Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses selling your home to pay down your debt and moving on to a luxury cruise ship with professional photographer, Sue Barr.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Joining me now is Sue Barr, professional photographer, award-winning professional photographer. Sue, it’s so great to see you, good morning to you. Good morning, how are you?

I’m doing okay, I’m great. I’m so excited to talk about your story. To kind of set things up, and people can certainly read the article, we’ll have that linked below in the lower third.

Let’s talk about the circumstances that led to you. And I don’t want to get too personal, but maybe you can paint some broad brushstrokes. What led you to consider selling your home and moving on to a luxury cruise ship?

Sue Barr, Sue Barr Photo

Well, first of all, I wanted to travel. That was my goal after my son was launched and out the door. What I really wanted to do was travel, but I really didn’t have the funds to maintain my house and still travel.

And a friend of mine was a sommelier on a cruise ship, and he would post these amazing pictures of sunsets and wine-soaked dinners and exotic ports. And I thought, oh, that would be great. And he recommended that I become, I think it’s called like, I forget the word, expert or something, a lecturer.

I don’t know what the word, I don’t remember the word.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Like an adjunct lecturer on the cruise line.

Sue Barr, Sue Barr Photo

Yeah, and I thought, oh, that’s great. And then my algorithms started feeding me jobs on cruise ships so I applied. And master photographer sounded like such, like a great job.

Master photographer, see the world, I get to use my expertise. They pay me not a lot, but I’m selling my house and I’m gonna get out of debt. So I get to travel on somebody else’s dime, how perfect.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, I mean, it does, especially for someone who is visual, you see the world through that lens of the camera. And I saw your pictures are just downright amazing is the only way I could describe it. I’m sure there are much better aficionados out there who could describe it better than I.

But can you share a little bit about, I mean, there must’ve been a lot of trepidation even with getting a great job, even with seeing the world, you’re selling your home and then you’re going to be living on a cruise ship. That’s a big step at any point in your life.

Sue Barr, Sue Barr Photo

I think that the lead up to it didn’t let me even think about the huge change. I am always somebody that dives into things. Even when I taught years ago, I would say you’re not gonna learn if you don’t do it.

And fear is something there’s a psychology, a type of psychology called Albert Ellis, where if you’re scared of an elevator, you get in the elevator. So I walked through life with the attitude of just because I’m fearful of it, doesn’t mean I can’t do it. In other words, what I’m the most fearful from, I have to do.

So I was just trying to get out of debt. I was just trying to make my life fulfilling. My son was launched, he was doing well.

The photography business was changing. I couldn’t, and I don’t wanna not get a job, but dealing with overprivileges, moms and dads or 20 year old art directors at agencies that whatever, it was just, the business was changing and I needed to change my life as well. So I wasn’t fearful, you know what I mean?

I was more like trying to get through the pain of letting go of everything.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And I think all of us go through different stages in our lives in terms of our careers, in terms of our lives. You mentioned launching your son. So I think all of us go through that at some point of our, it’s evolution.

So Sue, you’ve obviously made a lot of big changes and this is a big step. You talked about some of the challenges along the way. What were the challenges?

I mean, I have to think that this was definitely a change from moving from living in a big home to potentially living in a smaller cabin or suite.

Sue Barr, Sue Barr Photo

I was on the bottom bunk of a windowless cabin where you couldn’t put toilet paper in the flush it. When you took a shower, you couldn’t use the hot water more than 10 minutes or the fire alarm went off and everybody in your corridor, in your hallway heard it and it went for an hour or more because the bridge somehow didn’t get to us very quickly. You couldn’t use crew elevators because they were always filled with food or cleaning supplies.

And so I was going up and down 15 flights of stairs two or three times a day to get to my studio. So yes, it was a huge change. It was a humbling, physical, exhausting change to having a house which was an open concepts house.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And I mean, so it’s humbling. There’s, you talked about the evolution, your evolution as a person. We’ve got about a minute left and I apologize because we have this short timeframe.

We’ve got about a minute left. I mean, NetNet, were you able to pick, with selling the home, taking this new position, were you able to get yourself out of the financial hole that maybe you were in and are you in a better space today than you were then?

Sue Barr, Sue Barr Photo

Yes, I paid off my back taxes. I paid off everybody I owed. I paid off all the credit cards.

I still have a little bit of debt but it’s manageable. I still, I don’t have a savings account per se, but I will, I still have, I still work and I love what I do as a creative. So I’ll most likely die with a camera in my hand or a pen in my, a camera or a pen in my hand or something.

And what this has done is it’s freed me off, freed me up to pursue all the creative endeavors that I love. And then every so often somebody hires me to do a headshot or a family thing or a brand campaign and I enter it with not the desperation of I need your money. I enter it more with the passion of how can I make this the best I could do?

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, it absolutely sounds liberating. And I think you don’t have to follow the same path that Sue is certainly following, but it just shows that you can follow your path and get to a similar result. Sue Barr, we’re gonna have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. Thanks, have a great day.