Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I'm Colin. I own a small construction company.
Married. My wife's a nurse. We own two homes in San Jose, and we're broke. Why are you broke if you're a nurse and you've got a construction company?
Because I don't know how to manage money. Oh, okay. How much debt do you got? So I have an SBA loan for the company, $130.
I've got a key lock on one of the houses for $150. One of the houses I owe $700 on and one I owe $600 on. Okay, what about the one you live in? The one that I live in, I owe $600 on.
Okay, so you owe $700 plus $150, $850. What's the other one worth? The one that I live in? No, the other one.
The other one is worth about $2 million. Between $1, $8 and $2, $2. Okay, and so if you sold it, you could be debt-free? Yes.
So why are you hanging on to the investment property? Because for my kids, I imagine, because I don't have a 401k, and I kind of figured that would be my money that I could give to the kids. Okay, well, and then you call me and you're broke, so this is not working. Yeah, so I'm looking for a plan.
So basically you borrowed a HELOC, an SBA loan, and kept a home mortgage in order to buy an investment property. That's in essence what has happened. Or in order to keep an investment property. To keep from selling it.
See, if you had sold it, you wouldn't have the HELOC, and you wouldn't have the SBA loan, and you wouldn't have the mortgage. And so now you can still sell it and not have all of those things. That's a good start. That's probably where I'm starting.
Is that the only debt you've got? I believe. Actually, I probably have $20,000 in credit cards. Okay.
And then we need to sit down and start living on a plan, a budget, so that you and your wife are sitting together with the EveryDollar app. Go through Financial Peace University. I'll give you both. That's my gift.
If you'll do it. Okay, go through the class. Sit down. Start writing out a plan.
So what do you build with your construction business? What kind of buildings do you do? It's actually, it's a waterproofing company, and we work on commercial buildings mostly, and apartment buildings stacks and underground parking garages and podiums and planners. Okay, so you have to, I presume, you have to present a detailed plan and a bid to your customers, don't you?
Absolutely. And then you have to execute that detailed plan and bid in order to make a profit and in order to deliver the service as promised. Is that right? Yes, yes.
All we need to do is apply that exact same skill set to your monthly budget. We're going to lay out a plan for where money's going to go in detail, and we're going to execute the plan. And the two of you, you and your wife, need to agree to that plan before the month begins, just like you and the customer agree to the budget and the schedule of the job. When you get the new job, when you're bidding a job.
And so building a, building a, you know, doing construction work in detail. Now, some people are out of their hip pocket, right? But you're doing it professionally, and if you apply that exact same mentality to your monthly budget, you tell your money what to do before the month begins, and then go do it, you and your wife, and you don't accidentally end up with credit card debt or accidentally go, oh, God, we had to clean up with a HELOC because the HELOC was to cover a mess, wasn't it? Actually, it was to build, I pulled it to build in the house, but yeah, I, yeah, I should have not borrowed the money.
Yeah, yeah. So if you're doing that, then you're not doing any more damage, and you've got peace, and you've got this great income with no payments in the world to prosper by selling the rental. I would sell the rental and get myself on a plan. I can breathe just thinking about selling this thing and being completely debt free with money left over for an emergency fund and then restarting with this fabulous income in California.
Now, if you do that and you don't change your habits, you're going to be right back in a mess again. So it's a two-part answer. You've got to change your habits, get on a plan, start executing like you were doing a job with your spouse, in agreement, hang on, Christian will pick up, we'll get you signed up for everything for free, and if y'all don't go do it, we'll help you do it. And then you'll be safe to sell the rental.
If you sell the rental and keep doing the stupid stuff, you're going to be right back in a hole with no rental to sell. Don't do that. Create your free every-dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.