Well, it has been a while since I have posted. I guess I start to take things personally, and then I sort of shut down. Sorry I have disconnected from you all.
Anyhow, Paul and I have finally come to realize that we are TIRED OF owing other people money. We have some debt that, when it all adds up, amounts to quite a hefty amount of money. This includes student loans, a car, and "stupid" debt (isn't all debt stupid?). Finally, we are tired of owing other people our paychecks. It is high time that our money works for us, instead of us working so darn hard for our money.
Thus, I will take you on our journey with us. It is not going to be too pretty, but we are determined to become financially secure. Our goals are to pay off our debt, invest for retirement, be able to afford to educate our children through college, own our house free and clear, and be able to have fun in our lives. We will accomplish this only through hard work and dedication to our goals, but it is doable!!! Baby steps is the key.
We are following the advice of Dave Ramsey. As such, we will begin by placing $1000 in an emergency fund. Then, we will begin to tackle that pesky debt. We plan to sell my Toyota van, and probably the truck as well. While we own the truck, as well as Paul's old Subaru, we make monthly payments on the van to the tune of $347 each month. That is a lot of money that could be used in a much better fashion than a car. We should clear about $4000 on the van. If we sell the truck too, that will add another $10,000 to our debt removal. Not a bad start. Then comes the hard part...getting rid of the other $26K.
We are going to sit down and create a budget and a list of ALL of our debt this weekend. I expect it will be a bit painful, but it will allow us to look at what we are willing to sacrifice to become financially free!
How much debt are we looking at? Without the house, it is probably around $40,000 including the student loans. OUCH. With the house, more like $170K. Double OUCH. We are determined to succeed, and look forward to seeing you all on the "other" side of this journey.
Until then, please do not expect visits or fancy gifts. We are paring down to the essentials in order to improve the future for ourselves and our children. We love you all and hope you will understand our commitment to our futures. We know we will have support from you all, as well.
4 comments:
Sam and I have started with Dave Ramsey too! We are looking at two years of working hard in order to get ourselves secure and be able to buy a house.
I wish you the best of luck! Maybe we can keep tabs on each others progress.
I am glad to see both of you working toward this end. And we all understand getting back to essentials. We have all been in the same position.
I think that I am also in that mode though debt is not an issue for once in our lives.
However I tend to buy things I don't need and I like to be able to do things for our grandbabies.
However I think the time has come to concentrate more on our future.
Daddy is working diligently toward that end and I will be doing the same. Time flies so quickly.
This summer will be a home summer. Daddy and I need to regroup and also so some things to the house and yard.
Hopefully we will be able to work on the house and play with our grandbabies.
Good luck to both of you - it is very hard but well worth the effort to know you are secure.
Love you,
Mommy
Hi! Welcome back! I've missed you. :-)
When we paid off our debt, we did it very much the way Dave Ramsey recommends, even though we didn't know who Dave Ramsey was, and we didn't have an emergency fund either. In fact, the month we left Germany, we made a double payment on our last bill so that we could leave totally DEBT FREE. Of course, that also meant we left CASH FREE!
Hey! I just noticed the "no fancy gifts" thing. What fancy gifts?! You were giving out fancy gifts? I never got a fancy gift! I think you might have to make an exception...a back-gift, kind of like a back order. :-)
Post a Comment