How We Paid Off $68,000 In Debt
For years my husband and I lived paycheck to paycheck. You know the saying!
Well for us and many people I know it was how we lived. One day I caught an episode on Facebook of a financial coach talking with people who have paid all their debt off. They would scream they were debt-free. I immediately started following along. I joined debt-free groups on FB and Instagram. Hearing these stories made me cry. Then I turned to YouTube and watched anything I could find about paying off debt. My mind was blown away. Before hearing these stories, I didn’t know it was possible to become debt-free. I started to think, can we do this? Can we become debt-free? I continued to research all things regarding finances. I bought books from financial coaches. I studied and studied until I was confident that we could set a plan in motion to become debt-free too.
Taking to my Husband
I tried to talk to my husband, but he didn’t understand or believe it was possible. My hubby was like everybody else. We grew up with the belief we were normal. You buy a house, buy 2 cars and have credit cards for “emergencies”. Right? So, I know what you are thinking… this is normal. Everybody you know has car payments, credit cards, and maybe a personal loan or two. A lot of people furnish their homes with financed furniture, as we did. Maybe you know a few people that do not have debt & that’s great, but most people I know have debts, which is sad. According to “society,” being in debt is normal, but I decided I didn’t care about being normal anymore! How about you?
Preparing
So, I took about 6 months to go through our spending habits. I cut out cable which was big for me. I loved my TV. I cut out some monthly subscriptions I didn’t need. I wrote down all my debts from smallest to largest balances. This is called the Snowball method. In my opinion, this is the best method for paying off debt. Then I started on my plan June 1st, 2017. On May 7th, 2020, all of our consumer debts were paid off. 2 car loans, 2 personal loans, 7 credit cards and a furniture loan were all gone!
I know what you are thinking…
It took you 35 months to pay off $68,000? It did. We were not as strict as we could have been or should have been. I did make a lot of changes. We did continue to go out to eat, however, it was just me and my husband. That’s not an excuse but having 2 or 3 kids and going out to eat is quite different than just the 2 of us. This shows you that paying off debt can still be done by cutting back on entertainment, eating out, shopping, and subscriptions. I will tell you a secret, I love to shop. I am a big online shopper, but I completely stopped. When we were going through our debt-free journey I cut out all online shopping. So, I made that big adjustment which allowed us to be able to go out to eat a few times a month. I believe it’s all about balance.
Here are the steps I took:
- Tracked my spending: I tracked for about 6 months
- Made a realistic budget: It can take a few months to get it right.
- We cut out unnecessary spending (entertainment, shopping, and subscriptions)
- Put aside $1000.00 for small emergencies
- I continued to educate myself by watching debt-free videos and reels, reading books, and reading blog posts.
I hope this blog post encourages you to begin a debt-free journey. Check out my Stanstore for free planners and trackers.
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