Hi, I'm Heather
It's great to meet you!
- When I graduated college 15 years ago, I had $80,000 in student loan debt and no real job. I signed up for AmeriCorps, packed up my life in California and moved to New Hampshire to spend the year volunteering, living off a stipend set at the poverty level, grocery shopping with food stamps and rooming with other volunteers in low income housing. This really fueled my understanding of the difference of a ‘need’ vs. ‘want’ and managing a very tight budget.
- During that year I met my future husband in New Hampshire, who had also recently graduated college with $60,000 student loan debt, and was unemployed, living at his parents, and looking for work at the time.
- Fast forward 6 years, we were 28, living in Boston and getting married. We had full-time jobs, were making good money, but still had that $140,000 combined student loan debt looming over us that we had not made much of a dent in with our payments mostly going toward the interest and paying off very little principle.
- At the time, it felt like we would have student loans forever and we would never be homeowners. Despite what felt like an impossibility, we planned, we budgeted, we prioritized what was important to us. We gave every dollar a purpose by paying our bills, spending only on our priorities and cutting expenses, saving, and paying off debt.
- And the best part, fast forward 15 years (I’m now 37!), the financial habits that we created in our 20’s led us to pay off our 6-figure student loan debt, buy our starter house in Massachusetts, sell it and move across the country to buy our dream home in Southern California, save and invest, and become multi-millionaires in our 30’s.
- We did all this while living a purpose filled life growing our faith in our church community, gaining new skills and growing our careers, investing in friendships, and building our family with kids now ages 3 and 6.
- Budgeting isn’t meant to be restricting, it’s supposed to be freeing. It’s a method to help you prioritize what is important to you which gives you the freedom to live a life of purpose without your finances holding you back or keeping you stuck from what God calls you to do.
- I created Loud Budgets to help families build the systems and frameworks, gain the knowledge, and build the motivation to change their financial future and open a world of possibilities for their lives.
