Small Things with Great Love

We’re FINALLY Debt FREE!

January 22, 2010 at 12:37 pm (Uncategorized)

On January 16, 2010, Patrick and I fulfilled a goal that we have been working on for two and a half years (since June 2007).  We are finally DEBT FREE!

Before I got married, I knew that normally did not act with wisdom when it came to managing money.  Granted, I wasn’t making much  money, but what I did make, I treated as disposable income because I also had very few expenses.  I lived with my mom because of the nature of my job, and I had extremely low monthly payments are a few thousand dollars I owed on my car.  That was basically it besides the minimum payment due on my large school loans each month.  Other than those things, I would shop and go out to eat A LOT.

When Patrick and I were about to get engaged, we did a budget to see if we could afford it.  What we realized was that we were wasting most of our income on dining, entertainment and clothing.  There was even one month, we had spent about $500 just on going out to eat!  It was shocking and embarrassing when we realized it.  After the first “budget meeting,” we definitely started trying much harder to be good stewards and being careful where we spent our money, but in all honesty, we were only mildly successful.  We didn’t have a plan, and it showed.

When we got married, we moved into our first one-bedroom, 700-square foot apartment.  We got into the habit of praying together each night before going to sleep.  Being mentally and emotionally burdened by our new living expenses, we began to pray that God would help us to be wise and good stewards with the money He gave us.  In the meantime, when we would pay bills, there was often miscommunications and tiffs over the money.  When we looked at our calendar of bills due, there was 3-5 bills due each week because of the number of debts and other living expenses we had taken in including my school loans (the largest amount by far), Patrick’s truck payment (our largest payment monthly), some wedding related stuff, and a couple of small credit cards.  In all it totaled about $65,000.  We felt so imprisoned and controlled by our debts, but we couldn’t ever seem to change our situation in a drastic enough way to make a dent in the debt.  I am not even sure that we realized that getting out of debt was the answer to our problems with money.

One night early in 2007, there was a work event that I had to attend.  It was an open house for a new building that our organization owned.  It was there that a co-worker’s husband, Andy Crais, told me about Dave Ramsey.  What he told me about Dave’s plan for financial freedom intrigued me enough ta tI started trying to catch Dave Ramsey’s radio show in the afternoons.  As I began listening, I realized that I didn’t have to be a financial genius to be sucessful with my personal finances.  He had a simple road markers outlining the path to financial freedom.  Patrick and I began talking through some of the principles I had heard.  Early on, when I would listen to the show, I would get tears in my eyes when someone would scream “I’M DEBT FREE!”  I wanted that type of freedom for us so much.

Finally, I decided that I wanted to know more.  I bought Dave’s book, Financial Peace University.  As I read it, I talked with Patrick about it.  We began to gain confidence that we could perform what Dave called “the baby steps.”  So in June 2007, we made our first budget and made the decision that getting out of debt was our family’s financial goal.  We began withour smallest debt and we poured all our extra money into paying it off.  We reigned in other areas of our life so that we could allocate more money to paying off debt.  We were on “beans and rice, rice and beans,” as Dave would say.

Paying off the first couple of small debts was addictive and made us feel like we were making great progress toward our goal.  As we paid off more debts, we would put the money that had gone to that debt towards the next debt on our list.  As we were doing our “debt snowball,” we continued istening to the radio show and learning how to make wise financial choices in all areas of our life.

For example, payments in general, but especially car payments, perpetuate the cycle of debt in someone’s life.  Honestly, in my whole life, I don’t think the thought had crossed my mind that it was possible to not have a car payment, and to have a paid off martgage, that was just a ridiculous idea.  That was only for really rich or really old people.  Needless to say, this type of teaching added fuel to our “get out of debt” fire.  A debt free life was the kind of life we wanted to have.

As we shared our new goal with family and friends, they rallied around us to support us in the effort.  In fact, some of them joined the “get out of debt” bandwagon.  In fact some of them beat us to the goal!

I’ll never forget the day that Patrick decided to sell his beautiful, comfortable, brand new Tacoma pick up truck to eliminate a large chunk of our debt.  He instead purchased a beat up, no frills, $500 Jeep that he has now drive for about two years.  He sacrificed so much comfort and the appearance of affluence in order to do what was best for our family.  I respect him so much for that!

We both sacrificed.  Learning how to delay the pleasure of spending money was probably the hardest part, but the most rewarding part too.  We have learned that being wise with money is the most loving thing we can do for each other.  We haven’t even bought Christmas gifts for each other in 3 Christmases.  Learning to delay pleasure for the greater good is a lesson that has changed us forever — thank goodness!

In this process we have totally gotten on the same page financially and never fight about money now.  Statistics say that the leading cause of divorce in America is money problems.  Thank goodness because of the last two years, we’re not going to be in that statistic. In fact, making money decisions together has added to the openness and intimacy of our marriage because we have been able to share our dreams and set goals together.

It was difficult to work to bring our financial life into order.  There were many times I thought we might not meet our financial goals.  Later in the process, it wasn’t nearly as fun because the periods of time between successes became longer because of the size of the debts.  But yesterday, we finally did it!  We sat on our couch and pushed the send button on the computer to make our very last payment to Sallie Mae.  And two and a half years later, we are not only debt free but we are different people now.