Kellie is the Director of Client Services at a medical spa in Utah. She wants a kid and a home, but she has over $150,000 in student debt. If you want to be on What We Spend, we’d love to hear from you. Write us at: [email protected] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the premise of 'What We Spend' podcast?
You know how you always want to know about everyone else's money? You do, right? Like, you'll see someone buying something you want or taking some amazing vacation, and you think, how can they afford that? Or you meet your friend's new girlfriend, and she has some very impressive job, and you think, how much money does she make?
I think when it comes to money, even if you don't want to admit it, we're all a little nosy. But I don't know, I actually think that's good. I think we should be talking about money more. And all the ways, big and small, that it impacts our lives. On this show, we are actually going to do that. We are going to go somewhere that we almost never get to go.
Deep into the heart of someone else's finances. Here's how this is going to work. Each week, I'm going to introduce you to a new person from somewhere across the country. And they are going to tell us everything about their finances. How much they make, how much they want to make, what they worry about, or if they don't worry at all.
And then for one week, we'll follow them through their daily routine. Every day, they'll record an audio diary with all the nitty gritty details of how they're spending their money. I mean, the coffees, the groceries, the rent that's due, the car accident that suddenly upends everything. And after that, we'll talk about what the week brought up for them, what it's made them feel.
Because whatever you're buying or not buying or saving or spending, at the end of the day, money is always about more than your balance. I'm Courtney Harrell, and this is What We Spend.
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Chapter 2: Who is Kelly and what is her financial situation?
How much school debt do you have? I have $150,000. I had more. I had $300,000 after my master's. I had a great uncle pass away who was an artist and my parents chose with their share of that that they would help pay off all my private loans. And so that was a crazy night. I remember pressing submit on $150,000 payment and just being like, holy shit.
And they were like, yay, doesn't that feel so much better? And I was kind of like, feels like 50% better and it still feels like I have still $150,000 of debt. This is Kelly.
I turn 32 in one week and I live in Salt Lake City. Kelly is one of the 42.8 million Americans who has student loan debt. And also, like a lot of her generation, she wants to buy a home and have a baby, and she's trying to figure out if it's possible to make all that work.
Kelly married her husband about a year ago, and eight months ago, the two of them moved from Tennessee to Salt Lake City, Utah. Ben is an engineer for a software company, Kelly's a director of client experience at a medical spa, and she's also an online mental wellness coach.
I used to be a therapist, and... For lots of reasons I'm not right now, but I will always have therapy or coaching in my life, and I will probably go back to that full-time at some point.
Kelly is paid hourly, but she makes about $50K a year. And Ben makes about $78K. That's before taxes and health insurance. Together, that puts them just under the average income for married couple families in Salt Lake City. How would you describe your relationship with money?
Consuming. Oh. I would describe it as all consuming. Yeah. The thing that keeps like coming to mind is, you know, when someone has like an addiction or a struggle and they caught like the monkey on their back.
Yeah.
Because you just can't get away from it. It's just clinging and it's present with you all the time. It feels like that. And I try really hard to like be in control, like maintain my control. Yeah. But it's kind of this tug of war.
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Chapter 3: How does Kelly manage her monthly expenses and budget?
I still feel the need to justify like I just need to treat myself sometimes and have my hair washed.
What does that make your expenses altogether, your regular expenses?
Around $4,800 a month, but then you get to debt. How much debt do you have? A lot. If you are including my student loans, we have $202,728 in debt. Where did you go to school? I went to Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Why did you go to school? I thought I was supposed to because I was told that, you know, this is this is the next step.
And I think this is part of like the the dream or the lie that was sold to my generation was like, if you don't go to college, you're going to end up working at McDonald's. You know, like you're going to be a deadbeat and you're going to have to live with your parents and you're probably going to use marijuana even. Yeah.
You know, like, you're going to be a bad person, essentially, if you don't go to college.
