I have been asked many times to share Our Debt free Story. So I thought I would take the time to do just that.
So our journey started in around July 2010. I was reading one of my favorite bloggers (moneysavingmom.com) and she did a post about Dave Ramsey. She talked about how her family paid off their debt and even paid cash for their new house!! ( How cool would that be!). So after reading her blog I started to research who this Dave Ramsey fellow was and how we could start this journey as well. I mean how cool would it be to have no payments!!
So after researching I talked to Tom about this and how the baby steps work. I will stop here for a minute. If you have never heard of Dave Ramsey you can go here and you will be able to see what the baby steps are and how they work. You can also go under the show tab and listen or watch his show live, which I do , it gives you so much motivation!
Okay back to the story....
I told Tom how great this guy was and that we should do a budget and we could have no payments and be debt free. ( yeah , he was skeptical!) , but he agreed and off we went onto our debt free journey. I started meal planning, couponing, making everything I could from scratch and we put every ounce of extra money we could to our debts. We continued to pray for guidance with our money as well.
The debts we had were just like everyone else's or as Dave would says we were just "normal". We had my student loan debt, 3 or so credit card debts , a car loan and of course since we just had our 2nd son we went and bought a used minivan ( but took a loan out on it). Close to $45,000.00 in debt! Yep normal... As we were going through this journey Tom was laid off twice, but we kept going and I think that gave us more motivation to get the debts paid off!
Before we new it, the credit card debt was gone, then the car payment, then the student loan and last but not least our van payment!!! We became debt free July '13!!! That was a very surreal day for us, making that last payment and it really did take a long time to sink in that we didn't have any payments ,except our mortgage.
Some people may think we are strange.. we don't own any credit cards, we own both our vehicles ( one car is from when I was in high school and the paint is chipping) which are both reaching 113,000 miles but they are paid for so they drive like a dream!, we don't buy anything unless it is with cash.
So fast forward to today as we are starting a new journey in our debt free journey! The journey to pay our house off early and have no more mortgage payments !! We are getting there slowly but surely and yes it will take us a good bit to get it done, but we know we can do this , because we have tackled debt before. Yes, it will take a lot of sacrifices and yes we will get tired and discouraged. But with each other, prayer and support from others and our family. We can do this!
And so can you!!! I hope telling our story helps you , whether you are just getting started or you just needed more motivation as you are on your journey! Keep going you can do this and before you know it you will be able to yell "I'M DEBT FREE!!!".
I would love to hear the story of your journey to becoming debt free! Whether you just started or you are still on your debt free journey, leave your story in the comments! You may also motivate or inspire someone else to get financial freedom!
~Katie
