We're Debt Free!!!!! (Our Dave Ramsey Journey)

In September of 2007, I began a personal campaign to gain control over our household finances. We are a single income family that used to be two-income family (until November 2006). By September 2007, it had become obvious that the household funds just were not cutting it. (We had continued to live as a two-income family but had cut back to only getting one income after having back-to-back babies).

So, with the mission of doing whatever needed to be done to avoid my having to go back to work and put my two babies in day care (they were 11 months old and 23 months old at the time), I set off to find a solution. I began by playing the Grocery Game http://www.thegrocerygame.com/.

I had a lot of success with playing the Grocery Game and became very involved with their message boards (where I met some very amazing frugal ladies). And that is where I learned about Dave Ramsey.

At first I just ordered his books and quickly perused them. O.k. more finance books, whatever. I had read several finance books in my life by this point and they all had very good ideas. But none of them had ever really, really changed my life. (Although I did make some good decisions as a result of having read finance books in the past, which I later found out. Some of those things came in handy during our Dave Ramsey journey).

But none of those books ever helped me to really get a real handle on where our money was, or went, at any given time. We were credit card people baby and we had great time!!!

So, from Sept. 2007 through Dec. 2007, I plugged away, making some changes that I thought were good, attempting to create a budget, deeply cutting back on spending in most ways ... but still, it wasn't working out ... and then I finally figured out why due to the wise ladies who were Grocery Game veterans.

Basically, I had gone nuts playing the Grocery Game while using my credit card!!! I was saving money off the price of groceries, but I was regularly exeeding our grocery budget by using my credit card to buy whatever groceries I wanted, in whatever quantities I wanted to buy them!

Sooooo, I redirected and in Dec. of 2007, I opened and read Dave Ramsey's best book, Total Money Makeover with new eyes. And, I began at the beginning, with Baby Step 1. My husband didn't want to get too involved, but he did give me free reign to reorganize our monies and our budget in whatever way was necessary. And my husband (having grown up broke) can stop spending on a dime if need be and so I would instruct him accordingly as this journey got underway.

It took awhile. Many lessons were learned. And relearned. I might list some of those lessons out in another post because they were truly a big part of this whole process. It was not as easy as just reading the book and applying the principles. The real life lessons from applying the principles, and then seeking to find a way around the principles, and then realizing that I had to go back to the actual principles and stick to them to make this work ... those were the big lessons.

I really did not expect that on March 9, 2010 we would finally be debt free except for our house. I knew we were on plan, but I often have not focused on when the actual end to our debt would be. I also had not planned for the large tax refund that Uncle Sam allowed to let happen for us this year.

And then last week, when I was recovering from my tonsillectomy, I had a lot of free time. I found out that this month was actually a three paycheck month for us. And so, I found in our budget the last amount of money needed to finally pay off our original $24,700 Home Equity Line of Credit!

We are debt free, aside from the house, now baby!!!!!

Here are the stats:

Total debt paid off -- $33,375

Began financial overhaul in September 2007

Found Dave and began TMMO in December 2007

Finished BS 2 on March 9, 2010!!!

How exactly did we do this you might ask. After all, our income didn't really change all that much in the 2.25 years we were involved in this journey. In fact, my husband made less money each year after 2007 and even took a temporary pay cut for three months beginning in January 2009.

Well ... we sold some things. We sold many things. We cut back on some small things. We cut back on some big things. We refinanced our house. We did without things. And, most importantly, we kept the goal front and center.

And now I can say that we actually DID it!!!! It has been life changing!

It doesn't free up more money though. Because there are many things we must now save for in 2010 in order to maintain a debt-free lifestyle. For instance, it is no fun that we have to buy a roof for our house this year. But we will save for it and dh will put it on :) We also have to save up to pay our property taxes due this year. And that is no small amount of change. And other boring things like that must be attended to as well this year.

But after those things are taken care of, we will be ready to take on Baby Step 3 with gusto! We are not done. Just baby steppin' our way there ...