According to a recent study, 80% of Americans have some form of debt.  80%!  Time Magazine reports 86% of women will have children by the end of their childbearing years.

This is a huge percentage of people choosing to have kids while in debt.  For 80%+ of the American population, having kids while in debt is completely normal.

If you are wanting to join the 20% of Americans not in debt, but you still want to have a family, how do you accomplish that?  Is it possible to have a family and get out of debt?

The good news is yes, it is absolutely possible to get out of debt with a family.  The bad news is, it won’t happen overnight and it is going to take some work. Okay, a lot of work.

When I first graduated from college with a crap ton of debt, I wasn’t worried about it.  It was just my husband and I. We were going to get great jobs and knock this stuff out in a few years.  

Well, fast-forward to two kids in two years and we were looking at a whole different game.  

If you are thinking about having kids while in debt or if you already have kids and realize you should get out of debt, it will be totally doable.  It just might suck sometimes (total transparency). This is a topic I constantly research. What is the secret of people who can do this?

How do they make it work?  What do I need to do to dump debt while having a family?

What I found were lots of little things you can do to pay off debt with a family, but there are 7 key things to do if you want to have a family and still get out of debt.

7 Secrets to Pay Off Debt While Growing a Family:

1.  Budget

You HAVE to budget.  There is absolutely no way around this.  Without a budget, you are going nowhere super fast.  The budget is the foundation for everything. Every hope and dream you have will only be accomplished through the budget.

I always hear budgets being described as the “roadmap” to get out of debt.  That is absolutely true. Your budget will show you where your money is going and when you decide to put “X” amount of dollars toward your debt that month, it will happen.  Without this key player, you will never get out of debt.

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2.  Set Goals

Just like anything in life, you have to know where you want to go in order to get there.  This starts with writing down some goals. People who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve them than those who don’t (source).

Give yourself some goals with timelines.  What is your debt payoff goal for 1 month from now, 6 months from now, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years?  Commit to the process by saying things out loud and writing them down.

Having goals will actually make you accountable.  Especially if you and your husband are conquering this together.  You can hold each other accountable. It is good to set dates of achievement for these as well.  Nothing keeps you focused like an impending deadline!

When you have written goals, it becomes real.  You don’t want to let yourself down. Without goals, you will just be floating along “paying off debt,” but not really attacking it with all you’ve got.  You will be selling yourself short without goals in place.

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3.  Meal Plan

Don’t run away!!  I promise this isn’t as bad as it sounds.  But seriously, this is one of the keys to paying off debt while having a family.  Food is America’s biggest budget buster (source).  Between eating out and groceries, we blow insane amounts of money on food.

Meal planning:

• eliminates the need to eat out (unless it is budgeted for),
• it provides a meal every day,
• and it ensures you will have all the ingredients on hand for the meal.  

You will have no excuse to waste your money eating out or making unnecessary trips to the grocery store.

This has been one of the biggest game-changers for my own budget and debt payoff plan.  Once I started meal planning, I never went over budget on food again.

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4.  Creatively Save

This is probably the secret with the most information out there.  What I mean by this is for every single item line in your budget, you need to figure out how to reduce the expense.  Find cheaper rent, cut out memberships, change cell phone providers, lower electric usage, have a clothing spending freeze, shop for insurance every year, make your own products, etc.

You can find one million ideas out there to help you cut costs within your budget.  With a family, you will most likely never pay full price for anything ever again. Kids go through things so quickly, you won’t be able to rationalize paying full price.  

Some may say this is the only secret to having a family and getting out of debt, but truly this is just one small piece that will help free up some of your money for debt payoff.  This is not the whole equation though.

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5.  Plan

You need to be a family with a plan, and constantly adapting plans to pay off debt at the same time.  These plans I’m talking about are called sinking funds. These are like mini saving accounts for the expenses you know you will have, but they don’t happen every single month.

If you are serious about having a family and getting out of debt, you need to be very in tune with monitoring your budget and spending patterns.  Paying attention to the patterns in your spending will help you better prepare for the upcoming months.

One of the biggest setbacks people face (aside from a true emergency) is all of those little expenses they forgot about.  Things like the annual sewer bill, insurance premiums, real estate taxes, school pictures, medical appointments, Christmas, etc.  

All of these kinds of expenses can be planned for if you pay attention.  You need to be able to look at your previous budgets and realize you need an oil change every 6 months, or your husband needs a new pair of tennis shoes every 12 months.  Once you pick up on spending patterns, you will be able to predict what is coming and save appropriately.

These sinking funds will put in place the money you need when the expense comes up.  There is no need to panic about being over budget. With enough monitoring, you can plan for pretty much anything that will come up in the future.  This will help keep your debt payoff on track and drastically lower your stress level when things come up.

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6.  Focus

To truly be successful at debt payoff, you may have to hit pause during your journey.  This seems counterintuitive, but trust me, it works. If you are actively growing your family, that needs to be your focus.  If you are done growing your family and want to get out of debt, that needs to be your focus.

If you are pregnant or plan to be, you need to stop debt payoff and shift your focus to baby prep.  This can be frustrating when you feel like debt payoff is stalled, but it is the most responsible thing you can do.  

Once you have the baby and all of your checkpoints for financial security are met (for me this is maternity leave is complete and all medical bills are paid), then you can focus on debt payoff again.

At that point, the baby will be built into your budget as a member of your family, and you will focus on debt payoff.  Is your budget going to increase with each child? More than likely, but that’s okay. Just adjust your budget as you go.  

The important thing is to not try and split your focus between a baby and debt payoff.  If you try to do both things, you will do neither one well. You just need to stop for the 9 months to focus on the baby and then you can resume your debt payoff plan.

This is the price you will pay for growing your family while trying to pay off debt.  You will have to occasionally pump the brakes with each child you have. Instead of being frustrated, be thankful you are in a position to be financially ready for a new baby and you can pick up where you left off after the baby arrives.

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7.  Practice Contentment

This is the single most important secret to having a family and still getting out of debt.  Really let this one sink in. If you want to have kids and pay off debt, you need to practice contentment.

This means you need to be fulfilled and satisfied by your life.  If you are discontent, you are constantly going to be wanting more, trying to keep up with the Joneses (who are broke by the way!) and feeling unhappy with your life.

Contentment is typically not something that comes easily for most Americans.  We live in a very superficial, consumer-driven country. Bigger, better, faster is what we want, and we want it now.  There is always some new thing advertising is telling us we need. If you listen to all of this outside noise, you will always be wanting more.

The truth is, it is going to be really challenging to have kids and still get out of debt without making some sacrifices.  This means telling yourself, “No.” You will have to learn to live with less and be happy about it. You basically have to choose to be content or you are going to be miserable.

For a lot of us, this is a journey.  Contentment doesn’t happen overnight, but it will develop over time.  When you start to live on a budget, find creative ways to save and see the benefits of those things (being able to have children), you will find yourself changing.

Suddenly, those material things aren’t going to matter.  You are going to cherish people and experiences way more than stuff.  When you truly start to see the dollar value of things that will eventually end up in landfills, you just don’t care about them anymore.  You learn to live with what you have and be happy.

If you can master contentment, you can be confident knowing you can build a family and still get out of debt.  No question.

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Is it actually possible to have a family and still get out of debt?  If you use these seven secrets, there is no question you can do both.  When you practice contentment the rest falls into place. You will have no problem budgeting, meal planning, goal setting, planning or looking for ways to save.  If you do these things, you really can have it all.

Do you have any additional tips to grow a family and get out of debt?

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