As you can see I have done a terrible job of keeping up this blog. Mostly I blame our lack of Internet. You see, for the last two years our family has been "living like no one else", trudging uphill through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace program. We are slowly making our way to the end of baby step 2, a process full of blood, sweat, and on my part especially, tears.
You see, when we got married back in 2009 we sat down together and added up our combined debt. And we were shocked. I came into our marriage with one small credit card balance and two hefty student loans. And hubby...well let's just say I needed all my fingers to count his credit cards plus his student loans plus some very stupid 401k loans we had taken out to close on our house. All together the debts totaled nearly $50,000! Yikes!
Then it dawned on us that we owed more than hubby made in one year. And that $600 of his meager monthly earnings was going to minimum payments. Double yikes! You can bet that at this point I was freaking out, yelling "why me?" and "this is YOUR fault" and other non-helpful, marriage-destroying things. I think for hubby the worst was realizing he had nothing to show for all the debt. It's not as if he had bought some nice furniture or a huge tv. The balances were mainly little things purchased at the end of each pay period. You know, when there was too much month left at the end of the money.
We knew we were in trouble. We knew we needed some serious help to gain control over our spending. And we knew we needed it ASAP, or we were going to end up bankrupt. Not a good place to be with a brand new marriage, a new mortgage, AND especially when we discovered that we were expecting a baby. I know, we are crazy but we try to keep things interesting :)
Anyway, luckily my dad, who happens to be a financial planner, saw all this and being the concerned dad that he is bought us a copy of "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey. Thank you dad! The next month we enrolled in a local FPU class and began the most important journey of our marriage. This is our third year paying off debt, and I am thrilled to say we owe less than $16,000 and are on track to finish this year! In the midst of all that we are now expecting our THIRD child and still feel confident that we can meet our year-end goal.
I write all this to show that it CAN be done, and all the hard work, sacrifice and overtime at work for hubby (meaning long hours at home alone for me) are so worth it in the end. We have so many dreams that would remain unfulfilled if we had never tried to achieve financial stability. Like taking our kids on vacation, renovating our home, starting our own business, being a rockstar (ok that's hubby's). Even the little things, like having internet, going out to eat, and saving for retirement were out of reach, but now they are possible. We are so grateful that nothing catastrophic has happened along the way, and we are looking forward to the day we can scream "We're debt free!"
So what does all this mean for me and this blog? For starters, having money to actually DO things means that I can begin to plan the renovation of our lovely Grant Park victorian. That is generally the purpose of this blog because I love houses and looking at pictures of beautifully decorated houses. My hope is that this blog will not only document the transformation of our home, but also any future investments we make in real estate. I did say I wanted to start a business, right?
We are so excited for what the future has in store, and we can't wait to share as we make progress. Stay tuned!
