Our Debt-Free for Life Journey and Buying our First Home!

About 8 years ago, Drew and started our journey to becoming debt free for life. Our ultimate goal was to become first-time homeowners and have a place of our own. It was difficult, but I am so grateful we took the necessary steps to work toward debt freedom when we did. Money can be such a tough subject to talk about for a lot of people. It’s emotional and touchy, but taking control of debt is an important step toward financial freedom.

Drew and I started getting serious and talked about getting a place together. We even went and looked at apartments to see what part of town we wanted to be in. We had no idea what to expect or what we needed to do in order to afford our own place. I think we both just knew we wanted to be together and were ready to do whatever it took to get us to our goal. 

I had just finished a certification to become a medical assistant and I was trying to find an internship site. A position became available with an Ob/GYN in town who hired me after my internship hours were completed. What I thought was an incredible opportunity turned into one of the worst experiences I’ve ever been through. The doctor was horrible to me. He criticized me in front of patients, I was severely underpaid, and my paychecks were constantly late. And then when I finally had enough and filed a complaint with the labor board, he withheld my final check. Through all of this, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. So now I was pregnant, unemployed, and trying to figure out what to do. All while knowing that getting a new job was going to be difficult because of my pregnancy.

I was using my credit card here and there, but nothing huge. I never worried about carrying a balance, I just spent carefully and made the monthly payment. No problem, right? Wrong. When I quit my job, I had nothing to fall back on. I had a savings account, but it never had more than a couple hundred bucks in it at a time. There was no way we could seriously find an apartment with the way things were.

It was a rude awakening when we sat down to look at our budget to see what we could afford at the time. A decent apartment in a part of town that doesn’t make you feel scared to be outside at night was around $750 a month for a 2-bedroom. It shocked us. Covering groceries for ourselves and our 1-year-old could be a struggle for some months. How in the world were we ever going to be able to afford our own place? It felt so defeating. Drew made just over minimum wage and I had left my job because I couldn’t handle being treated so poorly. We knew we wanted me to stay home with our son, but that felt out of the question. I never wanted to work outside of the house, but what were we going to do?

Another difficult situation

A few weeks later, Drew was told the company he was working for was closing. he would be out of a job in less than a week. He had been there for about 3 years and loved what he was doing, so when the company announced with little notice that they were shutting their doors, it was really hard.  It was another added stress on us, but looking back, I am so glad things happened the way they did. We wanted to sign a lease and rent a place, but we just never went through with it. Obviously, there was a reason we never found a place that worked.

At the time, we were living with my mom renting out her basement. We were so grateful for my mom letting us stay with her, but we couldn’t live in her basement forever. Drew and I both knew we had some work to do if we ever wanted to be able to afford our own place someday.  Our kids deserved more space and we dreamt of having our own home.

We needed to get serious about our budget and our financial goals. We sat down together and looked over our budget, monthly expenses, and credit cards. Then we tried to find areas where we could cut back. It was hard to look at everything in black and white and feel like our goal was unattainable. We didn’t give up though. We listed our debts and our monthly bills, and compared that to our income. Things were already so tight we weren’t sure where to even begin, but something had to change. We knew we needed to develop new habits and change our spending behaviors if we wanted to achieve debt freedom.

Things were looking up

Thankfully, Drew found another job pretty quickly. And it came with a decent pay bump! It felt like we finally had a win, and it gave us to motivation we needed so badly to keep moving forward and working toward our ultimate goal. It was about so much more than paying off debts. I wanted us to adopt this mindset of never carrying debt again. Slipping back into old habits is so easy, so making our goal bigger was important. Debt free for life was the ultimate goal. We started paying off our credit cards and other debt from smallest to largest as quickly as we possibly could. Freeing up as much money each month as possible was the best place to start to help us feel like we were really making a difference.

