Testimony from Amanda of There We Grow
It’s been almost six years since my husband and I started down the road to becoming debt-free… and we’ve never looked back. It was his idea originally and I have to admit, I thought he was slightly crazy and not sure it was even possible. After all, you are always going to have a car payment, right?
My husband was trying to grow his landscape business and I was working as an orthodontic assistant. I had always hoped to stay home after we started our family but had no idea how we’d do it. Now seeing what’s happened with the job and housing market, I breathe a sigh of relief almost everyday that we stuck with our plan to live debt-free.
To get our momentum going, we sold some items we owned and started stashing as much cash as we could. As we gained a little confidence, we began throwing as much money as we could towards the debts we owed and one by one paid them off.
By 2008, we were completely debt-free (except our house) and had started building a bigger emergency fund. We were able to celebrate with a paid-with-cash trip of our dreams — to Hawaii!
What an amazing feeling that was! It’s kind of hard to describe, especially to someone who doesn’t remember ever being debt-free. It’s almost like trying to explain how refreshing a glass of cool water on a hot day is to someone who’s never tasted it.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been times we’ve looked at other people’s things and wanted to spend money to buy something similar — but we didn’t allow ourselves to, even when it was tempting. We’ve determined that being in debt — particularly when you’re in debt for items that depreciate and wear out quickly — pales in comparison to the freedom we have of not being strapped down.
Becoming debt-free also allowed me to make the transition from working full-time to being a stay-at-home mom. There have also been several opportunities we’ve been able to take advantage of because of our financial flexibility — not to mention helping people in ways we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to.
For those of you working toward the debt-free life, hang in there! The rewards are so worth it!
No career, training, or previous life experience completely prepared me for the gauntlet of all tasks: motherhood! Now my days revolve around my newfound passion in life as a stay- and work-at-home mama bear to our little boys and wife to my best friend of seven years. We love to travel, grow things in our garden, and explore the outdoors but our favorite thing is being able to do it all debt-free! If you’d like to learn more about me, I’d love to have you visit my blog at There We Grow.
Liz says
Wow! You did it so young! Our goal was to be debt-free well before retirement. The sacrifices were worth it, but yes, it was a struggle.
Tasanee says
We are just starting on this road. It is good to see others have traveled it before.
Alice saigal says
I’m coming up on my tenth wedding anniversary. 10 years ago I still had $250k in student loans, car payment, and daily survival. I was living paycheck to paycheck. My husband had $0 school debt and bout my old 73 impala so he would not have a car payment. (funny because thats why I drove the school bus yellow car for 10+ years before him.
In our first year of marriage I was laid off, hired, laid off, moved from Texas to California, hired…..it was rocky. We drove old cars, we bought few clothes, and ate out very little. About 4 years ago we became debt free. We built our emergency fund, and saved for time when I would stay home with our child we planned to adopt. A year later I had my son and instead of staying home for a couple months I’ve been able to stay home for 2 years. I’m very very blessed. I worked 60-80 hours a week for years. Now it’s more 😉 but …
As things are pais off we found it is really easy to get lacked in budgeting and being mindful of how you spend your money. I really appreciate the mirror of where I’ve been and want to share that we have found there are still many things we really don’t need. Things don’t make us whole. Now we are working hard to teach my son this…hard lesson for a boy with a ball fetish.
10 years from now I hope to remember who I’ve been, who i am and that my family understands the value and cost of everything.
Busy Mom says
That is so awesome!! Congrats, Amanda!!!
WillHTB says
Living debt free really just makes life more enjoyable. Not only are you not seeing the cash go out each month, but everything just feels better, and your car seems to drive a little better.
Kendra says
Okay, I’m confused. Even if you still have a mortgage payment you can claim that you are debt-free?
Regardless, the article is inspiring. Congrats on such an accomplishment!
Amanda says
Hi Kendra,
As of march we sold our house and are now completely debt free. We will probably purchase a house at some point but are enjoying complete freedom for the moment 🙂
Jenni says
This is a great reminder of how important it is to stay on track. I would say to those who are discouraged, though, that every situation is different, and it’s important to remember that. Everyone’s going to have different jobs, different emergencies, different health situations, etc. We are trying to stay on budget and have struggled the past few months (though we have savings to cover it) because of higher utility costs (living in the super-hot Midwest this summer), health issues and a need to increase our food budget due to some food allergies. I’m the kind of person who is happy to clamp down and say “No vacations” but we are still on one, mainly because my husband’s grandmother hasn’t seen our kids in awhile, and we never know when will be the last time. It’s costing us a little extra, but to me it’s worth it because 3 years from now if she’s gone we can’t go back in time and do things differently.
