In this testimonial, a single‑income parent from Hawaii recounts the family’s financial hardships while raising six children and teaching Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Unsatisfied with slow progress, they met Alan of One‑on‑One Financial (101 Financial). Alan emphasized "speed" as the key differentiator from Ramsey’s approach. Within the first month of the program, the family paid off about $10,000 in consumer debt and a student loan, and over the following year eliminated roughly $40,000 in debt. This rapid debt reduction allowed the partner to secure employment, the parent to leave full‑time work to care for the children, and the family to break the cycle of poverty, providing better educational opportunities for their kids. The speaker highlights how the program’s focus on swift action transformed their financial situation and restored hope for the family’s future.
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At the time we were introduced to One-on-One Financial, I was the single income for our family. Floyd was in school full-time, and we have, yeah, 6 kids together. So we were really busy, pretty strapped financially, but it, I mean, and just to try to learn how to do things better, I was actually facilitating Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and teaching his courses so that I could learn. But even with all of that, I wasn't able to get ahead. We weren't able to get ahead very Quickly. And growing up in Hawaii, it's a hard economy in general, but it's also really difficult for local people to get ahead. And as I watched and read story after story of local people who were able to get out of debt and pay off their homes and buy second homes and things like that, I was— I knew there was something to it.
After we had talked about it, we decided we were going to meet with Alan And I'll be honest, as we were driving down, I thought, oh, here we go with another one of these multi-level marketing things. But walked in, sat down with Alan. I asked him, Alan, what's the difference between what you're doing and what Dave Ramsey's doing? Because they seem like basically the same thing. And he told me one word, and that word was speed. Speed. And that immediately kind of caught my attention because, like, like Belle was saying, we didn't— we weren't making much traction and our debt snowball was still about the size of a pea. And so we sat through the presentation and long story short, we were students. About 2 days later, we were able to pay off about $10,000 worth of Consumer debt and a student loan within that first month.
So it was pretty exciting. It was, it was a little bit difficult to be the only ones that we knew of as 101 students away from Hawaii. But throughout the last couple of years, you know, cars would break down, and what would normally break us if appliances broke or other things would just completely stress us out, we were able to manage it and move things through and, and do things the way that we were taught within the past year. We've also been able to pay off about $40,000 at least in debt and have put ourselves in a place where now Floyd has a job and we were able to accurately weigh out the benefits, pros and cons of my leaving my full-time work and being able to come home and actually raise my own kids instead of have the daycare do it, which has been a really beautiful blessing for our family and helped us in our goals. I mean, one of my biggest drives to learn finances, and my desire to figure things out financially was not just to personally get ahead, but to allow my kids the education and the ability to learn what they need to learn so that they don't have to suffer the way we have in poverty and in limitation, and provide them with a way to really soar. And that's been exciting.
One on One Financial is not necessarily a business of Making people rich, but they are a business of— sorry, they are a business of bringing families hope that maybe otherwise wouldn't have it. And I don't know why I got emotional. That's okay. That really is the truth. You walk in and you're bringing a gift, and it's a gift of hope.
