What’s worse: being sick, or having to pay for being sick? We were all told that if you go to school, and get a good education, then you’ll be set with a nice income and secure future. What happens if you follow that plan and things go off track with illness, job loss, and curveballs in life?
Ashley Hurst is a nutritionist, and founder of Wellness by Design specializing in treating autoimmune conditions and digestive disorders. She has the glamorous title of entrepreneur, but her path, included some pit stops along the way.
Ashley took an interest in wellness after dealing herself with a digestive condition. It was her dream to be a nutritionist, but reality struck when she graduated and started looking for a job.
She wondered, “Do I need to switch careers, even if I like this? I was applying to jobs for a solid year- one or two places a day.”
And then a big curveball came.
Ashley was in a major car accident and the stress caused a flare up on her digestive track which landed her in the emergency room several times. She found herself owing about $15,000 in medical debt, “It was stressful, and I felt stuck,” said Ashley.
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How Ashley Paid off Medical Debt
Wanting to have a good relationship with money, she wrote on a board in her room what she owed and that she wanted to have $10,000 in savings.
“I changed my mindset too. I had to stop believing that I was bad at finance,” said Ashley.
She started applying a lot of things she learned from Best Money Class Ever. She sold old books on Amazon, looked for freebies, and realized the little things add up.
Everything went back to what she wrote on the board in her room have paid of medical debt.
When grocery shopping, she’d see kale chips and instead she’d make them at home to save money. When paying off debt she prioritized paying off the highest interest debt first and negotiated everything: the interest and what was owed.
She took a couple of jobs in other fields, but realized she wanted to, “start something and bring it to life.”
She listed herself on health professional sites as a nutritionist and received a call one morning from a lady who was crying saying that her son had terrible stomach pain. Ashley began doing one-on-one consultations. Her practice took off and she found additional income working part-time as a nutritionist with Head Start.
With hard work, persistence, and patience she paid off her medical debt and has $10,000 saved for a rainy day.
If you want paid off medical debt and emergency savings you can turn your financial life around too!
