Imagine being in your 20s and nearly half a million dollars in debt. Your skill set includes singing and baking cakes.
And you consider yourself an ostrich person.
If that last part doesn’t make sense, it will. As will the nearly eight-year journey Jade Warshaw and her husband Sam took to pay off the huge sum of money they owed. Now, the icing on the cake is living debt-free.
As for the ostrich reference? She explained: “We were people who knew that there was a problem, but we buried our heads in the sand and thought, ‘I don’t have to deal with this right now. I’m young. It’s probably not as bad as we think.’ That kind of denial.”
While the old joke is that denial is a river in Egypt, it can get you in big trouble financially. With $280,000 in student loan debt, another $100,000 owed on an investment property, and credit card debt which brought the total to $460,000 for her and her husband Sam, the Warshaws’ debt seemed insurmountable. Where does a person in a situation like that even start?
The Journey Begins
Warshaw began with advice from someone who would end up being her eventual employer, money expert Dave Ramsey. She bought the financial guru’s bestselling book “Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Peace” and learned the importance of budgeting and how to pay off debt.The Warshaws began in the most obvious place: cutting back. “To save whatever money that we could, I remember selling a keyboard to try to get $10, it was that tight.” she said. “The next thing we did, we moved, but this time we got roommates that paid half the rent.” Their housing bill dropped from $1,200 per month to $600. Then more cutbacks.
“We sold one of our cars and went down to being a one car family,” she added. They sold all their furniture and slept on an air mattress—for five years.
When they finally bought a couch with cash, it felt like winning the lottery. She recalled the conversation with her husband about getting something most people take for granted. “‘We’ve been going hard for four years. Let’s go get a couch.’ We were so excited, like, this was the first thing that we’d ever taken our foot off the gas and purchased the right way. We didn’t feel guilty about it. And we were so happy we stayed up late and slept on the couch three nights in a row. And it was the best feeling.”
Meanwhile, they both had jobs on cruise ships, which together paid about $30,000. But cruise ship employees have a lot of downtime. Luckily, their financial plan was never off-the-clock. They used the opportunity to take an extra whack at their debt. “I wasn’t going to just sit and chill, and neither was my husband, and so we picked up side hustles,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed baking and been good at it. So I would bake and sell whatever baked goods I had. My husband trained dogs. I gave voice lessons.” The money added up, and the debt continued to go down.
$91,000 to Go
After years of frugal living, they were finally down to the last big note: a $91,000 student loan. It turned out that the loan company holding the note wasn’t doing well financially and was about to be sold. That presented an opportunity to negotiate. “They said, ‘We’re trying to collect whatever we can.’ I said, ‘Well, you know, what would help us is if you could remove some of this outstanding interest that has accrued over all the times that we were not able to pay the bill.’” The company knocked about $15,000 off the amount, which brought it down to the mid-$70,000s.
Coming Full Circle
In 2020, her husband spotted a job opening with Dave Ramsey’s company. He urged her to apply—after all, who better to give advice about getting out of debt than someone who successfully did it? She did her homework, studied the company, applied, and now works as a host helping others.
Warshaw noted that her callers have different issues than she experienced, due to high interest rates, skyrocketing food prices, and rising utility bills. Many are wondering about real estate. “It’s a reflection of what’s going on in the economy and in culture right now. Homes are expensive. People are trying to understand, ‘How do I save up? Am I ready to buy? I don’t want to make a mistake, interest rates are high.’ Right now, we’re seeing a lot of real estate calls. Inflation has been a problem for people, and overall, the cost of living is higher,” she said.Warshaw is passionate about giving back, and she takes great satisfaction from helping those who are in the position she experienced. “I think it’s a very full-circle moment. I never thought I’d be doing this. I thought I’d be in entertainment for the rest of my life, because I love it. But I love helping people with their money, and I remember being the person listening to the show and being so encouraged by what I heard.”
