First things first, I just want to make sure that you know that I’m by no means a financial expert. The things I did may not work for everyone especially in the time that we’re in. Never feel pressured to overextend yourself when the world is all over the place like it is now.
With that being said, me and my husband have hit a milestone that we’ve been chasing for a long time. WE’RE DEBT FREE!!!
How We Got Out
Around the time that we purchased our house in March of 2019, we finally decided to get serious about our finances. At that time our we had separate bank accounts and were interested in saving money, but it wasn’t necessarily a priority.
Enter Dave Ramsey.
My husband was obsessed with this guy! Every day he came home telling me about yet another light bulb moment he had reading his book and listening to his radio show.
Little did I know, every habit I had created involving my money was about to hit the fan.
First up it was combining our finances, and creating a budget. This one hurt bad! I’d been priding myself on being independent and never asking him for anything financially or being asked. I had been making all my own decisions about what I bought and when my entire life.
After swallowing my pride, we got on the same page and laid out a plan down to every penny that came in.
January 1st, we put into effect our new plan and within about the first 3 months, all of my debt was gone. My husband still had about $18,000 worth of student loans left though.
Then the pandemic hit.
How We Paid Off Our Debt During The Pandemic
Thankfully my husband’s job moved to remote work, and although I was furloughed it wasn’t a huge strain on our finances.
I always like to say that God was really using this time to bless us because random money was coming from all types of places.
Stimulus checks were approved, which was an extra $3400 in our pockets, and then we got a refund from our car insurance company. I was approved for pandemic unemployment, which was a huge boost. That coupled with a few other blessings and sticking to our budget put us in a really great place financially.
It all led to officially being out of debt on August 1 of this year!
Now, we’re setting our sights on getting a new car debt free, which I’m really excited about! I’ll let you guys know how that goes!
How are you and your family handling finances during this pandemic (if you feel comfortable sharing)?
