Rachel Jonat spent most of her young adult life dreaming of Olympic medals and crossing finish lines.
But the games came and went and she began a new chapter as a wife and mother. Both roles forced her to take a hard look at the debt she and her husband were facing: $82,000 in total.
They clawed their way out one step at a time, attributing most of their success to the practice of minimalism.
"I've always lived with debt."
Since opening her first line of credit at 17, Jonat says she's been in a constant state of debt.
The bills only piled higher as she did everything possible to fund her dream of rowing professionally in the Olympics. She eventually qualified in 2003 – with some collateral damage along the way.
"I had financed my Olympic dream with credit cards," she says. "My mom stepped in and took out a second mortgage on her home to help me with that. I've always lived with debt. It just seemed normal."
The newlyweds kept the debt cycle going
The couple married in 2007.
Their wedding expenses went straight to plastic, but it was when they started renovating their new home in 2009 that things started to get scary.
"That's when we really hit the big numbers," she recalls. "We decided to tally up our debt and start paying it off. That was our scary moment. It was a huge number but we decided to do whatever we could."
Then they discovered Minimalism
At the time, her husband's income was erratic at best and she was on maternity leave from work at a bank.
Then her sister started sending along links to articles on Minimalism.
From what Jonat could tell, it looked like nothing but 20-somethings backpacking across some developing nation or another – not exactly the ideal lifestyle for a couple with a newborn.
But something about the idea grabbed her. "It was definitely very new to me, this idea that your stuff 'owned' you," she says.
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