reinforce. But, um, just like small practices over time, that's the slight edge every single day, consistency, and so it's easy like I just want to be clear here, because we're talking about getting out of debt and we're going to share our numbers and like we're also talking about going on vacation and doing the pool and it's easy to be on the outside looking in and be like, well, they just must make a ton of money or whatever we don't, but we saved for the pool. Like we have lived here for four years and the pools needed done since we moved here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we just saved and worked hard and we paid cash for it, because that was one of our resolutions this year we're not getting into any more debt and we successfully did that. And it felt so.
Speaker 1:We were very disciplined. I mean, we were very disciplined on getting into debt and then but now we've been.
Speaker 2:We've been very disciplined on getting out of debt and very intentional about it yeah, and that's also why there's some projects out there that aren't finished aren't finished and they're not going to be until next year, because we're out of money oh, I'm gonna have to replay this back for you when you say, oh, why? Don't we just do this, and why don't we?
Speaker 2:just do this, we're doing the front door, buddy. We're doing the facelift on the house. We're doing it, but anyway, same thing with the vacations. The whole thing is like we love dave ramsey we talked about this in may but also when you're a family who's working on being intentional and being a force to be reckoned with and focusing on being a christian family part of what's so, so important, of like having children that love God and don't want to rebel when they're 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, which they're probably still going to in some ways.
Speaker 2:They're not going to be perfect, but it's implementing fun being a fun, a family with a fun culture, and making memories with them and not just being the like.
Speaker 1:It's important to be structured and strict and have expectations, but, like you, got to throw fun in there too, and so part of our family culture is taking the trips yeah, and that's why we've done a mix of of creating, like, events and things that are free, some that cost a little bit of money, and then some like taking trips because the beach yeah, for sure, it's just, it's important and but with that we paid for those trips with cash and we went and did the trips but we were frugal, as frugal as we could be, on the trips.
Speaker 1:We didn't like you know and by cash we mean same as cash with our chase credit card no interest for 18 months.
Speaker 2:So we're good to go now, but that that's like that's kind of our philosophy if you love dave ramsey, he's probably, yeah, he's wouldn't agree with this, but that's just what's important to us and that's just what we did good, so take the trip, but pay cash for it yeah okay, where do you want to go from here?
Speaker 1:Let's get the numbers out.
Speaker 2:Alright. Isn't there something else we can talk about.
Speaker 1:Why is this so hard for you?
Speaker 2:It's just yeah, I don't know. I feel like I did want to say some other stuff, but I won't delay the inevitable.
Speaker 1:You just wanted to say other stuff, because you don't want to tell everybody the numbers every time I know it's so like it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Like I said before, when we didn't have a community and friends and stuff here, I didn't care if people knew my business because they were all strangers.
Speaker 1:But now it's just uncomfortable now I don't care, I'll lay in bed at night and be like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:why are you doing this?
Speaker 1:but you can't live your life in secrecy okay, you can't, and it gives you a reason be like oh nope, sorry, I can't do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, getting out of debt yeah, so we last updated you guys. What month was that?
Speaker 1:it was apr.
Speaker 2:Go ahead and say that, Abner.
Speaker 1:So in April we were at $83,582.95.
Speaker 2:Of debt, of debt With what was that? Was it?
Speaker 1:seven lines. How many lines of credit did we have there? We were down to six at that point. Okay, how many lines of credit did we have there?
Speaker 2:We were down to six at that point and so that was okay. This is going to get a little tricky, so we were starting the year at 91,000. I can't see. Sorry, I was counting the lines 978, 18.
Speaker 1:I'm counting eight.
Speaker 2:Minus 83,582, 55. 83,582.55. So at that point, from January to April, we had paid off $8,300 in debt. That's pretty good. That's about two grand a month but we were paying down lines of credit. And so we didn't update you in May, we didn't update you in June, we didn't update you in may.
Speaker 1:We didn't update you in june.
Speaker 2:We didn't update you in july, but we're in august and, baby girl, we're updating you, so do you want to read that number? So now we are at 100 000 but I feel like history is repeating itself.
Speaker 1:It probably always will.
Speaker 2:No, it will not.
Speaker 1:We are now at $64,871.71.
Speaker 2:That's great. So from April 83, 582, 95 minus 64, 871. No, no, no, that's not right. We're not at that. That's wrong guys.
Speaker 1:How's that wrong?
Speaker 2:Because we have to plug these numbers in. It's actually higher than that.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Well, now I don't feel as good about myself.
Speaker 2:I was feeling like there's no way we did that just kidding should we rewind it?
Speaker 1:no, all right. So we're actually at 75,367 dollars and 57 cents dang. I was feeling so good. I was like I don't even know how we did that yeah, I was like this cannot be right I picked up some extra jobs. I started stealing things and selling them online, so this is crazy because from January to April we paid off $8,300.
