Every time I listen to the Dave Ramsey show I always love to hear how he responds to callers when they ask how he’s doing. His response is always the same, “better than I deserve.”
Dave Ramsey has been on my radar since Mason was a baby, so 8ish years. We were so gung-ho when we first started reading his books and then we ended up selling our home and paying off all of our credit card debt with that. Let me start at the beginning and bring you up to speed with our past & present.
Jonathan and I started our marriage with debt. A credit card with a pretty big balance and a car payment. We were both working at the time but we were not saving anything. JKM’s paycheck covered all of our bills and mine basically went to eating out and frivolous spending. The sad part isn’t that we were burning through my checks but we were also running up another credit card AND I decided at the same time my paid for car wasn’t good enough, so we took on another car payment. On paper we could afford all these new things, the new car payment, the credit card minimum payment and eating out ALL the time. We hardly ever grocery shopped and even when we did we still chose eating out over staying in. We developed more bad habits with our money than good ones.
It wasn’t until I got pregnant with Mason and we realized in order for me to come home (which was always the plan, even though we were never preparing for it financially) that our spending habits would have to change. I remember pinteresting debt freedom plans because I had no idea how to even begin digging out of the hole we found ourselves in. We had never even had a budget. Not once, had I written down what our bills were, I dont even think I knew exactly how much we were making. Sad times, friends.
Once I finally realized we needed to start with a budget and to find out exactly where our money was going, I felt better and worse. I could NOT believe how much we were spending on eating out and just junk. We were the definition of keeping up with the Joneses’
I came home in January before Mason was born in April and we went ALL in on living within our means. It was then that I developed a plan to start paying off debt and sticking to a budget. We hadn’t yet learned of Dave Ramsey’s ways so we were just doing the best we could with what we knew. When I came home we had three consumer debts. A credit card and two car payments. We were able to pay off Jonathan’s truck within the first year but we were still dealing with the other two debts. We kept chipping away at them but on a limited income it was mostly just paying the minimum payment more times than not. This continued until after we brought our Branny bear home from the hospital. When MKM was almost three and B was two months we made the decision to move.
It all happened so quickly, we had talked about listing our house before but never got around to it. Superbowl Sunday of 2017 we mentioned it to a good friend, who mentioned it to his uncle who happened to live in our neighborhood. He and his family came and looked at it and that Wednesday they told us they wanted it. We had a lot of DIY projects going on and he told us to halt them that they would finish them. Such a blessing.
We had heard whispers that one of Jonathans extended family members was looking at moving into a retirement home. The rumors were true, he was looking to sale a brick ranch on a few acres and that had always been or dream but never something we thought could actually happen. After a lot of back and forth he agreed to sell to us for a good price on one condition… We had to clean the house out and accept it “as is.” That phrase will forever haunt me. We were young and not well versed on what repairs would cost. The house was like something you would see on hoarders. Not even exaggerating. He had been widowed for a while and had completely let the house go. It was ROUGH. Before we even closed we got to work cleaning out. JKM’s family helped us clean out and we finally could see the bare bones. It needed floors and paint most of all, so thats what we did.
We closed on our old house a month before we closed on our new house. We were able to pay off a credit card that had been haunting us for years and cash flow new floors and all repairs needed on the new house.
After we were settled in we only had a car payment & our mortgage. We weren’t in our house long before we realized we desperately needed new windows. We were out of cash so we financed them. We carried three debts for 2.5 years before paying off the windows.
From 2020 until present day we have carried and paid off several debts. A credit card, camper, car & personal loan are our current debts. We have been working so hard towards paying down our debt to truly reach our dreams of starting a business. We are fully back on the Dave Ramsey train and have already completed baby step 1. We are currently on baby step 2.
Follow along with us as we reach our dreams!
Peace & Blessings,
Hannah
a pew full ♥ 