Kelly's degree cost about $40,000 a year. And after undergrad, Kelly went on to grad school at the same university. She has a master's in mental health counseling. But as Kelly sees it now, the math doesn't make much sense. I want to ask you something about that, and I mean no judgment with this. Okay. How did you think you were going to pay off that amount of tuition?
Or were you at the time like, I know I can't pay this off. How did you think about it then?
Oh, no, it's a good question. I didn't. I did not think about it. I had no clue what I was doing. It wasn't like, hmm, I wonder how I'm going to pay this off when the average annual salary for a therapist is, $40,000 to $60,000 a year, I was not thinking about that. I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn't really have anyone around me who was explaining what I was doing.
Like, your prefrontal cortex is not developed when you are making those decisions. Ultimately, I don't regret anything because I am who I am, and I'm happy, but I'm financially trapped.
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Chapter 4: What is the extent and impact of Kelly's student loan debt?
struggle not to wonder when it's ever gonna not feel like that when we'll have enough that i can forget oh yeah this bill is gonna come due today and i can forget and it won't be a problem it won't it won't overdraw it won't be the last of the money you know until the next paycheck so okay that's those are my thoughts good night
Total spending for day one, $250.38. Day two.
Okay, so I did not spend any money today. I brought my lunch, so that was good. I had a unique experience today where I actually got some money back. which is a fun and exciting thing to happen. So the story is that I had started a laser hair removal membership about a year and a half ago because I have PCOS. So I had hair on my neck. and chin and chest that I wanted removed.
PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome, is an imbalance of hormones. It causes all kinds of problems, including excess hair growth.
So I started a laser hair membership. And when we moved out here, it was just a lot more expensive living out here, and it was something that I could afford when we were in Tennessee, but I could no longer afford but I thought I was locked into this contract. Anyway, I was convinced to call them and just see what they could do. And so any of the like services that I had,
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Chapter 5: Why did Kelly choose to go to college despite the debt?
paid for already but hadn't redeemed all of that I'm actually going to get that back and so today when I was looking at my bank account I saw these charges and I was like wait what the hell are these until I realized that they were actually green and so they're positive and that's money coming back toward my account which is super exciting so it's going to be
actually like a thousand dollars which is huge i'm just gonna put that straight toward my apple credit card um so i'm really excited that's like actually a huge deal it's a huge dent um it it gets us ahead on our debt snowball by like three months if i just put all of that money immediately toward that card which is so freaking cool
A debt snowball is a strategy to tackle debt. It basically has you pay off your smallest debts first, and then once that's paid off, you roll the payment you were making towards that debt into your next smallest debt. And then you roll that snowball on and on and on until all your debt is paid off. Kelly loves tracking her debt snowball.
Because I can solve the problem in my head. I can solve the problem in theory. And I can even work it out on paper with formulas and make it color coordinated. And it makes it feel so simple and accomplishable. Even though when I look at my spreadsheet, we're not debt-free from just cards. Again, not including my student loans. We're not debt-free until... almost 2027 doing our debt snowball.
And that's if we do it perfectly and nothing happens. So even though that's like a very future distant success of being debt-free, I think there's something satisfying about the fact that I can see it on the paper when it finally hits zero. It just makes a very black and white formulaic easy. It's simple when in real life it's not. Where did you learn to do that? Dave Ramsey, I think.
I had to learn so much shit for myself because it just wasn't stuff that we talked about. And when I have brought that up, like, why didn't we ever talk about that? They're like, we just didn't know that we needed to, you know? And then I think... God, my parents were my age with two kids, and they were just figuring it out also.
Kelly grew up in Colorado Springs, where her mom was a substitute teacher and her dad was an IT manager. What was money like growing up?
Confusing. My parents were doing very, very, very well before 2008. And then the recession happened. And so I remember, all I remember is going from we don't talk about it and really aren't worried about it to like, we can't buy milk anymore and we only go into town once a week. I remember that being like frustrating, confusing, but I could tell that my parents were really upset and anxious.
