$44,426.13 What a Year!
I have known about FPU since my senior year of college. Sister Marla gave me "The Total Money Makeover" in 2012. I attended some of the classes, and I kind of tossed the book to the side until last year... Last year I was scared. Last year I questioned why I went back to school. Then on August 20th I saw an Instagram/ Facebook post from my friend Kamille that changed my life. She talked about how she and her husband were paying off their student loans... What?! I thought we die with these. So I reached out to her and she began to share their testimony. As we started our journey they became debt free and seeing them made me realize that this is a possibility for us too.
I asked Eddie what he thought about us ordering FPU, and he was on board. We ordered FPU the following week and decided that Monday nights at 8:00pm for the next 9 weeks we would make it a date to watch the videos and fill out our workbook. Every week we were learning more and more information, and the discussions that we had while we were going through the class just continued to bring us closer together. We talked about how money was handled in our houses growing up and the affect that it had on our thoughts about finances. We began to peel back layers to our identity that we didn't even know were there. Mid October 2017 was the first time that we made an actual additional debt payment and it felt really good! as we began our debt snowball we were amazed at what we were able to accomplish. In just one year we paid off $44,409.04!!!
$44,426.13 was....
3 credit cards
1 car
6 Ed Financial (Student Loans)
1 Bishop Loan (Student Loan)
6 FedLoans (Student Loans)
Not captured in the number above are new tires for both cars, 1 new car battery, 1 bumper repair, but guess what they didn't go on credit!!!! This is a huge win for us. The credit card debt above was mostly car repairs! Our credit cards are no longer our emergency fund :-) We are occasionally using them for small purchases to keep our high credit scores, but they are paid off immediately! We know we want to buy a house soon so keeping good credit is important to us although we aren't fully convinced that we want a mortgage to buy the house.
This year has taught us so much. Captured below are some of the things that we have learned on this journey so far.
Life will still happen
A few weeks in to our journey to debt freedom our checking account got hacked and someone purchased over $1100 worth of clothing from a German boutique (insert eye roll)... annoying.
We woke up to flat tires and a dead car battery just like anyone else.
The difference was it didn't shake us like before. We paid it and kept it moving.
Contentment
As you see people post new cars, new houses, and vacations, that wasn't us this year. It's not our time and we are ok with that. Could we do all of those things sure, but that wasn't our focus and we decided to be committed to our plan.
Fun & Family is Important
In order to maximize our travel funds we saved for all of our 2018 travel during Q1. We used bonus money and tax returns to increase this. Even though we are going through our debt freedom journey we were still able to attend 4 weddings 1 marriage conference, We went to Cancun on a couples trip, I went to Cuba for a girls trip, we flew home to Ohio for Mother's day, Father's day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Ed's mom's birthday, and we went to Cleveland to visit my grandparents, and family that lives there. Since we live away from our family we agreed that family was important, and that we would spend money to travel to see them. Living on one income has given us the freedom to be able to still travel on this journey. Sure we could stay home, and we would have saved thousands of dollars, but tomorrow is not promised, and I don't want to have regrets about not spending time with our family while they are living.
Make a budget & stick to it
Although our budget is not perfect we still have some fun with our money and this summer our debt payments weren't as high, but we were still making progress. The goal is progress not perfection.
Unity
When you are united in finances as a couple it brings so much unity to a marriage. We have always been close but I feel like this year has really brought us closer together and made us stronger as a couple!
Celebrate
Life is hard, and it can really be a challenge sometimes. Celebrate the wins no matter how small. I used to be a shopaholic. This year I can count on one hand the number of times I bought a new outfit, and even with those times it was because someone gave me a gift card. As we paid off loans or hit big milestones we would plan a celebration. Sometimes it was a nice dinner sometimes it was just a glass of our favorite wine and toasting to the success, but either way we celebrated the wins!
I am so grateful for this journey sometimes it gets hard sometimes we just want to buy stuff, but we remain focused on our goal of owing no man nothing, but to love him Romans 13:8.
I asked Eddie what he thought about us ordering FPU, and he was on board. We ordered FPU the following week and decided that Monday nights at 8:00pm for the next 9 weeks we would make it a date to watch the videos and fill out our workbook. Every week we were learning more and more information, and the discussions that we had while we were going through the class just continued to bring us closer together. We talked about how money was handled in our houses growing up and the affect that it had on our thoughts about finances. We began to peel back layers to our identity that we didn't even know were there. Mid October 2017 was the first time that we made an actual additional debt payment and it felt really good! as we began our debt snowball we were amazed at what we were able to accomplish. In just one year we paid off $44,409.04!!!
$44,426.13 was....
3 credit cards
1 car
6 Ed Financial (Student Loans)
1 Bishop Loan (Student Loan)
6 FedLoans (Student Loans)
Not captured in the number above are new tires for both cars, 1 new car battery, 1 bumper repair, but guess what they didn't go on credit!!!! This is a huge win for us. The credit card debt above was mostly car repairs! Our credit cards are no longer our emergency fund :-) We are occasionally using them for small purchases to keep our high credit scores, but they are paid off immediately! We know we want to buy a house soon so keeping good credit is important to us although we aren't fully convinced that we want a mortgage to buy the house.
This year has taught us so much. Captured below are some of the things that we have learned on this journey so far.
Life will still happen
A few weeks in to our journey to debt freedom our checking account got hacked and someone purchased over $1100 worth of clothing from a German boutique (insert eye roll)... annoying.
We woke up to flat tires and a dead car battery just like anyone else.
The difference was it didn't shake us like before. We paid it and kept it moving.
Contentment
As you see people post new cars, new houses, and vacations, that wasn't us this year. It's not our time and we are ok with that. Could we do all of those things sure, but that wasn't our focus and we decided to be committed to our plan.
Fun & Family is Important
In order to maximize our travel funds we saved for all of our 2018 travel during Q1. We used bonus money and tax returns to increase this. Even though we are going through our debt freedom journey we were still able to attend 4 weddings 1 marriage conference, We went to Cancun on a couples trip, I went to Cuba for a girls trip, we flew home to Ohio for Mother's day, Father's day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Ed's mom's birthday, and we went to Cleveland to visit my grandparents, and family that lives there. Since we live away from our family we agreed that family was important, and that we would spend money to travel to see them. Living on one income has given us the freedom to be able to still travel on this journey. Sure we could stay home, and we would have saved thousands of dollars, but tomorrow is not promised, and I don't want to have regrets about not spending time with our family while they are living.
Make a budget & stick to it
Although our budget is not perfect we still have some fun with our money and this summer our debt payments weren't as high, but we were still making progress. The goal is progress not perfection.
Unity
When you are united in finances as a couple it brings so much unity to a marriage. We have always been close but I feel like this year has really brought us closer together and made us stronger as a couple!
Celebrate
Life is hard, and it can really be a challenge sometimes. Celebrate the wins no matter how small. I used to be a shopaholic. This year I can count on one hand the number of times I bought a new outfit, and even with those times it was because someone gave me a gift card. As we paid off loans or hit big milestones we would plan a celebration. Sometimes it was a nice dinner sometimes it was just a glass of our favorite wine and toasting to the success, but either way we celebrated the wins!
I am so grateful for this journey sometimes it gets hard sometimes we just want to buy stuff, but we remain focused on our goal of owing no man nothing, but to love him Romans 13:8.
Here is our updated debt free chart. Each line represents $2,000 of debt eliminated. We created this chart after we paid off all of our consumer debt, so this represents all of our combined student loan debt. We are planning to pay this in full in the next 12-18 months - this is something that we thought would take us 10 years to do!
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