Amanda says
I agree. Everyones family and situation is different and it’s certainly not an easy task. We have food allergies at our house that we struggle with as well. Sometimes it’s necessary to hold off on something good to take care of something more important. Glad you had a savings account that you were able to fall back on and were able to spend time with grandma!
SMS says
Someone is going to ask what you want for a gift (Birthday, Christmas etc. ) mention the new glasses and towels. I am not offended by household stuff as gifts.
SMS says
I so agree with spending time visiting Grandma. Those are my most precious memories. It is an investment in family. You can turn the travel into a mini vaction if you are driving. Check into free or nearly free activities in the towns you drive through. Pack a cooler. Some of the roadsides have a lot of historical info. Take lots of photos.
Gabby says
I have undergraduate and graduate student loan debt on a modest salary (I don’t qualify for income-based repayment or public service forgiveness plans). I’ve taken some incredibly radical steps to not only stay on a ten-year repayment plan, but also to work ahead on payments, build my savings, and start on retirement. Whenever I feel deprived, I have a file of news stories about senior citizens who are unable to retire due to outstanding student loans. That keeps me going. Only eight more years to go, rather than a lifetime!
Aimee says
I *love* your motivator, Gabby! That’s ingenious. 🙂
Shelly says
This is great that you shared your story. When you are working to become debt free or trying to stay debt free to know others have been there and are also working hard can be a great encouragement. Our family is debt free (even the house) and it is just so wonderful. We had to turn down going out to eat many times, have never owned a brand new car, and watched many of our friends go on vacations or improved their homes as we were striving to become debt free. The journey is not an easy one and things always come up but in the end everything we gave up to get here was so worth it.
Just now we have many bills coming in from my sons recent hospital stay. I thank God we have good insurance and we have been saving up for a day like today so we will be able to pay each bill as it comes in full. We think about every purchase to make sure we spend what we have wisely to make sure we can stay debt free.
Shirley Stark says
This is an inspiring read but always feels so unattainable to me. We have so much debt that I wish we could do better with but it is something my husband and I struggle on constantly. We make progress here and there bit by bit but the setbacks just keep coming.
Thank you for posting this, though. It’s great for motivation. I will never give up =)
Amanda says
Keep up the good work! Doing the best with what you have is always better than doing nothing at all!
nancy says
Came over via Money Saving Mom.
Congratulations of living debt free. It is very liberating!
Thanks for the link and information on your carpet cleaning machine. I checked it out, because my very old one doesn’t work very well, and the carpets need to be cleaned.
I noticed there is a $20.00 coupon for this item, and I had nearly enough in Amazon. gift cards, thanks to a gift and Swag bucks, so I ordered it am really looking forward to recieving it.
nancyr
Erika says
Five years ago my husband and I took on the Dave Ramsey plan and tweaked it to fit our budget. Less than two years later we paid off over $20K in what we called wasteful debt, bought our last two vehicles with zero payments and now our house will be paid for in less than 6 years. We are retiring early and moving to Spain to live abroad for at least one year. We are preparing to leave on a 12 day vacation in Hawaii that is all paid for in cash & with plenty of disposable spending cash to travel with. This being done while we have been socking away our emergency fund plus some. Our only true debt is our mortgage. We said ‘no’ to alot of things and now when we ask ourselves if we really need to buy or spend, most times the answer is ‘no it isn’t that necessary’. It becomes a way of life, there is no stress and we are really living like nobody else because we have no money issues in our marriage and life. You have to want it bad enough to get it!!
Gaetane Joseph says
I look forward to making this my family’s reality. We are now working on living debt free. We have past credit cards that we are paying off in large lump sums in order for us to get them cleared off. We plan on just having 1 credit card each just for emergencies and paying them off right away instead of just paying the minimum balances. Thank you for reminding us that there is still light at the end of the journey.
L says
I also needed to hear this today, it is SO easy to want to get off track at times. Like today I was thinking how ugly our glasses and dish towels look and how it would be lovely to get some new ones. But honestly to stay in budget it has to be a “no” and it gets hard to always hear that word from yourself/budget. A treat now and then would feel so nice, but I need to remember why we are doing this (so I can stay home with our kids and we can pay our bills and try SO hard to build any type of emergency fund) and how someday the towels/glasses will have seemed so trivial. But it is still hard when it seems everyone around you can afford whatever they like and I just want dish towels that aren’t all bleached out. I do realize they maybe cannot either but it sure looks that way! How other than prayer can you have the strength to stick to the budget so diligently when it is really no fun at all?