During this time, I was also trying to find ways to make an income from home. Going back to work just didn’t make sense with how much we’d have to pay for childcare now that we had 2 little ones at home. My options were limited, but I was determined to find something. I listed an ad for in-home childcare just to see if I would have any interest and I did! I started watching 2 kids a few days a week and was able to help throw more money at our debt to pay it off faster.

Things were starting to look up. We were making progress toward our debt, and we had a little bit of money in savings, but we were still using our credit cards from time to time, and it made me feel almost guilty. It felt like going backwards every time were swiped a credit card somewhere. I wanted to cancel the cards and just be done for good, but our credit card gave us cashback at the end of every year. While I knew it wasn’t free money, we were diligent about paying off the balance in its entirety every month, so we avoided extra interest.

I know this isn’t the ‘Ramsey way’ of doing things, but this is what worked for us and our debt journey. That is one of the hardest parts of the debt free for life journey if you ask me. You have to find a system that is going to work for you and is going to keep you motivated to keep working towards your end goal. We wanted our own home so badly that we kept our heads down and just kept moving forward. We could have stayed in debt, gone on vacations, or put clothes on a credit card, but none of that was what we truly wanted.

Becoming debt free for life

We made some stupid decisions along the way, but no matter what, we always kept moving towards our end goal- debt freedom. It took about 3 years to pay off medical debt, 2 large credit cards, student loans, and our family car. It could have been a lot faster, but we were also trying to save for a home and provide for our children, which somehow increased to 4! The day we paid off our last debt- the family car, felt like the biggest accomplishment ever. It felt so good to get the title and know that we didn’t owe money to anyone! It’s been over 4 years since we paid off the car, and it still feels just as good.

We faced a lot of hardships on our debt free for life journey, but we wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t sat down together that day and decided to make a serious change and take control of our budget. Putting in the hard work to change our habits helped us learn how to keep moving forward and working toward our goals.

Becoming homeowners

Once we were debt free, we could finally work towards saving enough for a home. This goal felt so much easier to achieve than paying off debt. Maybe because we were seeing our savings account increase instead of decrease; we had so much momentum. It was so easy to sit down on payday, pay our bills, and immediately put everything else into savings. It was so exciting to see our savings go up every 2 weeks.

We had become really good at cutting out unnecessary spending through our debt payoff journey. We cut out cable tv, we only went out to eat once a month, shopped around to save money on car insurance, and I stuck to our food plan diligently to help keep our grocery budget under control. (I have a whole post about our food budget and tips on how to save money that you can find right here!)

We knew our debt-to-income ratio needed to be right for us to even qualify for a home loan. Because my income was sporadic, we couldn’t use it as part of qualifying for a loan. We would only qualify on what Drew made. It took longer than we hoped, but in March 2016 we started looking for homes. It took a few months and dozens of offers, but in July we closed on our first home! I was certain something would go wrong throughout the process. They’d find something wrong with our bank statement, or the loan wouldn’t come through on time. Everything worked out perfectly though, and on closing day, we got to take the kids to the new house, buy ice cream from the neighborhood truck, and move into our 3-bedroom home.

Knowing we had worked so hard to reach our goal made it even more special to us. We loved that home. It was where we brought Autumn home from the hospital and where we found out Lucas was in remission. We also found out that Drew’s dad had worked for the company that built the homes in our neighborhood before he passed. That home was meant for us in every way and had we not changed our habits and worked so hard to reach our goal, we never would have experienced the incredible memories we have.   

You can do it, too!

If you are on a debt-free for life journey, don’t give up! I know firsthand how daunting it can feel, but keep going. Find a system that works for you, get yourself on a budget, and check out Dave Ramsey’s baby steps. I don’t agree with all of his rules and ideas, but he helped me learn how to create a budget and change our family tree when I was desperate for things to change. Also, find things that bring you joy within your budget. this will help you stay focused while not being deprived of everything.  The sense of pride and accomplishment makes it all worth it, I promise. Thank you for being here!

-M