About two weeks after Lesia and Al met, Lesia bought a new car. “I was so excited. ‘I got a car!’ He just looked at me like, ‘You already had a car. Why did you need a new car? That’s just more debt,’” she says. “So I brought a car note into the relationship, but we paid it off and I’m still driving that car.”
The car wasn’t the only thing they paid off. Soon after they married in 2002, Al and Lesia started to focus on tackling their debts. They trimmed expenses, including ending a tendency to frequent high-end restaurants. They paid off all of their debt, including their mortgage, by the end of 2007.
» MORE: Should you pay off debt or save for retirement? Here’s our advice.
Over those five years living in Cincinnati, their annual household income averaged about $149,000. Lesia is an engineer who works in IT, and Al worked at a pharmaceutical company. The couple doesn’t have kids.
In 2010, Al got laid off. Still, he says, “When you lose a 16-year job but you have no debt whatsoever, it allows more options in life. Option A was to get another job, and option B was to follow my passion and purpose to help other people become more financially fit, so that’s what I did.”
Al then launched Game Time Budgeting, a company that offers educational seminars to help people become financially fit. He also wrote “The Uncommon Millionaire,” a book about his money philosophy.
» MORE: 3-step guide to paying off debt
Talking money in monthly meetings
Al and Lesia, both 43, have always made a point of deciding each month where their money will go the following month.
“When we sit down and have our monthly meetings, we become broke on purpose,” Al says. “Every dollar of income that’s coming into the house, we spend it virtually first, before we ever get it.”
That is, they allocate their income to groceries, savings, philanthropy — any and all of their expenses. That includes travel. The Riddicks take three international trips a year, in addition to smaller weekend trips.
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