I kinda stole this name from my husband. He started a site last night called Voodoo Buddy, referring to all the mods and upgrades he’s done to his Genuine Buddy scooter. He and some other people got the nickname because no one really knew what they were doing, they were using parts not meant for a Buddy, and generally figuring things out for themselves.
I sort of feel like that’s how we started our approach to handling money: we didn’t really know what we were doing, picking and choosing what seemed to work, and figuring it out for ourselves!
Here’s the background:
My husband and I got married when we were both 20. We were high on love and all that, and didn’t really think about our finances. We had no budget, even though my mom nagged me to do one! Shortly after we were married, (I’m talking like 2 months, people!) we were both out of work. And it just seemed like we were scrambling for a foothold for months and months. Of course, in the meantime, we were using our credit cards for survival. Then, after a bit of steady work, we had the amazing opportunity to open a coffee shop with 2 of our friends. At this time, I think we were 23 years old, had no savings, and generally had no business starting a business! The business went well for a while, then not so well, then not at all. Kelly-Shane worked at the cafe full-time (not cashing a paycheck for the last like 4 or 5 months) while I worked at Wells Fargo and then at my dad’s cabinet shop. We simply couldn’t hold on any longer without a second income. And we had been using the credit cards, again, to survive. Not to mention the debts we had from the cafe itself. Fast forward a bit, and we’re working pretty decent jobs, but have major payments on all those debts. And a baby! So in December of 2007, we got a personal loan at a Credit Union to pay off all those cards. That loan would have been paid off in December of 2010, but we did it YESTERDAY!! Which prompted the start of this blog.
I don’t pretend to know all the answers. We’ve learned so much over the last few years, and a friend suggested I should be a “financial advisor for young people”. I’m not quite up for that, I think, but I figured I could try to write up what we’ve done to get ourselves out of debt, and hopefully someone will find something useful in all of it!
~April
