Our journey to debt-freedom began in August of 2007.  We had once again run our credit card up to the limit of 13,500.  Granted, that is not as high as some consumers have, but the monthly payments were KILLING us.  I felt we would never be debt free.  I felt we would die with a credit card balance.  Check out my first post on our debt-reduction journey.

I checked out the Dave Ramsey book from the library.  You know his slogan “live like no one else so you can LIVE like no one else” really spurred me on.  I dug up for change around the house and rolled it.  I took that into the bank and paid it on our debt.  I used only cash when shopping and anything left over went into the “pay off debt” account.  I did surveys and sold all of our CDs and books on Half.com.  I went through our bills and got rid of hidden costs.  I cut out our home line and got rid of netflix (though I did re-instate this later).  For about a year and a half, we cut out eating out except for breakfast after Mass and I gave up thrifting!  Yes, me, the GW queen gave it up.  We stripped copper wire and picked up cans to turn in for scrap dollars.  At the time, copper was going for quite a bit.  We ended up making 300-400 off of the scrap copper R’s work was throwing away.  I kid you not, he pulled it out of the dumpster!   I took on a job of clearing clutter from a very large hay barn from one of our friends, who happens to be the biggest pack rat in the history of pack rats!  I never did finish the job completely, but I did remove 80% of the clutter from it and dump a large percentage of that into a huge burn pile.  Of that 80%, I sold on ebay probably 30-40% and made about 3500.00 to pay towards the debt. He’s still a pack rat and I know that barn is cluttered up with his “finds” again.  I could probably clear it for him once every two years!!   I also held a garage sale of my clutter and netted a couple of hundred dollars.  We also chose to apply Christmas bonuses to the debt rather than spend it.  We applied our income tax refund from 07 and 08 towards the debt as well.

After we began homeschooling, some of our money saving schemes went out the window.  We began eating out twice a week.  I felt I needed a break from cooking 3 meals per day/7 days per week.  I know, I’m lame.  I justified this with the fact we weren’t paying tuition anymore.  Funny how even though I had almost 500.00 more per month, I was still always coming up short with the bills.  I payed very well for a while, then I started slacking.  Then baseball season came up again and we had to shell out $$ for hotel rooms and food and baseball park admission.  We also began low-carbing, and while this is a great way to eat and lose weight, it’s also much more expensive than eating Hamburger Helper you purchased as a loss leader and coupled with a coupon.  I’m finally getting into the swing of price matching and stocking up on low meat prices.  It’s the way to go.

When R’s father and mother passed away, we received a small inheritance.  We applied that as well.  This brought our amount down to about 2500.00.  Then I decided I wanted to take a vacation.  Couple the small costs of a camping vacation with driving a V-8 truck during the September 08 gas shortages.  We probably spent more on gas than we did on anything else for the vacation, even the darn camping equipment.  This brought out bill back up to about 3500.00.  We just plugged away at it and then R got a wonderful Christmas bonus again this year.  We applied the whole amount (minus our tithe) and in January when he got his W-2 (on 1/5/09) I did our taxes with Turbo Tax, filed online, received the refund in a few days and sent the payment on Thursday.  Whew.

It was a long journey, but it was not an impossible journey.  Back in August of 07, I really didn’t believe we’d get out of debt but I had a vision.  I kept the chart on my blog and on my fridge so I could be inspired every day.  I did whatever I could to earn money, even if it were only 1 or 2.00 at a time.  Every little penny really does add when you’re trying to pay off debt.  Along the way, I think I may have shown my children that perseverance and determination does pay off.  I also think they may have learned a valuable lesson that debt is not the way to live.  Working hard and SAVING is the way to go if you want to buy something!

Looking towards the future, I will be putting aside the remainder of my income tax into our savings account.  If the kids are accept into the school, I’ll have to use my “Feb. credit card payment” for their registration fees.  Until I have to begin paying tuition again, I’ll be stashing that money into our savings.  I just know “murphy” will visit again and I want to be totally prepared for when he comes.

Thanks for sharing my journey through the years.  Thanks for all the encouragement and comments along the way.  You can always click the “debt reduction” tag on the side bar to read all of the posts.

Woohoo!  I’m debt free!  I can now live like no one else, since I lived like no one else!