Financial Freak Show

While cruising around twitter I came across a guy cruising around Detriot delivering pizzas in an attempt to cruise his way out of $101,000 in debt. To keep himself sane while he’s working deliverawaydebt updates his loyal followers on how his pizza delivery world.

With tweets like his “stiffy alerts” (when folks don’t tip him) and various other customer updates I had to learn more about Jeff and his leased Hummer H3 drivin’pizza delivery story. Actual tweets from deliverawaydebt:

4/14-Delivered to the local Moose Club. I deliver to their cook every friday night. I walk in and shout JIMMY! He shouts JEFF! back. Nice

0/21 STIFFED stupid lazy lady wouldn’t get off her big butt to sign the credit card slip. Had her kid walk it 2 feet to her- LAZY!!

3/18-1/31 Thanks for the buck! I loved climbing the 75 stairs to get to you door. Hope you don’t get any bbq sauce on you, 20 wings

STIFFY ALERT!! 0/13 Guy looked like a drug dealer. Had on a watch that looked worth $10 grand plus. Prob rhinestones from the be-dazzler kit

First the Lions win today and then my first run is a 5 dollar tip. What a day!

STIFFY ALERT-lady was singing the song from Dora the Explorer. I even finished the song for her and she still stiffed me. Guess I need vocal lessons

2/13- dude was in a smoking jacket. Must’a been expecting a playboy bunny. Sorry man no dice.

$62 on 13. Made more on Sunday than Friday again. Time to go home and go to bed 5am is just around the corner

4/16-0/12.96 STIFFY ALERT yeah she counted out the 96 cents for me. Thanks lady I guess it’s back to the Coinstar machine later.

This guy is killing it for all the right reasons! – enjoy this post written by the legend himself…

Everyone who’s working on paying down their debt has a specific moment they decide to start the long and painfully journey.  For my wife and me it was a couple of months after returning from an overseas assignment in China.

In February 2007 we had taken an excellent promotion which would fast track my career and put the money we needed into our pockets so we could pay off our debt.  At this point we still had not combined our money; we’d been married about 6 months.  She was working and paying for her car, credit card, and her other bills.  I was paying all of my bills, the house, and entertainment for us.  We were two people with proportional amounts of debt given our separate incomes.  We never sat down and talked about money, we never took the time to see the totals of our debt.  I was making good money and all the bills were being paid, so there must not have been a problem.  Budget, not us we didn’t need one.  Budgets are for poor people who don’t make as much money as we do.  The new job was going to take care of the debt anyway, right?  Our thought was once the normal bills were paid everything left over would be applied directly to our debt. 

We returned to the US in March 2008.  I decided I didn’t like the job and was not the right person for the position.  Add on the fact that we really didn’t like the location.  We were 2 of 20 foreigners living among 3.8 million Chinese.  I took a demotion and returned to my old job.  Now remember the new job was going to pay off the debt we had.  Upon our return we had made zero progress on paying down the debt, wasting a whole year of opportunity.   The next major problem was that we loss of the $1,950 per month by working outside the USA.  Upon returning all overtime was eliminated, the $2,000 a month I received before the trip was now gone.  We had a deficit of almost $2,000 per month to figure out how to cover. 

My wife worked in Media Planning (marketing) before our move to China.  She could go back to work to make up our money shortage, but we also found out we were pregnant for the second time.  Day care for a young toddler and a newborn would cost us $1800 per month, wiping out any money my wife could have made.  Back to the drawing board we went.  I’d been listening to Dave Ramsey for a couple of weeks when I heard him say that delivering pizzas was a great way to make extra income.  After talking it over with my wife, we decided that I would make the sacrifice and take on a second job.  I applied and was accepted to a new pizza joint down the street.  I started delivering in May 2008. 

In January 2009, I drafted our first budget.  Following Ramsey’s advice and after reading a ton on the subject of budgeting, I was able to put everything on paper and see how the money moved in and out of our hands.  We did this for a few months and felt that we were in control but the debt wasn’t going down.  There had to be a better way.  In April 2009, my wife politely suggested we seek out some professional help (she’d been asking to do this for quite awhile, but I was the roadblock to making it happen.)  Yep, I am definitely one of those people who never ask for help.  It’s a good thing my wife knows this and stepped in to straighten me out. 

I looked for a Financial Coach on the Dave Ramsey’s website under the Endorsed Local Providers section (ELP), and found one that was in my area.  With one call to the ELP we had an appointment set up for the next week.  After our initial counseling session my wife and I were excited to get started.  We drafted a better budget and started to use it.  Two weeks later we meet with our Financial Coach and were able to fine tune it and put his system into practice.

We had a total of 3 coaching sessions and after a little over 4 months after starting our plan we had paid off over $13,000 on our debt.  Wow, looking back this was the single most valuable step we’ve taken in our quest to eliminate debt.  Now 100% of the money generated through delivering pizza is applied to our debt.  We’ve paid off both vehicles and use that extra $700 per month to eliminate the debt.  We’ve also been able to pay off another credit card giving us another $100 per month.  That totals to around $2,000 per month including the pizza money that we put toward the debt. 

My wife and started with $101,000 to eliminate.  That’s including our second mortgage and all personal, credit card, and student loan debt.  We finally feel like we are making headway, our debt free date is Oct 2011.  This will be a long in difficult road, but having a plan and working it is the only way we will get there.  Being away from my family at night is one of most difficult things I’ve had to do.  When I look into my kids eyes though, I know it will be worth it.  They will have completely funded college accounts, they will have parents who don’t argue about money, and they will learn about money at an early age and will have their Father around to play with and love them.  It’s tough, but nothing in life that really matters is easy. 

If you’re interested in reading about the day in the life of a pizza delivery driver, follow me on Twitter at @deliverawaydebt.  I tweet about the crazy things that happen during my shifts. I’ve also started a blog to write about all the fun my family is having paying off debt.  http://deliverawaydebt.com/

Thanks to FinancialFreakShow for allowing me to share my story with you

 Jeff Kosola

-post written by Jeff Kosola - Thanks Jeff, your an inspiration!