Last Friday I announced on Facebook and Twitter that Amber and I are officially debt free. I also said that we paid off $28,000 in the past 8 months. If you are like me you asked yourself 2 questions. 1. How in the world did they get in that much debt? 2. How did they pay that much off so quickly? 3. Why would he share such detail? Here is the story…
5.5 years ago we bought a house in Franklin, TN. Little did we know that we could wake up one day and have to spend $4,800 fixing a heating and air unit.
The problem was that we didn’t have the money saved up to buy the new one. We had to put it on a credit card. Over the next couple of years there would be random things that we would do that we would have to put on credit. In 2008 Amber and I also decided to buy a brand new Honda Civic. I had a great job and we had enough money to pay the monthly payment of $346.27, but never thought about saving up to pay for a car with cash.
At the beginning of this year Amber and I attended the Total Money Makeover event in Nashville after our friend Mike Pappas invited us. Dave Ramsey is the speaker at these events. Dave at one point started speaking about how so often men and women think differently about money. He also talked about how to get out of debt using the debt snowball. Dave also taught about how to put an emergency fund together to be ready for the “emergencies” that happen in everyone’s life. Amber and I left the event feeling inspired, but also feeling like someone had just kicked us in the gut. We knew we needed to fix some things, but didn’t know how to practically go about the change. My church was going to offer Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey, so we enrolled.
Amber and I connected with the simple and Biblical teaching of handling money right away. It’s very simple, spend less than you make, be ready for emergencies, and get out of debt as quickly as you can. We sat down and gathered all of our debt and put them on a spreadsheet. I always justified our debt by telling Amber that it was on zero interest credit cards so it wasn’t costing us anything. The problem is that about once a year we had to transfer the money to another card, get hit with fees, and our amounts were growing. We had been paying toward car for a few years so we were down to owing just over $12,000. When I gathered all of our debt I realized that it totaled $28,000. I was embarrassed.
I could see in Amber’s eyes that she was scared. She had trusted me to handle the finances and I had done a very poor job. I justified buying little things here and there and often even buying things for Amber that she didn’t even care about. I was buying these things for myself and masked the purchases as being for her. I remember the day where I had to look Amber in the eyes, man up, and apologize to her for breaking her trust and not leading well in our household. At this time I made a promise to Amber. I promised her that we would pay off all of our debt by the end of this year. She told me over and over that it wasn’t possible, but only because I hadn’t lead well in the past. I had broken her trust. I however was a man on a mission.
I am a great salesman when I am passionate about what I am selling.. We own a 2003 Honda Accord that is paid off and have access to a 12 passenger van that my wife’s band Everlife used for years, so we started by selling the Civic. I continued to sell things all over the house.. We sold many guitars, musical gear, living room furniture, bedroom furniture and so much more. I even sold my iPad to show Amber how serious I was. The amazing thing was that God provided every time that we sold something. We were given very nice living room furniture for FREE, We were given a dresser after not having one for a few weeks. At times someone from our family would have a talk with us making sure we were ok. We were more than ok.. We were on the same page, and we had a plan. The other thing we started doing was pick up all kinds of random jobs. I mounted TV’s and installed surround sounds, we helped property manage a house and find tenants, we took pictures at a car lot, Amber babysat a lot, cleaned a house, did graphic design, took pictures, and so much more. We basically worked our tails off this year. In the middle of the year I even had another job change that forced us to put part of our plan on hold while I looked for a job. I ended up working for Dave Ramsey and I love it! Working there has helped give me the extra push to be diligent and get the rest of the debt paid off.
Last week we made our last credit card payment and are officially debt free other than the house. After establishing some goals Amber and I decided that we are actually going to sell our house too. We want to spend the next few years living way below our means and will help us to be able to do things like take vacations that allow us to rest, start a family at some point, and give like never before. We are so excited to finally be on the same page. I am not going to lie… This was very very very hard to do. This has been totally humbling, but also completely worth the hard work. I am so happy that I was able to keep my promise to Amber.
I hope that this blog encourages you and helps you understand why I was so happy to post that we are debt free. It wasn’t to brag or do anything but encourage every one of you that there is always HOPE.
