Saturday, February 17, 2007

The Bruce Williams Call

It has been a VERY slow week on the Change Race Front. I found 1 penny, and sadly that's it!

I have to admit that I have always been a fan of talk radio, and one of my favorite shows is The Bruce Williams Show. I used to listen to him in High School & College, because he always had interesting views on current events, and had very sound financial advice. (Just in case you are interested in other talk radio shows I am interested in, I like Jim Rome. I also podcast the old Loveline shows, along with Rounders a poker show and about 15 other podcasts)

One night in college, I was working at the front desk of the YMCA, listening to Bruce Williams, and decided to call up and ask him if he had any thoughts about how I could get out of the mounting Credit Card debt that I was getting in college. I was amazed to get through and basically Bruce told me to that I needed to either increase my input or decrease my output. It was just that simple. It was good advice, but sadly not what I wanted to hear at the time.

When I moved to Houston, Marti and I were about $12,000 in Credit Card Debt. I decided to take Bruce's plan into action. We spent very little, and ate a lot of Ramon Noodles and Mac & Cheese dinners. I also got a part-time job to "increase my input". As we worked down our debt, my goal was to call up Bruce Williams's show again when I was totally debt free, and thank him for his advice and for all his financial comments through-out the years.

Well in 2005 Marti and I were debt free, and I made my call to Bruce. He seemed very thankful for my comments and it was a good moment for me, since I had achieved my goal of paying off my Credit Card Debt. (Side note, we still have NO credit card debt!)

On Thursday, I was listening to the Bruce Williams show on my iPod. Bruce was off last week, so it was a "Best of" show. I was in the shower listening to the show, but also just spacing out, when I heard a voice that sounded REALLY familiar. Then about 2 minutes in, I realized that it was ME! A very surreal moment. But it was nice to know that the producers of the Bruce Williams show enjoyed my call enough that it made the cut for the Best of show.

Total since last post - $0.01
Total for the Race - $216.86

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Neat story. I also like talk radio. I'm very glad to hear of your debt-free ways.

Anonymous said...

Loved the story - good times for sure:)

lpkitten said...

congrats on staying debt free...i know that once you've been there, you never want to go back!

Chris said...

Did Bruce rack you or did you get the buzzer? Hopefully you were a stand up interview.

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nhcardhunter said...

Great story, Bailey. Being debt free and staying that way is a long hard road to hold. Looks like you're at the top of the mountain now.

Best,

Jim

Anonymous said...

Great job paying off your debt and staying debt free. I am completely with you on that one! :) I'm curious, what do you do with the money you have found? Do you spend it or save it?

beth said...

thats neat! sounds like something i ought to do :)

Bailey said...

Thank you all for the comments. Good to hear from the peanut gallery! :-)

Brian - Good to hear that I'm not the only one who likes talk radio. Any favorite shows of yours?

Becca:) - Thanks. I think it's time for you to make your OWN blog!

lpkitten - You are so right. Once you get out of that hole, you NEVER want to go back!

chris - sadly, Bruce did not rack me. I guess I didn't make anybody spit mountain dew all over their laptop screen.

nhcardhunter - I am now working on losing about 25 more lbs. I have 15 down already. Once I do that, THEN I might be near the top of that mountain.

Change is a good thing (CGT) - If you search the history of this blog, you can see what I did with the first $100 I found. I bought 100 scratch off lottery tickets. Since I reached the goal of $100, I have been just keeping the money and doing nothing special with it. Any ideas?

beth - I'm not sure what you are referring to, but I think it is a good idea to pay of your debt AND call Bruce Williams! :-)