Monday, July 12, 2010

Van Paid, Check!

(Find previous getting-out-of-debt posts here.)

Well, the Warrior Poet and I have sent off our final payment on the van loan. Yippee! It only took us five (!) years. Here's praying that the transmission doesn't fall out before we save up for a replacement!

(Those of you who think you need a new car even though you have to schedule the payments out for sixty months, don't do it! Back away from the salesman. Please pay cash for a beater instead of going into long-term debt for a car. Believe me.)

But God has been good to us. Two years ago, we faced the fact that not only were we $25,000 in debt (excluding the house), we were too undisciplined to get out of debt without personal help. We enlisted the aid of a personal financial coach for six months, who trained us to keep our heads in the game and our eyes on the goal. He was very helpful. He still replies to our occasional emails when things go awry and we don't know what to do.

Anyway, in two years we have paid off over $15,000. We listen to folks on Dave Ramsey that have paid off $50,000 or more in two years, and realize we are not nearly as aggressive as Dave recommends, BUT we have still paid off $15,000 in debt in two years.

(We realized in the counselling sessions that the only way we could get that aggressive would be to put the kids in school and send me back to work full-time. We decided that we were Not In That Bad Of Shape. We were going to do this thing while homeschooling if at all possible, even if it took longer.)

$9700 to go. Yippee!

7 comments:

Noel Giger said...

Congratulations and Praise the Lord! We just paid off our credit card debt and (hopefully) will begin working toward paying off these 2 cars!

Great work!

Katie said...

Great job, Noel! I can't wait until we pay off the credit cards.

CAB said...

Glad to have found your blog! Facebook is good for a few things, I'm finding :) Now, to find some time to read and catch up w/y'all! I have been to the Dave Ramsey workshop - years and years ago when I was living in Dallas by my lonesome, my Dad flew me home for the weekend and he took my sister, brother, and I to it. I read the book. Now, why, oh why, do I not follow his sage advice???? Hmm. I am convicted once again to be a better steward!

Randall said...

That's terrific! Congratulations!

amy said...

So amazing! Give me advice, please. Our debt is so consuming, where do we start?

Katie said...

Amy, I think your comment got lost for awhile. So sorry about that-- we have been on vacation. :) Dave Ramsey's recommendations help us a lot, and, after going through Financial Peace University and 'going it alone' for a year or so, we also enlisted the help of a (Dave Ramsey trained) financial counselor. He helped us to understand how to apply Dave's principles to our specific situation.

Katie said...

Amy, on the part about debt being so consuming-- it took us a couple of months to get ourselves right-side-up because our minimum payments were taking more money than we had left after paying mortgage, lights, food, gas, etc. Those two months were *so* tough. But I thought of it as turning a ship around, which isn't done in a moment. It takes awhile for them to get those huge ships turned, you know? So it is when you decide to tackle your debt. You have to set things up so you can succeed while paying it off. Let me know if you need more info. Also, if you look at my early posts labeled 'finance', there are some details on how we went about it.