How we did it…paying off $32,800 in 10 months…

I have had lots of requests for more information about how we paid off our debt in less than a year.  There are lots of financial gurus out there.  We picked Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover as our template for success.  I had heard good things, and I liked that it focused on giving back.  We also enrolled in Financial Peace University, a 12-week class that helps people with no financial background understand things like investing and retirement plans.  I was an English major in college and graduate school, so I never took a business class.  Looking back I definitely wish that I had…

Dave Ramsey suggests that you start your Total Money Makeover by putting away $1000 in the bank.  We already had close to $10,000 sitting in our savings account and were really uncomfortable parting with all of it, so we decided to keep $5000 in the account at all times.  That left us $4000.00 to start paying off our debt.

Budgeting has become a monthly activity in our house.  Paul and I both participate, that way the ownership of our budget is on both of us.  I still pay all of our bills online, but I pay for almost everything else with cash.  There have been studies that prove that it is harder to spend cash then it is to put something on a debit card.  It is even easier to put something on a credit card.  I have envelopes that contain my budgeted amount for each category, like food and medical expenses, and I do not use my debit card except for gas at the pump.

1.     We sold our van.  I had a nice Toyota Sienna with all of the bells and whistles.  I LOVED the van, but we owed $15,000 on it, which was way more money than we had in the bank.  Paul took the van to Richmond and sold it returning with a 2001 Honda Odessey that he paid for in cash.  It is not the car of my dreams but it runs very well and is reliable, which is what is really important.

2.     We used the money that we paid every month for the car payment, around $300 to start paying off our debt.   We also cancelled our cable, which saved us $100 a month.   Our budgeting helped us to save an additional $300 a month, mostly through cutting back on Starbucks, my Target addiction, and eating out.  That $700 a month was applied to our debts in this order.

-       $1200 on a Best Buy credit card

-       $4500 for Ford’s school tuition at OLMC

-       $6,000 in student loans for my graduate degree

-       $8,129 on Paul’s car

3.     We went through our exemptions and changed them to make sure we would get a reduced tax return at the end of the year.  This added about $300 to Paul’s paycheck at the end of the month.  We used our tax return from 2010 to pay Ford’s school tuition in cash.  So with the $1000 between our past cuts and exemptions we just plugged away at our debt.  We also used Paul’s bonus this year to finish off paying for his car. 

4.     Our last source of extra income was to decide to move out of our home and move, temporarily, into the apartment over my in-laws garage.   We have been so blessed to have the opportunity to save this money. 

Paying off our debt is far from the last step.  Our budget, like a good diet, is with us for life.  We put away $100 a month for car repairs, $100 a month for Christmas gifts, $40 a month to pay for our property taxes at the end of the year, and the list goes on.  We are spending the next two years saving money so we can put 20% down on a house with a reasonable mortgage.  Eventually we will sell our home in Williamsburg, but not until the economy recovers and we can break even on it.  When we finish saving money for our new home we will begin:

A.     Investing in our retirement - $700 a month

B.     Putting away money for the kids’ college- $500 a month

C.     Paying off our mortgage- ????

The goal is that we will be able to live with the security that we can retire and send our children to college without the heartache that many people are living with. 

This fasting period from spending has really helped me to see a few things more clearly.  First… I miss my dishwasher.  I will never take that for granted again.  But on a more serious note, the consumerism in our country is OUT OF CONTROL.  I look back and see that I was just waiting for that next thing to spend money on.  It feels good to have the latest electronics, a really nice car and expensive clothes.  I don’t think that I was irresponsible, but in the long run that nice feeling was outweighed by the frustrating desperation that we were trapped in a situation where we would never be able to save money for the kids’ college or put away something extra for retirement. 

I would always have that sick feeling in my stomach as I paid for a cart full of things at Target that were a great price on sale, but that I really didn’t need.   I was so tired of feeling guilty about spending money on myself.  Now I have a clothing allowance and BLOW (money that you get to spend on yourself) every month, so the guilt has vanished.  The kids have a clothing allowance too, so I don’t need to stress when they suddenly don’t fit in any of their shoes, or they decide to grow mid-season.  The fact that I know we have money socked away so that we can pay for car repairs when they come up, or new tires if we need them, helps me to sleep at night where before I would lay awake and stress about our savings account that never seemed to grow. We give away more money now then we spent on my van payment last year.  Why?  Because we have more than enough…