Siouxland Magazine - Volume 3 Issue 2

Inspire
Lessons learned from stories in our community.
Austin and Shelby Pierce
Intentional Strength
By Michelle Lessmann
When Austin and Shelby Pierce became husband
and wife, their combined debt exceeded
$100,000. The bulk of this number came from student
loans from when they attended private colleges, Austin
at Morningside College, and Shelby at Colorado
Christian University in Lakewood, Colorado. Before they
wed, Shelby requested they develop a personalized
premarital counseling program to address various issues
that plague most marriages, including money. That is
when they were introduced to Dave Ramsey’s Financial
Peace University Program. They took the program twice,
once before they married and again to ensure they had
laser focus to tackle their debt.
Like many couples, Austin and Shelby took the Program
because they wanted to start their marriage off right
and take control of their money. In 2015, they made the
decision to follow the program to eliminate their debt.
Within five years, they made their final payment and
became debt-free in December 2020. According to
Austin, they “told their money where to go, instead of
figuring out where it went.”
The couple intently followed four main Ramsey
principles in their quest to become debt-free. First,
they developed a monthly budget and dictated where
they would spend every single dollar they earned that
month. They established categories including the typical
food, rent, and utilities, then added items specific to
them, including weekly date nights. They set the monthly
budget, then followed it religiously. At the beginning of
the next month, Shelby would copy and paste the previous
month’s budget, make adjustments if needed, then repeat
the process, month after month.
Next, Austin and Shelby used Ramsey’s infamous
“envelope system” converting from using credit cards to
an all-cash system. They had physical envelopes for each
budget item and each envelope contained the precise
number of budgeted dollars. Shelby attempted to make
the envelope system more palatable by decorating her
envelopes. When the envelope was empty, plain or fancy,
that category was done. The Pierces laughed that some
months they would have 3 really nice date nights and
then stay at home on the fourth date night because the
envelope was empty, or do something small, like go out
for Blizzards if only a few dollars remained.
Another widely-known piece of Ramsey’s advice the
couple implemented was the Debt Snowball effect to pay
off debt. This system for attacking accumulated debt has
one pay off balances from smallest to largest, regardless
of the debt’s interest rate. Minimum payments are made
on everything except the smallest balance, and the largest
sum is paid toward that. Once that balance is reduced
to zero, those funds are added to the payment on the
second smallest balance until that is paid off, and so on.
In this manner, debt reduction momentum builds and the