Our Debt Free Journey

Debt Free Journey

“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.” "If you've signed surety (“debt”), my son, do this. Give no sleep to your eyelids, no slumber to your eyes, and deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, a bird from the hand of the fowler." (Proverbs 6: 1-7)

My wife and I started this journey almost 2 years ago (May 2019). It got to a point when we lost our second child that we were having trouble paying all the medical expenses for a baby we did not bring home alive. We thought, if we tried again for a baby, how could we afford another outcome like this or worse. We thought to ourselves, enough is enough; we should not have to struggle through life living paycheck to paycheck and having to make decisions like this. In addition, if God was going to bless us with another child, we wanted to make sure that we would change our family tree and set him/her up for the success that we wish we had growing up.

That week we assigned my wife as the CFO of our family because she was better with numbers. She was the nerd, and I was the free spirit. We had pulled out an old dusty money makeover book that my wife had received in high school almost 10 years ago and we sat down that week, read the book, and wrote out our first budget. In the last year and half, we sold our brand-new Nissan Rogue for our Rav4 “hooptie”. I worked a part time job at night working 60 to 70 hours a week so we could have extra income. We even sold our house to move closer to family, which helped us getting closer to our debt payoff. We started with a $500 dollar snowball and ended with a $2300 debt snowball.

So, by the numbers:

Income: Start: $80,159   End: $95,793

Total Debt: 208, 548.19 (Paid off in 22 Months)

-         Student Loans 42%

-         Mortgage: 40%

-         Credit Cards 7%

-         Medical 7%

-         Credit Cards 4%

We give God all the glory as He put things in the right place, at the right time, so we could fill the whole we dug for ourselves.

We are so proud to venture on to BS3 and saving for a down payment on a house the Dave Ramsey way.