Our Journey to Debt Freedom Pt.1
I've been wanting to share about this area in our lives for quite some time! It's been a long four years since my husband Hunter and I have begun our journey of living on a budget and becoming debt free.I figured I'd start this story where any adventure begins- the beginning. Hunter's parents shared Dave Ramsey with him when he was younger, but he didn't follow his financial planning advice as he grew up and lived on his own. I had never heard of him, and my financial education came from a single lecture from my eighth-grade math teacher that I never forgot as well as a financial class in my sophomore year of high school. By my later college years, I finally got on the bandwagon with what I had learned, which was basically- 1. Don't splurge because you're a poor college student, 2. Don't take out any more student loans, and 3. Only spend $25 or so on your credit card and immediately pay it off to build up your credit score.When we were introduced to the financial guru Dave Ramsey as a couple, we were engaged and we were given Financial Peace University as a gift from my future father-in-law. At this point in time, I had stopped taking out student loans and had a total of $10,000 in school debt. Hunter graduated with no school debt but had about $500 in credit card debt. The first night we watched Financial Peace, we followed Dave's advice and took out the scissors and shredded up our credit cards.
However, while we were so gung-ho on following the baby steps, we seemed to not fully comprehend the instructions. We lived on a very tight budget to save up for our beautiful and very budget wedding, and since we were still in college and working lower income jobs, we had to be very careful with our money. We had the cutest, little, first apartment walking distance from my university that was such a steal. Our favorite date nights were spent getting a half-price beer at our favorite bar down the street. However, about six months after we got married, we made our first mistake, we bought a car- with a car loan.*So dumb*If I can be honest, not too long after, we both saw the flaw in our thinking. Making around $30,000-35,000 a year at that point, we had no business buying a $10-12,000 car, even if it was used. But we couldn't go back in time, we had to keep moving forward and know to never make that mistake again.In order to make progress in career goals, Hunter went back to school within that first year. While it's become a sort of divine blessing now, at the time, we were slightly torn with the option available to us. Hunter, who was studying to become an occupational therapist didn't make it into grad school that year. However, he did get accepted into an associate's program that would allow him to become an occupational therapist assistant, then apply to a bridge program in our city that would allow him to work while studying through a master's program to become an OT. The catch was that the associate's program was only available at a private school 45 minutes away that was going to cost $20,000.Yikes. If you haven't done the math already, that means we took out another loan. We paid monthly on his schooling, but we couldn't afford to contribute much, even with me working two part-time jobs. We moved from Denton to Dallas, TX, into the cheapest but "best" apartment we could find to shorten the commute to his new school and the paid internship I was working to complete my degree. We barely saw each other in those days, sometimes going three days before we got to share a meal together between his school, my internship, and his job. Those days were rough and sometimes it felt like there was nothing to show for it, but little did we know the path God was setting up for us.
The month Hunter graduated, we were three months away from meeting our first baby. I had continued working two jobs, one at an office and the other, my dream job from home as a writer. We were preparing to move back to our beloved Denton, TX, to begin raising our family and growing Hunter's career. However, some plans had changed now. The bridge program we thought Hunter would join no longer existed, and his private school went bankrupt and closed down! We moved back to Denton expecting to have him eventually apply to the only available OT program that would work with his bridge program transfer, all the way in Louisiana.In the meantime, there was a month or two gap where Hunter couldn't find consistent work as an Occupational Therapy Assistant, so to our dismay, out came the credit card again. We rung up about a month's worth of expenses in debt to add to the car and student loans. Luckily, the baby's birth was covered by insurance (only to be billed a year later with about $1,000 in additional payments!) and we had been using a pregnancy resource center to collect diapers, wipes and baby clothes to prepare for our son.That month was intimidating. Since college, Hunter had been working at the Cowboy's and Rangers stadium transporting people to and from the parking lots on golf carts. It made good enough money, but at this point in time, the seasons were slowing down. We had just moved to a cute rental house and were a little worried we wouldn't have enough for rent. We had a lot of questions, but God had a lot of answers for us.