Sara & Ian

… over one year, we have … cleared our debt, reduced monthly outgoing expenses, and saved a bucket of money.

A bit over one year ago, my wife convinced me that we should get some extra help with our finances. I didn’t want to believe we needed help, and thought I had things under control (or at least, under control ‘enough’). It’s funny though: In hindsight, we were struggling month by month to keep up with the bills. The debt just wasn’t going away, and we were unable to make any progress towards increasing our savings.

Literally by the time we had our second meeting with Phil, we had a revised money management and budgeting plan in place (including a variety of new accounts and reconciled debt) and were starting to get back on track. I didn’t quite understand how it all worked to start with, but with Phil’s guidance over one year, we have progressed from significant debt and no ability to save to having cleared our debt, reduced monthly outgoing expenses, and saved a bucket of money. And we are now looking at spending a year overseas with my wife’s family.

It is fundamentally a simple philosophy, but why do we all manage to get it wrong? I am so thankful that we committed to this budgeting process. We are now in a far more comfortable financial position and feel we have the skills to maintain our budgeting into the future. And we know it is worth the effort. It’s also surprisingly helpful when you need to report your ‘spending performance’ to Phil at the end of the month. Somehow, the thought of ‘what would Phil say!?’ provides that extra bit of encouragement that is sometimes needed! Thanks so much Phil!