If you have been following along, this is part 3 of the Digging Ourselves Out post. In this part I am going to give you our plan for getting ourselves out of debt. While everyone's situation is different, I hope that by sharing this it can inspire you to make better decisions for yourselves, so that you may also become financially free.
May 2010- I graduate from college. I am unable to find a great paying job in my desired city. We move back to our hometown area. I am making more money than my husband now, but he isn't able to find a job right away. This is okay, though because we were able to move in with my in-laws and they had enough room to accommodate our family of four.
October 2010- We find a home of our own. It is near the top of our price range, but it was the best choice at the time. Looking back I realized was far too picky. I also quit my job at this time, as my husband has found a full time job that pays better with health care, and we are now expecting baby #3. (I did not quit my job just because he found a job. It was a crap job.)
May 2011- Baby #3 is born.
June 2012- I start working outside the home. I am ready to work, and we found care that we can trust for our children. With this job I pay half to daycare, and the other half, as diligently as I can, I put towards student loan payments.
March 2013- I quit my job for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which- I missed being at home with my children. Looking to the future, we are going to be living off of one income, in a house that is stretching our budget too thin. We make the decision to sell our home, and search for a less expensive one in the area.
June 21, 2013- We find a foreclosed home that is half of the price of our current home. It needs work but we are very handy, and a lot has already been done by the bank. Downside- we are now making two payments. Thankful that we have savings.
August 2013- My husband lands his dream job. He now works for the union making literally twice as much as he was at the last place.
October 2013- Our home sells, and we are given the proceeds, which was a lot- given that we put a lot of work into our first home. We put most of that money into our new home mortgage- About a third of the house cost.
Now that you have our history here is OUR PLAN: My husband now makes twice as much. Save half of his income, and live off the other half. We were already able to have a comfortable life with his previous income, and even more so now that we have a cheaper home. That half that we have been saving, we have split into saving and debt. We now make double payments on our house, and will have it paid off by the end of 2014. Our student loan debt, our only other debt outside the mortgage, will be paid off by June of 2015.
We could have chosen at some point to just spend more, to get nice new vehicles, better house, and everything else we wanted. But we have chosen to spend it on debt, and honestly, it feels better. Each month I can breathe easier knowing that our debt is going away, far far away, hopefully never to come back again.
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