If you could cut your grocery spending in half and remove all your debt payments, how would your life change?
When I was a young bride with 3 small children, we asked ourselves that question. We were struggling along on a $35,000 income and wondering how we were going to offer things like music lessons to our kids as they grew. At the time, we didn’t know that 3 more children would eventually join our family. We only knew that if things continued the way they were we’d never have the life we hoped for. We had an $89,000 debt looming over us. No longer were we satisfied with limping along paying minimums. We stared it in the face, taking massive decisive action. In 6 intense months, we were debt free. On paper, it should have taken much longer. Looking back we recognize ONE IMPORTANT thing that made the difference in the speed of our journey to debt free success.
Once someone hears the details to our story, there are two responses: 1. I could never do that because I don’t have blank or blank. or 2. This is so motivating I’m going to do it.
I really hope you are #2, because no matter what your situation is, the One IMPORTANT thing will make a difference for you.
I’m hosting a live video event Wednesday, April 6th and along with our debt free details will explain it all. Reserve your spot here.
That’s us! Same income, three kids. 16K in consumer debt. When I told my husband we were X amount of dollars over every month (because of putting gas and food on the credit card, not because of vacations or fancy coffee, etc) he thought I was exaggerating. As soon as we had the truth on the table, we both immediately became the “2” version in your description above. Someone gifted us with Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” and we decided to totally go for it. We’re now paying down our debt while living on a budget that does not exceed our income. And yes, we had to cut the grocery budget in half, along with other cuts I didn’t think could be made, but it is totally worth it for the motivation we feel, the freedom on the horizon, and the way it has strengthened that last part of our marriage which was the only place we didn’t have 100% transparency. I would tell others not to hesitate to start a debt-free goal! I worried myself into health problems which have now abated since we started working together on this beast of a thing. 🙂 Thank you for your forthcoming testimony which I am sure will be awesome. I just wanted to add my 2 cents to the “take a penny, leave a penny” dish in case readers/viewers think you’re one of a kind. Anyone can do this!!!
What a great story! Thank you so much for taking the time to share it.
Angie; thank you for your wisdom. My Dad always taught me that if you didnt have the money for something, you didnt need it. We had three children and one income for a long time. We managed. Keeping our debt as low as we could, we started working hard to save. A penny saved is a penny earned. We started out with a fixer upper home in Fairmount, paid it off in three years, sold it, bought another home, paid it off.
I remember when we had our first mortgage burning party!!! And that has been many years ago, now. I shopped at Aldis, had cloth diapers, watched every nickel. It paid off. When the company that John worked for went out of business, we were able to withstand the financial loss. The one thing that we did do, was to always give money to our church. Even if it wasnt much, we tried. Even though this has been almost 40 years ago, I think the principles are still the same. Good for you!
I love it! So much wisdom in this comment. A mortgage burning party sounds really fun!