Two Millennials Trading Consumption For Wealth

MONEY TWO

Millennials TradingConsumption for WEALTH

By Eugene & LaKeisha Partridge

Hello! Eugene and LaKeisha Partridge here. Guess what? In 27 months, we paid off $109,319.22 in consumer debt spread across credit cards, store cards, auto loans, and other loans! We now live a cash-based lifestyle, investing over 31% of our annual income across eight different investment instruments. Do we have your attention?

In February 2018, we chose a life of wealth over consumption. We both started new jobs within one week of each other. A very close friend of ours, Ashley Brewster (@impact_financial on Instagram), heard the good news and insisted that she take us out to dinner. She asked her mother to watch our three daughters, and out to dinner we went. Little did we know that this dinner would change everything.

To understand our ascension, you must understand our genesis. We started our marriage as two broke people in the negative. According to the stats, we are not alone. The median net worth of Black families under age 35 is $600, between ages 35-54 - $40.1K, and over age 55 - $53.8K (Federal Reserve Board, 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances). Let that sink in for a moment. There is a net worth crisis in America. The “Keeping up with the Joneses” mentality, mass advertising, and social media comparison have created a hyper consumption society. We are broke. In 2015, we experienced lifestyle inflation. Our incomes increased substantially, and so did our standard of living. We wanted our slice of the American Dream, so we built a house more than double the square footage of our condo. Our credit was excellent, so why not finance everything inside the new home, too? You get a couch! You get a lawn mower! You get a refrigerator! To make matters worse, I left the closing table and bought my wife a car. In America, we believe that if we can “afford” the payment, we can afford the item. This explains why the average U.S. consumer debt is at a record high of $92,727.

We got sick of debt and asked God for a change. We didn’t ask for “supernatural debt cancellation,” or for checks in the mail. We simply asked God for a strategy to pay all our debts in full. Our incomes increased again in 2018 and we refused to make 2015’s mistake again. We had been tracking Ashley’s debt free journey on social media. Our celebratory dinner metamorphosed into a three-hour financial intervention. We hired Ashley as our financial coach on the spot. We sat down on May 24, 2018, had our rights read to us, and committed to the plan she created. We cancelled a trip to Disney to focus on our destiny. We got out of every leadership position and extracurricular activity that didn’t support the plan.

The first thing we did was stopped digging. Ashley literally confiscated our credit cards. We created an automated cash-based strategy where portions of our paychecks went to separate accounts: Personal, Debts, Bills, Kids, Giving, Food & Gas, Emergency Fund, Car Fund, Dream Fund, and School Fees. We worked side hustles and applied any extra money to debt. We now have a high-powered investment strategy that will make us multi-millionaires at retirement. Stewardship changed everything. The church needs to shift its focus from giving to wholistic stewardship. Proper stewardship would make giving automatic, ultimately changing the financial make up of our churches. How can we give freely when the money we are giving belongs to someone else? Our renewed mindset toward stewardship is the reason God continues to bless and expand us financially. When we get our financial houses in order, God can trust us with more. Proverbs 13:11 (NIV) reads, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.” We chose financial integrity. God did the rest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eugene and LaKeisha Partridge reside in Cincinnati, Ohio, with their three daughters, Sanei, Audrey, and Tori. They attend Greater Emanuel Apostolic Temple where Suffragan Bishop LaVelton J. Daniel is pastor. Keisha recently joined Nike as a Sr. Talent Sourcer and is an AAU basketball coach. Eugene is a licensed minister, the Director of Procurement at Paycor, an author of two books, a producer, and a TEDx speaker.