Amanda says
Set some goals along the way and give yourself a little reward It helped us keep our momentum going! 🙂
Lisa says
Give yourself a spending money budget – make it small! Eg: $10-15 a month. Then once every now & then, stop in at an op shop & spend time just looking at what you can buy & possibly buy something small to take home (or don’t – just enjoy the time!), take a pack lunch & go eat outside somewhere (often being outside is a welcome treat), buy things that (might) pay you back – eg: a tomato plant, then spend time nurturing it, look for cheap cuts of meat or an unusual vegetable that you haven’t tried to cook, then spend time enjoying searching for the perfect recipe, then cook & enjoy; save things you can use as craft items & then put them to use. There’s lots of ways to enjoy life.. Perhaps look at how you can spend time, rather than money.
Finally, with the towels & glasses – maybe just buy 1 or 2 nice glasses 2nd hand – these can be your favourite ones & keep the rest that you need, until you really can afford to replace them. You could possibly do the same with the towels, but buy cheaper new ones. They may not last as well, but buying one or 2 special things, is often better than replacing the lot, as we tend to enjoy the special things more when we use them.
You could also try selling something else online that you no longer need. Perhaps a book you’ve never really read or some clothes that don’t quite fit.
Good luck!
Jessica says
My DH and I have been debt-free for almost 2 years. Paid off our mortgage, etc, etc. It is but for God’s grace that we are beholden to no one but Him.
Amanda says
Amen!
Frugalista says
My husband and I are also working very hard to payoff our debts including the house while putting our kids through college. I have to tell you that there are times I feel sorry for my family especiall when people talk about their Hawaiian vacation, lavish home improvements, etc., but I quickly come to my sences and realize that sooner than later we will be able to afford some of life’s little pleasures. It has not been an easy feat and I’m proud to say that in the last 19 months we’ve paid $102K on the principal of the house and our son will be graduating from college, God willingly, debt-free.
Andrea says
That’s so awesome!
I used to worry about the vacations everyone was taking and then I realized that my kids aren’t really interested in those anyway. They love to be home doing fun things around the house and neighborhood with us!
jessie says
My husband and I have our second child on the way and have done the same thing over the course of the last few years. When we found out we were having our first child- I knew that I didn’t want to continue working 50-60 hours a week as a restaurant manager. I had already missed years of weekends and holidays with family and I couldn’t fathom missing these things with kids. So- I assessed my 401k & took an early withdraw, and we started to stash as much away as we could. We had already unfortunately fallen too behind to catch up on our home mortgage due to a 2 year lay off of my husband so we decided to start fresh. We saved up as much as we could, bought a modest 3 bedroom, 1 bath HUD home with cash and my husband spent the entire summer of 2011 fixing it up. It was a rough summer- we had to sell one of our cars to make it happen. There were a lot of repairs that needed to be done before we got our occupancy certificate. I stayed home with a newborn all summer by myself with no means of transportation while my husband worked late nights gutting kitchens and rewiring the electrical. It definitely still needs some work, but it is ours and we dont have to worry about a monthly mortgage or rent payment. And even though it needs work, I do like to pat myself on the back and boast that we have the nicest house on the block 🙂 Things still seem difficult at times getting by on only one income just with the cost of buying healthy food for our family, utilities, and gas as my husband drives about 65 miles a day to and from work. And as Amanda mentioned, it can be hard seeing some of the things other people are able to do and have with two incomes.
I count my blessings every day, that I’m able to stay home with my sweet girl, and look forward to our little girl arriving in October without worrying about needing to go back to work. We have a few very small credit cards- mostly just to build our credit back up so we can buy a larger home down the road…and I rest assured that we have at least a huge down payment from the sale of our current home. Living (Mostly) Debt free is the best decision we’ve ever made and I hope to teach my girls the lessons we had to learn the hard way!
Jessie
Casey says
This is just what I needed to hear today. We are working on paying off our van and last student loan and recently we have been slacking at putting money on those loans. Debt free seems so close yet so far away. Thanks for the encouragment!
Christine says
It is a great blessing from the Lord to be debt free, including our mortgage. It is a blessing to be able to help others, too, without worrying if I can pay my bills.
