The Marriage Vows Part 3 (For Richer or Poorer)

      When I said this part of the vows I was thinking to myself let's not ever have poorer times. Now we are definitely nowhere close to poverty, but we have learned a lot about money management this year. Combining our finances was actually a pretty easy experience I will say that when I signed up to have my check directly deposited into OUR account, and not my own I did feel this sense of the walls closing in on me. I had this feeling mostly because this marriage thing was really real, and I no longer could hide what I was doing financially. I was now accountable to someone else. In the beginning we tithed 10% of our income to our church, paid bills, purchased flights, and vacations out of our joint account. We didn't really have a plan to pay down our debt. Throughout the first year we paid all of our bills, and paid off our wedding rings, furniture, and some other debts including all of our medical bills. Then after graduating with my masters I got the email of how much I owed from my student loans for both undergrad and graduate school, and I had a moment of panic. How are we going to ever pay all of this back! I had been following a few of my friends stories through social media, and I saw how they were able to become debt free, or how they were on their journey to being debt free through Financial Peace University. Now this wasn't the first time that I had heard about this program, but now I really wanted to be debt free. I talked to Eddie about purchasing the home study, and he was all for it. As we began the class we were both hooked, and we saw a way out of debt that would happen sooner than we ever anticipated (no later than the end of 2019 if not earlier). You see we both do well for ourselves to be 27 and 31, and although we live in the high rent DMV we found that we were still wasting thousands of dollars every month on unnecessary purchases. After starting the program we got on a written budget, and assigned a dollar to everything every month including our debts. We are in the first official month of utilizing this system, and all I can say is that I see a way out of debt! In 3 weeks we will be a car payment free household, and I am so excited to no longer have any car payments. Our goal was for us to be done with all of our other debts including Eddie's student loans before my student loans come out of the grace period in February. With our diligence to the financial plan that IS going to happen! Throughout this process we have been able to have some great conversations about money, and how our observations growing up with money are impacting our situation today. So you may ask why are we so determined to be debt free everyone has debt. Well for one we don't want to be like everyone else. We don't want to worry about money. We also EVENTUALLY want to start a family, and for us it's important to have the money to raise them the way that we want to. For us that means making sure that they have the opportunity to see the world, and not just read about it. We also are both very generous people we would give someone the shirt off of our backs if someone asked, and although that is great our dreams go beyond that. We want to have scholarship funds, and be able to help those in need on a far greater scale than a few dollars here and there.  We know that if we don't first take care of our household we won't be in a position to assist others.  We also know that our parents are getting close to retirement age, and we know that they have sacrificed so much to raise us, and we don't want them to want for anything as they enter into those years.
        As we are telling people our story we get mixed responses mostly positive, but we have had some people tell us things like it must be nice to have two great incomes. The only reason you are able to pay off so much debt so quickly is because you don't have any kids. Now before you get all bent out of shape and start making excuses for your situation we don't get anywhere in life by making excuses for where we are. If we had a similar mindset we wouldn't be on a path to better. We aren't special, and the system can work for anyone that wants to follow it. I listen to the Dave Ramsey show and I have seen people with more debt than us, and lower incomes become debt free so I know it's possible to anyone that is disciplined enough to stick to the plan. We shredded ALL of our credit cards because we NEVER plan to use them again. Although I hadn't used some of my cards in years this was the hardest part for me it was like my security blanket. Instead we chose to put our faith in God, and not Visa.  We also put away some money for emergencies FPU recommends $1000 in savings while paying off debt, and then increasing it once you are debt free so that's what we did. Now that we are following the plan we realized that sticking to a budget isn't as bad as we thought it would be. We have already paid off a few thousand dollars in a couple of weeks, and it's exciting and motivating to see that $106,000 debt number go down every week! We will continue to update you all as we hit our milestones, and I hope that many of you will join us on the journey! Let's all be wealthy, and extremely generous! It is truly a possibility for all of us.  

The Medley's after my graduation with my masters in Organization Development. About 90% of our debt is from our education, but we are working through it together :-)