Debt Free and Loving It!

*Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser, planner, or professional. I am not and do not provide financial advice. I cannot and will not be held responsible for any financial decisions you make from reading this post. It is always best to seek out financial advice from a professional and do your own research and investigation. This post is just a story about our financial journey. I have not received any financial commissions from Dave Ramsey or any of his affiliates in writing this post.

I have mentioned before that we are a budgeting family but I’ve never really gone into our journey to being debt free except the house. If you know me, you’ve probably heard our story, but if you don’t know us, you may not know our story.

Our journey to being debt free starts about 9 years ago in 2011. My husband and I were just dating back then. Don’t ask me how long we dated before we got married…it was a while and neither of us knows when we officially started dating. It just kind of happened. For a while we were in a long distance relationship and then I moved to get out of a small town and have a fresh start. I was already looking closer to where my then boyfriend (now husband) lived and the person I was working for just happened to open a place of business in the area. It was an answer to my prayers! I officially moved 13 years ago. If I had to guess, I’d say my husband and I started dating maybe a year or so before that. So I guess in 2011 we had been dating for 5-6 years.

Anyway, this guy I was dating was constantly talking about some guy named Dave Ramsey. He listened to his shows. He kept talking about wanting to do something called Financial Peace University. As I mentioned, we were just dating, but had been dating for quite some time. I was so tired of hearing about this rich guy named Dave Ramsey who was making a living telling other people how to “get rich.” Did I ever do research on who this Dave Ramsey was that I kept hearing about? NO. I was SO SICK OF HEARING ABOUT HIM! Then my boyfriend started talking about wanting to take his Financial Peace University course. Um, how about NO. In March of 2011, my boyfriend proposed. We had been searching for a church we both liked prior to the proposal but hadn’t found a church home. Now the search was on not just for a church home, but also for a pastor we could agree on.

One Saturday evening Mr. Right told me he had a church he wanted to try the next morning but we would need to get up early because it started at 9:30 and it was 30 minutes away from where I lived (I was willing to drive as long as it would take to find a church home). Okay. Sounds good. So the next day I got up early (I’m NOT a morning person), got ready, and off we went to this new church he wanted to try. I had coffee in hand, most likely Starbucks because I spent whatever I wanted anytime I wanted.

We pull up and find a parking spot. THEN he tells me, “Oh by the way…We got here early because we’re going to check out the Financial Peace University. They’re offering it and today is the preview day so I think we should check it out.” Y’all I wanted to scream right there in the parking lot. Maybe a little more. I mentioned I’m not a morning person, right?!!? I was furious. I thought about not even getting out of the car, but we were there and it was a 30 minute drive, so I begrudgingly got out. You could probably see the smoke coming from my ears though. I’m not the best at putting away my angry face.

In we went. We met several people, found out where the dreaded Financial Peace University (FPU) class was being held and walked in. There were quite a few people there and they ranged in age. We watched the preview and listened to questions being answered. I wasn’t convinced. Probably because I didn’t want to be there in the first place. My mind wasn’t open to the idea, but my Mr. signed us up. The class started the next Sunday. We went to the church service, met later in the week with one of the pastors, but the church just wasn’t a good fit for me. I’m a little picky, I don’t like huge churches…I’m from a small town, an introvert, and just overwhelmed by big with lots of people. We still attended the FPU class. I missed the first class because I had to work. I was a patient care tech in a hospital at that time and worked every other weekend. I also worked in a physician’s office Monday-Thursday. We were saving up for a wedding.

The second week of FPU rolled around and my Mr. didn’t want to get up to go. Oh no…he wanted to do this, so he was getting up. He forced me to go to the preview class, he signed us up, we were GOING. So I got him up and off we went. I had watched the first week at home. Y’all I.Was.Hooked. Dave Ramsey has been to the bottom and worked his way back. Yes he makes a very nice living teaching others how to save money, pay off debt, and “Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else.” It is not a get rich quick program. It takes time, discipline, and CHANGE. You have to be, as Dave says, “Sick and tired of being sick and tired.” We evaluated what we were spending on everything in our first “budget meeting.” I couldn’t believe how much we were spending on eating out. I’ve mentioned I had 2 jobs. Mr. Right had 2 jobs. Y’all we were easily spending $1000 eating out. RIDICULOUS. There were only 2 of us. HOW were we spending SOOOO much??? We set out to make our changes and get to a zero based budget.

We got rid of cable, cut our eating out budget to $100 (from $1000 to $100), cut out all the extra spending (we were both guilty of just going out and buying whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted), and found other ways to cut EVERYTHING. The A/C got turned to 80 during the day and 78 at night to save money there. In the winter the heat was set to 64 during the day and 66 at night (I LOVED it)! We did our debt snowball and started trying to chip away at it. Initially all of this was done separately as we were not yet married. Once we got married it all got rolled into one. As I mentioned, I worked 2 jobs (I changed from 1 physician’s office to a different one during the time but remained working 2 jobs) and Mr. Right took on a couple of other side jobs. I had about $25,000 in medical debt, $3,000 in credit card debt, and Mr. Right had about $20,000 in debt, our wedding budget was $5000, and we were saving $1000 for our honeymoon. And don’t forget Dave’s recommended $1000 emergency fund!

We were able to pay cash for our wedding and honeymoon. With the extra jobs, we paid off our debt ($48,000 in debt+$5000 wedding+1000 honeymoon+$1000 emergency fund) in ONE YEAR! It was hard, it took A LOT of discipline, it was NOT easy, but it was worth it. We didn’t have much more than the $1000 in the emergency fund, and I found out I was accepted to nursing school. I was so excited, but how would we pay for it? We did something not recommended. I got student loans. I was SOOO upset about having to get student loans, but we just couldn’t get me through nursing school any other way. I did an accelerated program and I had some more medical issues during my time in nursing school, but I made it through. But we found ourselves back in debt. It was about $25,000 in student loans and about $5000 in medical bills. During my time in nursing school, I had dropped down to 1 job and was not working much. We lived on only my husband’s income. Again, not always easy, but we did it. We made the decision to continue living on 1 income as I went back to work. We were able to pay off the debt in 6 months. Every last cent I made went to our debt. We had garage sales, and we started coordinating FPU at our church home. Oops, I forgot to mention that during our FPU journey we tried other churches and finally found a church home and a pastor that we trusted and felt comfortable with. Coordinating FPU has been some of the best times I have had! It ALWAYS motivates me to make change in our lives and forces us to take a look at where we are off track.

We had a baby (after a struggle with fertility), the hubby got into and graduated from nursing school, we moved, we had 2 more kids, I switched jobs to a school nursing job that I love, my husband switched jobs to a job he loves. Thanks to all of our earlier hard work, we have been able to live a lifestyle free of debt except the house. It has allowed us to set money aside for a nice little emergency fund, save for retirement, start college funds for our kiddos, and live a little more freely. It also allowed me to make a better decision for our family when my doctor strongly recommended I quit my job due to health concerns (see this post for more on that https://messymamalife.com/baby-4-another-honest-post/). I didn’t have to worry about how we would pay for ALL the things. The only bills we have are: the house, electricity, water, food, clothing, gas for the house, gas for the car, Internet, diapers, Christmas, dog food, phones, and car insurance. Yes you see a category for Christmas. We save each month so we aren’t trying to figure out where we will get the money for Christmas or go into debt for Christmas. Does us going down to 1 income require us to budget more closely? Yes. Can we still afford to do fun things and do some things we want to do? Yes and we have a category in our budget for those things. Are we stressing about how it will all work out? No. All thanks to Dave Ramsey’s FPU class!