Gwen says
Thanks so much for this article, it came just at the right time!!!! My husband and I started the journey to becoming debt free just over a year ago and I’m ready to pull every hair out of my head with frustration. It was hard work just to start the process as we are self employed and seasonal with our business. It is also our sole income so it’s tough but we scraped and sacrificed until we got pretty good at staying on budget and only spending what we set aside to spend. Period. It was going great-tight, but invigorating. Then came the brick wall that everyone encounters in their journey. For us, it was expecting to refinance at a lower interest to both enable us to pay more on our debt and also put less of our funds back towards the winter months when business was slow. We waited 4 months of phone tag, and were told that it would be no problem to refinance given our financial records we already provided. 4 months later, we finally got an “official” answer and it pulled the rug right out from under us. They couldn’t do it. I will admit, we had relaxed (rookie mistake) on our budget a bit and it definately came back to haunt us. Here we are, August, winter quickly approching and NOTHING in our emergency fund AND behind on several bills to boot. I feel we are drowning with no life raft and just want to go under. I won’t give up, I can’t- but I am already just SO tired and we have 3 small kids who I’m so tired of telling no to about everything because we have no wiggle room in our budget. I know I’m whining, so I’ll get to the point. I said all of that to say this: THANK YOU for this article. It’s the kick in the pants that I needed to roll up my sleeves-again-and say I can do this. It’s hard but I KNOW that I CAN do this. I WILL do this, no matter what. It is also my dream to vacay in Hawaii and I will earn every minute of it too 😉 It IS worth the hard work. I am so looking forward to each debt that gets paid off. Thanks again for the motivation to keep plugging forward and remembering that even the small steps forward, are still steps forward and that the race isn’t won in one single huge leap, but in thousands of small steps. I will post my pics from Hawaii when we cross the finish line.
Emily says
Hi Gwen,
Don’t beat yourself up for feeling a bit discouraged sometimes – we ALL have those days and need encouragement from these great testimonies of debt-free living. Know that you WILL do this, as you mentioned!
– Emily
Kim' Fitness Journey says
I am working on being debt free. We have a lot of big goals in our life right now. The biggest financial goal is for me to finish my nursing degree and then save $50K so my husband can quit is job and go to nursing school too. He works on a boat now, so he’s gone for weeks at a time. We want to have him home!
Denis says
It’s wonderful when you read about others that have become debt-free. My family did it a little over 2 years ago and the pressure of everyday just melts away.
Elizabeth says
I think we drown in debt my husband has student loans still out (though him having a good job from that education is helpful), we just paid off our cars after 5 years and now we are going to try and baby them for as long as possible, we have one line of credit out we’ve never used and I have a CareCredit card because of how our new insurance is (much to my dislike but we didn’t have a choice) you pay up front and then they send you a check for what they feel you should have paid. The most depressing thing is though is when you build that Emergency fund and then everything hits it at once. We just did a bathroom remodel because the floor was collapsing in, then we went on vacation to see my husband’s parents and our house sitter brought in bed bugs so we had to have the house treated and we just got over that then we were told we had to take our oldest to the orthodontist because of problems with her teeth coming in and then this weekend our A/C broke and we were told that it was such an old unit that the wiring has completely fried and we will have to replace the entire central system and I have to take my children down for new glasses today because theirs have been so damaged it can’t be helped I’ve limped them by for an extra year on old frames.
Debt free is a wonderful thing but just try to keep in mind it is called an ‘Emergency Fund’ for a reason and one day stuff may hit the fan and you’ll come to the conclusion that if you didn’t laugh you’d cry because at that point you can be happy you have money put away but nothing will ever zap the feeling of realization that was your life savings gone within a very short period of time… for me it was 1 month.
Keep trying to live debt free though. I could only imagine if we had a pile of credit cards we were trying to pay off on top of this.
I’m especially happy to see young couples get this good idea but I’m also seeing a lot of them use the money on fancy vacations or other things instead of truly keeping it there as a rainy day fund. Price tag on my month? Over $10,000. Never such thing as saving too much remember that! Especially if you own your home.
Jenni says
This is really good advice. I’m sorry that your savings fund was blown through so quickly, but it really is true that you can’t always tell what’s in store. I’m glad you had the money to pay for all of your bills!
K* says
I’m sorry you’ve gone through so much! Could you possibly get some compensation from the house sitter for giving you bedbugs?
Elizabeth says
Sadly no it was a supposed ‘friend’ that house sit for us she needed the the place to go for a week and money and we needed a sitter. I thought we had covered our bases because I knew she had been struggling with the bugs and for 2 years we’ve kept it at bay but as a good lesson to be learned by me and I hope others can learn from my experience when you play with fire eventually you will get burnt.
Bed bugs are no laughing matter so if someone says they have them in the most polite way possible don’t let them in your home and try not to enter theirs. The love luggage so make sure to check your hotel rooms and if you think they are in an area (by the way by a VERY reliable source the federal building in Cinci is infested) then try not to set down your purse or other objects.
Rebecca says
Congratulations! It sounds like you worked really hard and it paid off.
CJ says
I have always been debt free except for a 2 1/2 year loan on a car many years ago and my home mortage which will be paid off by the end of the year (12 years early). I have always paid off my credit cards every month and was so glad I made it through college without taking student loans. I’ve chosen to do without vacations, lots of clothes, expensive cars, going out all the time and many other things that too many people do without hardly thinking about it. But it has been totally worth it to not have debt hanging over my head, and have a comfortable nest egg too.