Speaker 2:And from April to August we paid off $8,200. So this is where we're consistently paying off about this average of the same amount per month, Minus 75, 367, 57. Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not right 91, 978. Sorry, I should have done this before we hit record, Minus 75, 367, 57. So I should have been able to add that in my head eight plus eight. We've paid off since January 16,610 and 61. And we're down to one, two, three, four, five lines of credit. So we paid off two lines of credit. So that's good. The good news is the debt snowball is starting to kick in, so the lines of credit are coming down. We're getting to the bigger lines of credit, but it does feel like momentum is picking up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the other things that we did too is we just we continue to try to just audit our budget and so we've we went through and like cut out some different subscriptions and things like that, Even things that we could have, you know, justified doing Like I cut out some of my like supplement subscriptions and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will say if you want takeaways for the debt piece of like, all right. Well, how do we even figure out that? Well, we're in the beginning of the year we were so overwhelmed by how much debt we had accrued and like how many lines of credit and how much money we were paying out every month in in credit card and lines of credit bills alone, and then we were also seeing how much interest was accruing every month that we felt so, so, so, financially strapped. So again, read the slight edge. They talk a lot about finances in there too.
Speaker 2:I will say this applied there, but man, I forgot. I was gonna say again, i't know. But as you start paying off, you start to feel like you can breathe again. And if you feel like I can't possibly do that, I don't have breathing room, these are the takeaways. That's what I was going to say. Just like Corey said, go through your budget, clean it up. In the beginning of the year we had canceled all of our TV subscriptions, like, if you are like I don't want to live like a poor person, well, guess what, if you're in debt, you are a poor person.
Speaker 1:So get with the program and start canceling stuff yeah, I mean, really the only thing that we've made exceptions for has been things that were intentional with our family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even like well, a big, were you going to say more about that? A big one for us is we're both super into like this health stuff and even those we had to really look at it and say is this subscription worth it? Like we know that it is good but, is it worth it?
Speaker 2:in this, as we're trying to get out of this debt, and for some of them we were like, no, it's not, we can do without this, because if we can take this $150 subscription toward this supplement package and apply it toward $150 credit card payment, we can double up the payment and get out of the debt quicker and we're not accruing interest. So that was a big one.
Speaker 1:And we continue to. I mean, we still will eat out at some times, but we cut that back.
Speaker 2:Significantly.
Speaker 1:Significantly and have done more meals at home.
Speaker 2:Which this is a whole other episode of. We weren't eating out like, oh, we're going to go eat McDonald's, we're going to go eat Taco Bell. We need to eat out. Our life was so fast-paced that it was like we were failing to plan ahead, and then I was working all day and working into the evenings and then it came and it's six o'clock and I don't have any meat unthawed and no dinner and we have to order something.
Speaker 1:You look, it's one of those moments where you look in the fridge and you're like, oh, we got a bunch of meat, but it's frozen yeah.
Speaker 2:so this this is a bigger conversation, of which I'm gonna talk about this in three episodes of shifts that we've made in our life and scaling back. But sometimes the debt issue is more of a overcommitment issue of, like, if you're going so fast that you don't even have time or margin to breathe and plan, and like, think about meals and you're just constantly eating out, it might not be that you have lack of discipline in your finances, but you have lack of discipline in another area of your life and it's affecting your finances, and that was definitely the case for us.
Speaker 2:We've we've gotten out of like shave stuff back in our schedules and it has allowed me to go back to not every week because we're still super busy, but really trying to plan and make sure, okay, do we have the food that we need to feed our family for the week, so that we're not eating out? Yeah, and sometimes it sucks, and sometimes it's not like this elaborate dinner. Most of the times it's not because we have five kids and I don't want to clean a bunch of dishes.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and just one other thing I want to say is that sometimes, when you're in the middle of this and you're trying to get out of debt and you start to get that little bit of wiggle room, you can like make excuses to expand the eating out or subscriptions or whatever.
Speaker 1:And I would just encourage you to double down and, once you get that breathing room, just reevaluate again and see if there's anything more that you can cut and stick to the disciplines that you have.
Speaker 1:And that's one of the things that I'm hoping that we learn from this and getting out of this debt because this is the second round of us doing this is once we get out of debt, because what happened last time is we got out of debt and we felt that freedom and that wiggle room and then we just started putting things back on credit again because we were like, oh, it's fine, we'll pay it off.
Speaker 1:It's not, it's one right and then one turns into multiple and then you're right back in the same boat, so and even just moving into the house and not being fully financially prepared for the projects and things that we wanted to do. So one of the things that I really you and I have even talked about this, but I just I want to learn from this is not only getting out of debt, but then also, after doing that and even maybe a little bit while doing that is we've talked about this a little bit but building some savings and investments so that we so, when we do get out of debt and we look at it and you know what, if we want to move and to a new house or build a house or something, what if we want to do something else, is that now we're prepared for taking that on without getting ourselves back into this situation again?
Speaker 2:Definitely it's that offense and defensive finances yeah so well.
Speaker 2:We hardly scratched the surface of what all has taken place in the last, you know, several months and, but this is a good starting place, so we hope that you guys are doing well. We're glad to be back. We, I told myself, because I don't want to get in this spot again, I'm not airing this first episode until I had originally said I have eight episodes recorded and queued up and scheduled, but it's looking like we're going to be more at the five to six episode. So just know, if you're hearing this episode, we have at least six weeks in the books and we're going to keep getting into a good rhythm. And so there's. I had already recorded an interview, um with somebody. That it's. It's an incredible episode. We have a back to school episode. Next week we have another episode, just with a lot of really good nuggets and takeaways and a lot of good stuff in the works. So hope that you'll come back next week. Thank you for listening you.