We’re Debt Free!

I have never been good with money. For almost my whole college career, I lived pay check to pay check. I never saved money and I used my credit cards a LOT and just paid the minimum every month and left a hefty balance on them (yes, multiple). When I got my knee replaced a few years back, I wasn’t making any money, so I was really living off my credit card then. And when I went to China, I ran out of funds about a month before I came home. My parents helped me out where they could, but I used my credit card some more to make sure I enjoyed my experience. When D came home and we started ring shopping, I realized that I had made some major mistakes the last few years and that I was now bringing a butt load of debt into a future marriage. Telling D about my credit card issues was absolutely frightening because I felt like it was a huge red flag when it came to our pending nuptials.

Luckily for me, I married the most kind and supportive man in the history of the world who obviously wasn’t thrilled with the debt but took it on without blinking twice. D had saved up a ton of his money and was able to put a down payment on my ring, a deposit down on our first little rental home and pay for our first months rent. After that, we were left with starting our lives together in a lot of debt. It was not fun. We were completely on our own with all of our finances, school, a ring payment, and credit cards. We were blessed to have been granted with pell grants which helped pay off some student loans and tuition but other then that, we were struggling.

D and I went through several phases while trying to manage our debt. We studied Dave Ramsey which helped for a little. We tried to cut back on dates and eating out. That went up and down. But we also made some silly choices too, like using some saved up money that should have gone to paying off a card to buy a car that was a little too nice for us at the time. We also blew a bunch of money on Black Friday that we should have waited on. We were constantly going from paying down our credit cards and then using them a lot and watching them climb right back up.

At the beginning of this year, we had a wake up call where we had literally had no money for two weeks because of all the bills we had to pay. After that, we got serious about paying off all of our debt because we had a sweet little puppy who relied on us to keep a roof over her head and food in her bowl. Rosie has done so much for our little family, but one of the biggest gifts she gave us was the motivation to take our debt seriously. Giving her up because we couldn’t afford her was not an option. We had made the choice to take care of her and provide her forever home and we couldn’t let her down.

So we made a plan and stuck to it. We applied for a credit card that charged 0 interest for the next year and transferred our outstanding balance to it. D sold his mustang and we used half of that money for a portion of our debt. We downsized to one car for a while and then D bought a motorcycle for REAL cheap to putt around town in. We stopped going out to eat. Period. Unless we had a gift card, we ate at home. We didn’t go out to the movies, buy new clothes, or anything else. I sold shoes, clothes and appliances on a facebook site to make some extra side cash. We ate A LOT of pasta. I became serious about meal planning and cut our grocery bill in half. Dustin worked over 50 hours a week during the seven week break and I worked 2 jobs at 9-10 hours a day. Dustin started donating plasma again on the side. When it came time to buy tickets to fly home for a wedding, we bought them one at a time with cash so that we wouldn’t use any credit cards. When it came time to buy a second car, we settled for one well within our price range. We backed out of a really sketchy move that would have increased our monthly living costs by 200 dollars (turns out the house got foreclosed on so we couldn’t have moved there anyway. Someone was looking out for us)

As of yesterday, we are completely out of credit card debt. We owe nothing on my ring. We own both of our cars. Our rent is paid. We have paid off one school loan by ourselves. We have never missed a payment and when we recently changed banks, found out that we both have EXCELLENT credit now that we have paid off so much!

We still have some school loans that we need to work on, but because all of our other debt is completely gone, the school loan will be a small dent in our monthly expenses and be manageable and easy!

Although we hit some really low points during the last year, working on paying off our debt brought D and I so close together. Having a mutual goal (Rosie) made it easy to make sacrifices that we might not have made so easily before. With both of us working 50 hours a week for the last 2 months, we barely saw each other and learned to take advantage of the time we did have together. We learned that we didn’t need to spend money to have fun or feel fulfilled. We made friends together instead of going out to the movies or out to dinner every night! I started reading again instead of watching mindless tv shows constantly. We learned the importance of paying tithing to our church and saw HUGE blessings come from being diligent in following that commandment. We have learned to live within our means and to be completely content with what we have.

Money one of the most common reasons for divorce today and I am so glad that D and I had this experience at the beginning of our marriage so that we could grow closer together and realize that it never needs to be something we fight or argue about. We can breathe a huge sigh of relief and go out to a celebratory movie! (FIRST ONE IN FOREVER!)