To start with, we do not have credit card debt. I have my parents to thank for that. They helped me apply for my own credit card when I left to go to college in Montana, far from home in Eastern South Dakota. They only gave this to me for emergency use. They were very strict about it, and warned me to not buy anything with my credit card that I didn't absolutely need. So there is our credit card story. We use our credit cards now when traveling, or making large purchases, all things that we have the money for in our checking account. We just use the credit card for the cash back for things we already have the money for.
Second, we do not have any loans on our vehicles, and never have. This was out of luck, but also out of realistic expectations. We knew it would be in our best interest to buy our cars with cash and not buy more than we could afford with cash. The luck part was that my husband bought a house before we got married, put equity into the house, then we sold the house, and used the proceeds to buy our vehicles. IMPORTANT! We did not go out the next day and buy two cars. In fact my husband was still forced by his frugal wife to bear with the current crappy car he had until it stopped working all together. We also did not spend all of the money on the cars. We bought two cars, spaced about a year apart, several months after the house sale, with far less than the entire proceeds.
It makes me sad to know that there are so many people out there struggling with debt and with spending and saving. I think that Dave Ramsey put it really well when he said
"We buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't even like"
I hope that this can encourage some of you to avoid using that dreadful credit card on things you don't need. Next time I will give you our plan to getting out of debt.
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