Starting out in our relationship 7 years ago we thought were doing well. We bought a large home together, both had the jobs we had worked hard for and loved, and had our wedding coming up. We seemed to be way ahead of our peers in the check off boxes of life and we were happy where life was taking us. We had a little bit of debt but easily paying things off. However, we also had very very little savings and didn’t have a plan. But we were young, plenty of time to save later!

Fast forward 3 years we hit a speed bump. We had been having trouble conceiving and things went from a little stressful to a full on life change when we found out we would not be able to conceive without the help of in vitro fertilization (IVF). The process took us a little under 3 years and somewhere north of $90,000 to achieve success.  All the while we worked overtime in order to be able to keep a small piece of normalcy in our lives, traveling.

It’s strange because we didn’t stop to think how much stress making a budget could relieve. We just kept spending each month and doing our best to pay off the medical bills but never got there. We just kept getting behind. Credit cards and 0% payment plans were our friends. We even sold my hubby’s truck to get some cash for yet another procedure, but we never thought to budget?…

Fast forward yet again to January 2017. We were living in a rental home waiting for our new “downsized” home to be built – smaller but the monthly payment would be the same so of course we thought we could afford it. I was around 6 months pregnant, still working as a nurse and my hubby a firefighter. We had a $26,000 car loan, a leased car we were draining $350 per month in to, medical bills for both my hubby and of course for our million dollar miracle baby, and even a $7,500 loan on the furniture we were sitting on, plus some various other debt. All in all totaling upwards of $120k. We were broke.

Even though we owed over ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, we really weren’t overly concerned about our debt because everyone has debt, and I set everything up on a payment plan that we could “afford”.

Oh how we were wrong.

The Day Everything Changed

·        January 13^th 2017. The day that will live in infamy.

My hubby came home and said “We are going to pay off 120k in debt in 24 months”. Naturally my only response was an open mouth and a question mark on my forehead. I still remember my initial thought of Why do we need to do this? That thought was followed by a flood of other thoughts.

You see I had been managing our money for the previous 5 years. Hubby didn’t even know the access passwords to most of our accounts. We trusted each other and never had money “problems”, but truth be told I was overwhelmed. I hid a lot of stress from him as I did the math over and over making sure we would make it until the next paycheck would come. I would put things on credit cards and say I would pay them with the next check and sometimes other things would come up – like another procedure or a flat tire that needed repair – and that credit card wouldn’t get paid that month.

I would work overtime if I knew we wanted to do something, go somewhere or if we had holidays coming up. I would be so thankful if one of our checks had some extra money on it because I could pay for that credit card bill or put it towards the cruise we already planned. I felt like I was doing my best for our family, but looking back it could have been so much easier if I had just asked for help.

Unbeknownst to me my hubby had been spending countless hours researching, listening to podcasts, reading forums, and talking to others who had gotten themselves out of debt. He saw we had a problem and, being the husband he is, came up with a solution before bringing it to me.

So on January 13^th 2017, we set out to change our lives, our daughter’s life. We no longer wanted to be the “norm”, no longer wanted to live paycheck to paycheck, and no longer wanted to be in debt.

The Plan

“Thought we were making good choices with our money. We were wrong.”

We sat down and looked, really looked, at the past 3-6 months of expenses, laid them all out and sat back in a combination of awe and disgust. $1500 on groceries?! $300 at STARBUCKS? What were we doing?!

We thought that because I didn’t go on shopping sprees and hubby didn’t go golfing every weekend or out with the guys, that we were making wise choices with our money. We were wrong, and the craziest part is that we had NO IDEA how wrong we were.

We made a list of our income, using the lowest possible as our number, and we looked at our expenses – hurt us every time we looked. Then, we dug deep and sifted through ALL of our debt. No skeletons left in the closet, no secrets, no hidden ANYTHING. Not a pretty site, but there it was.

Decreasing Our Spending

Looking at our expenses we came up with a reasonable number for each budget category and laid those out. I was so surprised at the sheer amount of “unnoticed” money we were spending. By unnoticed I meaning we had nothing to show for it. We had to make some changes.

Some categories were unavoidable, like gas, but others we were able to control more and that’s what we focused on.

