“Make money the byproduct of what you do and what you do will be more fun.” – Chris Brady
The ripple effect from a life transformed simply can’t be measured. That kind of impact is precisely what the Financial Fitness Program is doing for so many customers around the world. We are so proud of the people who have decided to courageously defeat the status quo by embarking on a new journey towards escaping the Financial Matrix. Here is Kent and Bobbie Butters story:
As early as when I was a young girl in my twenties, I kept a spiral notebook with my monthly expenses and income. I always balanced my checkbook with the bank statement to the penny!! If it wasn’t balanced, I would work (sometimes for hours) to find my mistake. That said, I considered myself to be ‘financially fit.’ But here is our story as it unfolds…
Long before many of you (readers) were born, in 1981, I married my childhood sweetheart from 9th grade, Kent Butters. In the beginning, life was challenging since we were blending three children from prior marriages and dealing with ex’s. Eventually, we were able to manage those challenges. At that time, Kent’s mastery was radiator repair work. His dream was to own his own shop and become a business owner, so we purchased a radiator repair shop. I was working for the Federal Government- so I had a “secure” paying job.
We ran our radiator shop for eight years. Kent did the repair work and I did the books (without a computer). While operating our business, we learned the difference between an expense and an investment. After digging a large financial hole for ourselves, we closed the shop. Unfortunately, we lost our home, and Kent went back to being a Shop Foreman for another radiator company. Owning a business was not our mastery.
We both continued working in this manner during the 1990’s, and in 1995 Salt Lake City was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympics. We continued to work our “day jobs”, but started volunteering at the Snow Basin Ski Resort as event staff, where several of the events were to be held. When the Olympics finally came to Salt Lake City in 2002, both Kent and I were Team Leaders, but still volunteers. My dream was to work at the next Olympics in 2004 in Athens, Greece and my persistence and several emails to the HR Manager got us on the International Team. From there, we continued to work our “day jobs” until the summer of 2004 when I retired from my Federal Government position and Kent had worked his way up to be an Independent Sales Representative. Shortly thereafter, we left to work at the Athens Olympics.
Prior to working in Athens, Greece and after working as volunteers for the SLC Winter Olympics, we were hired by the North American division of the same company that we worked for in Athens. We worked as event staff and security at events in surrounding states. Kent and I had always been generous with our time and money to help other people prior to working with this company, but after working 13 years as event staff, even more of that ‘customer service’ nature had been instilled in our being.
Since we were now members of the International Division of the Company, we were fortunate enough to work at the 2006 Torino, Italy and 2010 Vancouver, Canada, Winter Olympics. But, while we were enjoying these awesome experiences, we again incurred some major financial setbacks at home. We had a family member who needed several thousands of dollars of help and after the 2010 Olympics, Kent incurred a job loss.
“I was now only receiving my annuity and working events which does not pay very much income. So, we bought groceries and paid bills with our credit cards, again digging ourselves into another big financial hole.”
Finally, in 2014, Financial Fitness was presented to us and we began our journey. That fall, Kent and I read through the Financial Fitness Book which started to changed some of our thinking. We consolidated all of our credit card debt to get out from the high interest rates and we used our home as collateral. Now we were able to pay almost double payments on that ONE low interest bill instead of three high interest bills.
Our thinking continued to change even more. Since Kent had worked for more than one employer, he had invested in a Roth IRA. We finally consulted with two of our mentors about cashing in the IRA and paying off our mortgage. Both of them told us to go ahead and make that financial move. Our ‘Financial Advisor’ (where the Roth IRA was kept) tried for nearly an hour to talk us out of making that move, but we stood strong and withdrew it and paid off our home loan, which now makes us completely DEBT FREE!!!
We had already retired from the event service company in 2015 while Kent was working as an Armed Security Officer. Then, on December 23, 2016, he left his job to join me in retirement. We are both fully pursuing entrepreneurship on our quest towards living the life we’ve always wanted.
We are now totally DEBT FREE, RETIRED, and LOVING LIFE!!!
Congratulations to Kent and Bobbie Butters on escaping the Financial Matrix. Your story is an inspiration to many!
Brandon J Perry says
That’s awesome for you guys. Love how you cashed some things out to pay off all the debt. Now you have all the extra money to invest.