I have been a stay at home mom a majority of my adult life. Because of this, our family has had to be careful with our spending. My husband makes a decent salary, but things happen when you least expect them. At one point we were $37,598 in debt. This wasn’t due to extravagant spending as some might believe, but our used mini van and medical bills. Our long term goal was to become debt free and decided to debt snowball our way to freedom.
My husband has been and still is the main bread winner in our household. Fortunately he has a job that offers overtime… which he snagged as often as he could. Between his overtime and my help in tightening our spending on the home front we managed to dig our way out of debt in 28 months! We still owe a decent amount on our house, but have since refinanced to an incredibly low interest rate on a 15 year note so that we will be completely debt free by retirement.
What propelled us to put our nose to the grindstone and “suffer” through 28 months of “only the essentials”? Our children, plain and simple. We have been teaching them between wants and needs, that nothing is free and if it’s worth having then saving up until you can afford it will bring them more satisfaction than charging it and bringing it home immediately. Debt owns you… it strangles the joy from your life and we do not want that for our children.
Since successfully completely the first stage of our debt snowball we have been able to bump our emergency fund to a decent amount. Enough so that when our central air and our refrigerator decided shoot craps within a month of each other, we had enough to pay cash. It hurt, but we had it.
We now face a large expensive foundation repair. Large enough that we may have to finance it. That coupled with my son needing braces soon has propelled me to work a little harder on the blog to help make our financial ends meet without too many sacrifices being made at home. We almost have half of the foundation repair saved for and payment isn’t due for several more months… we may not have to finance! Our children know our situation and are amazed at our steadfast stance of paying cash for everything.
Hopefully one day they will benefit from our example and live a life like no other.
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I love the idea of being debt-free, but I doubt we’ll ever really achieve it. For the past few years, our goal has been to buy a new house that is within our means – NOT making us house-poor – and paying off all “bad’ debt. I think we’ll always have a mortgage, and usually a car payment, but I hate buying anything on credit! It feels like just throwing money away.
I think the best thing I ever did to affect my debt situation was getting my college degree through my company’s tuition reimbursement program. That’s $100,000 I won’t have to pay back! I think everyone should check to see what their company offers! Quite often, there are valuable benefits to be had!
I definately know how you feel, but it sounds like the same things we say in our household so I’m assuming you follow Dave Ramsey as well. My kids are great supporters of the program and also work on my budget with me (as a single mom, we have no backup) and are wonderful at sticking to it (sometimes better than me!)
We have been able to yell “We’re Debt Free” last year and it’s been a wonderful feeling!
I wish you all the best in getting the foundation funds together, I truly hope it works out well for you!
We are actually debt free aside from our home mortgage, which is current. It’s HARD work but a wonderful feeling once complete.
Great job! We are paying off a home equity line of credit now, and the desire to get it done as quickly as possible has made me work harder on my blog, too! We’ve paid off a lot and I hope to have it done by the end of the year – then just 5 more years on a 15-year mortgage (unless we pay that off quicker) and we will be debt-free forever!
this economy really scares me, i had to take early retirement abt 11 yrs ago to care for my mother, so i have been frugally living off my savings and investments. i tried to get a part-time job, but every time i got one i had to quit b/c my mother needed me 24/7. now that she is gone, i am left w/ tons of things to finish the trust, so i have not been able to get a job b/c of that. since i have been out of the work force so long and b/c of my age, i am very nervous. i lost a lot of money, i mean a lot w/ the mess a few yrs ago….i dont know what i am going to do. i am by myself. i am very nervous, i dont want to be working in walmart when i am 80 yrs old….my friend make fun of me w/ my couponing and getting things free, but i have to do what i have to do to survive and make sure i wont be homeless when i am in my 70’s. social security wont be around in a few yrs….even though we have paid into it….
Being debt free must be a wonderful feeling.
we have slowly worked our way out of debt and are hoping to stay there good luck
Sounds like you guys have done an amazing job! I’ve never been “comfortable like that! How nice to have your house paid off by the time you retire!! Woo Hoo
I recently became debt free and it is such a great feeling. I no longer buy things that I can’t pay for, but I do have a bad habit still of buying things that I probably don’t need. I need to start building an emergency fund. It is so awesome that you guys are setting a great example for your children!
Congrats to diligence! We have found the snowball melting ourselves. It takes a while, but we are seeing the sun!