Seeing light beyond debt

Don't get in a check-out line with Travise Smith if you're buying frills with credit cards. She'll tell you why

ROCK HILL, S.C. -- Travise Smith got fed up with being in debt, and decided to do something about it. The first thing you should know about Travise is this: When she decides to do something, she's hard to stop.

Like the time she packed up and moved from Charlotte to Greenville, S.C., to find a husband. She was 23, working for Duke Power and took a second job at a men's clothing store because, she reasoned, what better place to meet a man? Adrian Smith walked into the store one night and -- you guessed it -- a year later they married.

After three years together, in 2002, they had racked up $172,000 in debt.

They owed $95,000 on the house, $46,000 on her Lincoln Navigator, $24,000 on his Dodge Ram truck, $5,000 to Rhodes Furniture for their bedroom suite and $2,000 to Lowe's for the riding lawn mower and other yard tools.

They owed more than they could afford, so they juggled paying their bills. One month they skipped the light bill; the next month, the water bill; the next month, the telephone bill.

It was a crazy, stressful way to live.

Two things happened that convinced them to change. Their pastor preached in a Bible study class that debt is a burden affecting not only your living, but also your giving. Around the same time, Adrian heard radio host Dave Ramsey advocating a debt-free life.

Travise (pronounced TRAY-vis) and Adrian decided to try.

First to go was the Navigator. Not that Travise didn't love, absolutely love, driving around in that big black SUV. "Oh honey," she said, "I looked good in that Lincoln Navigator!" But. "We couldn't afford it."

They replaced it with a 1972 VW bug that cost them $600.

Adrian, who was working for BellSouth, took a second job cleaning offices every weeknight for nearly a year. Travise sold toys, clothes, "anything that wasn't nailed down" at the flea market. She designed Web sites for churches. She clipped coupons and reduced their weekly food budget, for the two of them and two young sons, to $80. She got a job as a loan officer with a mortgage company.

"Once we paid off the first debt, we used the money we had been paying every month toward that debt to pay down other debts," Adrian said. "It took a lot of discipline. Most people think you're weird because you're not going out to eat after church. It wasn't always easy."

Little by little, they whittled away at what they owed.

Last to go was their house. They sold it, and rented a smaller, two-bedroom house without central heat or air.

Walking the walk

Travise, who is 35, became so convinced about the merits of living debt-free, she counseled clients to try it.

She refused to sign off on mortgages for some people, including Latonya and Richard Leach. They had been pre-approved for a loan by another mortgage company when they met with Travise.

She told them they couldn't afford a bigger payment.

Her straight talk upset Latonya. She wanted a bigger house. She didn't like being turned down.

"Travise said to us, 'I've got to sleep at night and six months to a year from now, when you lose your home or go into foreclosure or realize you shouldn't have done this, I don't want you calling me.'"

Travise sent them home with suggestions jotted down on neon pink sticky-notes.

Latonya and Richard got to talking and eventually concluded that Travise just might be right. Not only about the house -- but about the whole debt-free thing. They stayed where they were. They took their son out of private school. They canceled one of two credit cards. They started saving.

Now, several years later, Latonya and Travise are friends, and Latonya is studying to be a nurse, something she could not have afforded with a bigger mortgage.