Groceries is where I knew I could make some changes. The problem was that I also knew that value of eating healthy and we really loved to try out gourmet recipes at home. It took some trial and error but I figured that out. I have a grocery post coming out that will outline exactly what we did.

Each month we would get better and better. I look back on our initial, archaically written – yes written – budget and I gave us $800 PER MONTH for groceries, for 2 of us! If you look now it is still on the high side of $550, but where we are comfortable. Most months we spend less, but some months we spend it all. I even managed to fit my daughter’s 1^st birthday in to that food budget and we cooked for over 70 people! Anything is doable. Just have to have a plan.

We by no means cut out everything from our lives. We still went out to eat, I still got the occasional Starbucks, and we most definitely traveled. The difference was that every move we made, every dollar we spent was thought out. Did I really NEED that coffee? Did we really NEED those throw pillows? It was a matter of living intentionally and by living intentionally we were able to budget without the stigma that is normally associated with budgeting, which is deprivation. We did not deprive ourselves, we simply chose to spend our money on things that we NEEDED, things that brought value to our lives.

Increasing Our Income

Here’s the kind of fun part. We did work a bit of overtime, especially to pay off the bills for the fertility treatments, but we also very much valued the time we spent together. So… we had to come up with some creative ways to boost that income because there was no way in H E double hockey sticks that we would be able to pay off 120K as fast as we wanted to without something more than our standard income.

First and foremost we downsized our home. Used the cash for a down payment on the next house – goodbye PMI and high interest loan, and whatever was left got thrown at the medical bills.

Then there was the side hustle. Oh the side hustle. Basically the side hustle is ANYTHING you do on the side of your regular job. We did quite a few things actually. We hadn’t been introduced to the online businesses, blogging, or any of the other “cool” ways I would love to try today, but there were still ways to make a few extra dollars.

One of the things I loved to do was redo furniture. I would either take a piece we owned and spruce it up or find things in thrift stores, garage sales, or the trash. You slap a little paint on them, distress them a bit, and BAM you’ve got a “farmhouse table” or a “vintage look dresser”.

Next we sold some things. A lot of things. We had already sold my hubby’s truck to pay for a procedure we needed cash NOW for, so I focused on the smaller items. There are some great places to sell basically anything, from Facebook to Ebay to OfferUp to Amazon. I sold everything. Look around your house. Anything you’re not using? Really want to pay off that debt? Sell it!

Sounds a little crazy, but I can guarantee you I don’t miss any of the things I sold. They were simply taking up space. Looking back I think we bought so much because we had such a big house we felt the need to fill it.

There were other various things we would do to make a little extra cash including working as a babysitter in our late 20’s, dog walkers, cleaning random friends’ and family members’ houses. You name it, we did it.

The End Result

We beat our original goal of paying off 120k in 24 months by paying that ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in less than 12 months!!! We paid it off before my daughter was even born.

I didn’t realize how much satisfaction I would get from this process until I paid off that $26,000 car loan in one phone call. It was the most liberating feeling knowing I owned that car!

I’m pretty sure that was my official turning point. All I wanted to do was find ways to maximize our money, to make our money work for us.

Every month I cut a little bit more from our budget until I hit the point where we could feel the impact – it was a waaaaay lower number in most categories than I would have ever guessed. I would find ways to save without losing the quality of what we were buying – groceries was the biggest saver – and I would take pride when we were under budget in a category that month.

Of course we had months where we didn’t do so well. I looked back at our budget and we went over nearly every month in the first 6 months. It’s a learning processes! The key is persistence. Every month we would sit down and redo the budget and every month we would learn something new. We kept each other motivated and made every effort not to criticize if one of us made an err in judgement – I swear they put crack in those Starbucks drinks.

Fast forward to our original 24 month deadline. We have taken ourselves out of debt, out of $120,000 in debt, and a negative net worth that we didn’t even bother to calculate, and now have a net worth in the six figures with no plans of slowing down.

We don’t lead a life of deprivation. We lead of life of intention and planning and therefore can focus more time on the things we love and the things that bring joy to our lives. We spend more time with our daughter and each other, go on even more amazing vacations, eat the most delicious foods and have unforgettable experiences. We are finally truly Living Life and Loving Us!!!

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