Hi Friends 🙂
Are you having a lovely day?
I am, because I took the day off of work. Jason and I decided to take a little trip tonight/tomorrow down to Kansas City, MO – which is all part of his birthday gift. We are going to see Dave Ramsey speak:
(I realize that is a banner for a different date, I couldn’t find the correct one) It is a one day seminar about leadership. Although I am looking forward to the trip/seminar, this is totally more for Jason. He loves this sort of thing. The seminar is geared towards small business owners (which we are not) but the principles taught can apply to anyone.
We love Dave Ramsey, because it was his book The Total Money Makeover that helped us get our finances in order. Averie recently wrote a post about paying off debt, and to be honest, it is a subject that I have wanted to write about for a long time, but I felt so ashamed and there seemed to be this sense of guilt hanging over my head.
When Jason and I got married we had tons of debt – a mortgage, a car payment (thankfully my car was paid for), and credit card payments up the wazoo. I never told anyone (except for 1-2 friends who had as much if not more debt than we had) because I was ashamed. I felt like we had both been so terrible with money and I was embarrassed! I also knew that if we had asked our parents for money they would have helped us in a heartbeat. But I didn’t want that. I wanted us to pay off the debt ourselves. And we did!
It took us about a year and a half to pay off 4 credit cards that totaled over $35,000. It was not easy. I am working on a few more posts detailing how we paid off that money, but basically we only bought what we absolutely could not live without and we budgeted every penny we earned. There were some months that we were able to pay lots of extra money onto the cards (garage sales, 3 paycheck months, tax returns), and some months we didn’t have as much extra money (car repairs, replaced washer/dryer, etc)
We still have some debt (mortgage and car payments), but it isn’t hanging over us and being such a stressor in our lives. We have built up our savings (and we are continuing to build it!) Our cars will be paid off before the end of this summer and what a relief that will be!
Seriously if you have debt (especially credit card debt!!!) I urge you to visit Dave Ramsey’s website – his Total Money Makeover book is usually only $10-$15 on his site and is well worth the money. I’ve heard Suze Orman is a good money/debt advice person as well, although I haven’t personally read any of her books.
Even though I still feel shame when it comes to having credit card debt, I feel so much better after sharing with someone how far we have come! You remember that we took a weekend trip to Las Vegas last November – that was to celebrate paying off the credit cards and saving enough money to pay for the entire trip with CASH. We haven’t charged ANYTHING in almost 2 years. It feels great!
If you have any questions that you’d like me to address in future Debt Relief Posts – feel free to email me at couchpotatoathlete (at) gmail (dot) com.
Hopefully our car trip will go quickly – have a great day!
~Holly