And so it wasn't something where I felt like I could like be curious about it. It was just kind of like, this is how life is now. No questions asked. I don't remember having any conversations about money. I don't remember ever learning about money. I kind of wish I had had allowance because maybe I would have learned sooner like what budgeting was.
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Chapter 6: How does Kelly feel about tracking every dollar she spends?
So I got lip injections, which is not something I ever thought I would do, but... if they're free, why the hell not? That's really cool. Um, we did over $10,000 today at the spa and, um, we've had some really good days like that where it's 10, 15, 20, 25, sometimes more, um, in a day, which is incredible. Um, Days like today where there's a lot of money passing through my hands.
It's such an interesting type of day. Sometimes I do see the dichotomy of having my feelings about money where I feel trapped. It's something I'm never going to escape where I can't work hard enough to get out of this. Sometimes I see people come in and Because I work at the front desk, I build those invoices and I see the tickets and I know how much they're about to spend.
And some of these people, it's like seven or eight grand and they won't even stop at the desk to like hear how much it was. They're just like, OK, thank you guys so much for everything. Give me a call. You have my card on file and I'll see you in four weeks. And they just walk out the door and they don't know or care that I'm about to charge eight thousand dollars to their card.
Chapter 7: What does Kelly's daily spending look like during the week?
Like that is incredible. It's insane to me. And my boss caught me at one point like in shock about that. And she was like, does that make you like mad? And I was like, no, it's not even mad. Like, I guess jealous. Maybe I'm jealous. that someone has that experience of life that I, you know, I don't think I'll ever experience that.
Maybe I will, but I just think they have a different experience of being alive. I did end up spending more money today than I had anticipated. I got gas and I thought
Kelly got gas for her car, some pretzel bites, and a Coke, bringing her total for the day to $75.
Not a bad day. And we'll see what we do tomorrow. Good night.
Have you ever been that carefree about money?
No, no. I have never felt that kind of freedom around money. I think about money every day, multiple times a day. And sometimes it wins. Like on Friday, Ben and I had a...
a moment where it was like I'm really stressed out about money and I don't feel like you're on the same page with me and I was like I don't feel like you're on the same page with me because I'm not so stressed about money right now because actually I think we're doing well and the reality is what that means is we just need to sit down and have a budget meeting there are two possible relationships with money either it's in control of you or you're in control of it and the moment that you're afraid to look at your bank account you've lost control
So like that's the moment when you need to just dig into that feeling of fear and just redo your budget because it puts you back into that control. Do you feel in control?
think i feel as in control as i possibly can be but god it's frustrating that there are these things that are bigger than us and out of our control yeah you know like god forbid our rent gets raised in november i don't i don't know but that shit is not in my control
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Chapter 8: What is a debt snowball and how is Kelly using it to manage debt?
And it was $125. Anyway, hopefully those get here soon. I think that's about it. Over and out.
Total spending for day four, $144.80. Day five.
Hi, John.
How are you?
I'm doing good. What are you thinking about having today? I need some coffee. I do too. Okay, I just left the Harmon's with my coffee, said bye to John, ate my banana, and I'm walking back to work. Sometimes it's really hard because...
I will do things like that like didn't make my coffee at home so I want to get a coffee out and sometimes I guess it's hard because I make these little choices all day about my life right now right here today in this moment and I have these thoughts like Now I'm $20 further away from my goal of having a child. And it's really, maybe that's, maybe that's too much.
Maybe that's so dramatic, but that's how it feels sometimes. Like I really want these things. I want to own a house. I want to have a child. But this morning I really wanted a coffee and it makes me feel selfish.
After getting coffee, Kelly went to work. She ended up buying an audiobook for $15. And then after work, she went straight to PT.
And after that, we were driving home and we drove past this place that we drive past all the time. It's called Boondocks. But we like looked at it, I guess, this time as we were driving past and we saw that they have mini golf. And so we decided we had some cash and And so we decided to pop in and see how much it would cost. And it was actually just $10 a piece to do mini golf.
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