The Good Life

Broke, deep in debt and out of work, she overcame her financial obstacles to build her own advice empire.

Nowadays, people call me “the Ann Landers of personal finance.” Back in 1982, if anyone had told me that someday I’d write a newsletter—and a book!—to teach people how to get out of debt, I wouldn’t have known whether to laugh or to cry. The only thing I was an expert on was getting into debt. My family was on the brink of financial ruin. We had run out of credit. We had no savings. No income. Nothing.

That fall day, I looked with dismay at the envelopes that arrived in the mail. More bills to add to the mountain of debt my husband, Harold, and I had amassed. I had no idea how much we owed. What did it matter? We didn’t have the money to pay off even one of our debts. Harold and I had barely spoken since our business collapsed a month earlier. There’s no way out of this mess, I thought.

It seemed so easy at the beginning, when the first credit card arrived—a gas station card I’d gotten “to be safe.” The first time I handed it to the guy at the pump, I felt like a queen. Pretty soon, offers were flooding our mailbox. “Look,” I said to Harold, “this bank wants to give us a ten-thousand-dollar credit line!” Why not? Harold was a banker. I had a good job. I wanted our little boys, Jeremy and Joshua, to have everything I didn’t have growing up as a pastor’s daughter. And, anyway, the expensive things we had made us look successful. Nobody had to know that we hadn’t come close to paying for that brand-new car in the garage or the fancy vacations we took.

When I maxed out one card, a new card would somehow magically come in the mail. It was as though God wanted to support my spending habit—or at last the credit companies did. And if the cards failed, I could write a check. Harold was the branch manager at our local bank. “Honey, you’d better watch it about all those bouncing checks,” he said one day with a grave face. “My boss has spoken to me about it a couple of times.”

“Maybe we need to get new jobs,” I said. “Or start our own business.”

“We’ll refinance our house,” he said. We did—more than once. And, of course, the mountain of debt just grew.

Then an acquaintance told us about a door-to-door venture, a surefire way of making cash. “You’ll be millionaires in a matter of months!” he promised, and he was very convincing. Harold quit his job and we finagled a twenty-two-thousand-dollar loan to invest in the start-up. We should have known better. It was a complete scam. The “quality merchandise” we were supposed to sell turned out to be junk. Our so-called partners disappeared into thin air.

So there I was that September day staring at the pile of bills on the desk. I had to talk to somebody. I dashed outside and jumped into our new car (which by now we couldn’t afford to service). In a daze I found myself driving to Harold’s parents house. Maybe they’d have a solution. Or a loan.

I rang the doorbell. No answer. I let myself in and sat at the table in the empty kitchen. I stared into space and felt terribly alone. Suddenly, I was overcome by tears. I couldn’t stop crying. “It’s all my fault!” I nearly screamed. “Oh, God, please forgive me. We’ll find a way to get out of this mess somehow. But, we can’t do it by ourselves.”

And there in the silence of my mother-in-law’s kitchen I heard God say, You don’t have to. I heard him loud and clear: I’m here for you. But what did God know about getting out of debt? I thought of God as an expert on things of the heart, not money. Then I thought of my behavior over the past few years. I had let “things” take over my heart—all those luxuries that were supposed to make us happier. My problem wasn’t just money. It was how I used it and thought of it—worshipped it even.

Just put me first, God seemed to be saying. The rest will fall into place.

Feeling a strange measure of peace for a woman on the verge of bankruptcy, I drove home. Harold and I talked and we made a pledge that no matter what, we’d get ourselves out of this hole we’d fallen into. We’d stop spending and start paying back. No matter what, we’d stay close as a family and we wouldn’t forget God. In fact, even as we paid off the bills, we’d still give to our church and other charities. It was a way of putting God first.

Days later, I got an unexpected call from a colleague I’d worked with in commercial real estate. “Mary, would you be interested in managing some properties?” he asked me. Would I ever!

“It’s a small salary plus commission,” I told Harold. “But it’s something.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll take care of the house and the boys.”

With that I started opening up those bills. I phoned every single creditor and assured them that if they gave us time, we’d pay them off.

But how? Small steps first.

We stopped eating out. I culled the supermarket flyers for bargains and made simple, nutritious meals that pleased all of us. Over one supper of burgers and salad, eight-year-old Jeremy said, “Mom, this is better than eating out,” and Joshua, six, agreed.

Whenever I got a commission, I increased the payments on the bills, and slowly I began to see progress. I followed a system of paying down the card with the lowest balance first. When it was paid off, I moved on to the next lowest balance. As each account was paid off, I canceled it, cut up the card and said a relieved prayer of thanks.

After nearly three years as a stay-at-home dad, Harold was eager to get back to work. We opened our own real estate firm. The business took off and we adopted a formula of 10-10-80. Whenever we received any income, we gave away the first 10 percent—to our church and to charity—and put the next 10 percent into savings. Our budget eventually allowed us to live debt-free, except for our mortgage. We kept one credit card for convenience, but we paid it off in full each and every month.

In church one Sunday our pastor challenged us in his sermon. “Let God stretch your imagination,” he preached, “so that you can touch the world for him.” A light went on. Just days earlier I had heard a radio program about someone who had started a newsletter that was reaching thousands of people. I could write a newsletter on how to get out of debt! I thought excitedly.

Thus was born The Cheapskate Monthly. I printed 4,000 copies, rented a mailing list and sent them out. The result: three subscribers, including my mother-in-law! But then a copy of the newsletter reached a reporter who decided to look me up. The story ran in the Los Angeles Times and my phone rang off the hook.

It took more than a dozen years to get out of debt—and a staggering one hundred thousand dollars. Along the way I learned so much, but putting God first was the first step. Words from Romans are always on my mind: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” With no debt, I feel like there’s a lot more room for love. And you know what? That’s the way to the good life.

Mary Hunt is the author of Live Your Life at Half the Price. You can find her books and more information at debtproofliving.com.

Read Mary's tips for getting out of debt in 7 Secrets to Debt-Free Living.