I got this email from Heidi yesterday and was so inspired by it that I asked permission if I could share it with you all:
I absolutely love your blog! A few years ago we had credit card debt and within a year was able to pay that off. We found Dave Ramsey (whom I told my husband about because of your posts) and followed the steps he outlines for getting out of debt.
Last month, we were able to take money from our savings (while still leaving a size-able emergency fund) and pay off our second mortgage 7.5 years early! The man at the bank was shocked that we saved the amount and didn’t take from our 401K.
Now we will pay ourselves back in a year and take what we paid on the second and put that towards the first to pay that one off early, as well. I can’t wait until we can say we are completely debt-free!
Thank you for all of your posts and deals. I love it! I, too, am a stay-at-home mom to two boys (4 and 6) and love reading about the things you do with your children. -Heidi
Mable says
I love the reader testimonies. I find them very inspiring!
Andrea says
So here I was curious about how you paid it all off, and then I saw that you didn’t have any student loan debt at all. My husband and I do…to the tune of roughly 120k. I’m not worried about it, nor am I even focusing on tackling it now. To me, student loan debt is “good debt”, and if Dave worked in the academic field, he’d learn that the “community college” doesn’t get you very far if you intend to teach at the collegiate level. 😉
That being said…I need to sit down and plan with my husband. We have some credit card debt (no 2nd mortgage here, or car debts) we could knock out in a short amount of time (2 years or less) if we buckle down…
May I ask what your husband does since you stay home? And what part of the country do you live? Often, those things come into play when people read these articles, and get down on themselves (for example, California…cost of living is higher). Did you go without cable, cell phones, etc? It sounds nosy, but really…I’m just curious. We’re not minimalists, but we’re not people who have to have the latest and greatest either…just ESPN and Speed channel for our Indy Racing. 😀
Great job, girl!
Heidi says
Andrea: No, that’s ok. To be honest, it sounded too good to be true before we started. Yes, we were VERY lucky to have our parents pay for our college as we will do for our boys (already have a nice college savings account for each of them). We moved from the Los Angeles area almost 8 years ago. We knew realistically that if we wanted children and wanted me to stay at home (major want from both of us) that we had to move. My husband is an engineer and was able to transfer within his company to Southern Arizona. Cost of living is cheaper here.
We didn’t go without cable but did drop the cable box in our bedroom since we rarely watched it. We do pay for cable and DVR but recently purchased a ROKU box and we are tempted to drop our cable provider. We have pre-paid cell phones (no smart phones). We stopped eating out every weekend and I pack his lunch instead of him eating out. I don’t coupon and we eat healthy (both lost a significant amount of weight on WW) so I do price match and watch the sales ads. I also try to make things instead of buying pre-made items or pre-cut items (veggies, meats, etc). I try to outlet shop when we visit family in CA (have both of our children’s clothes and shoes purchased already for the new year). Since we don’t have family here, we rarely go out so got creative with at home dates (and it was cheaper!). No, we don’t go the rice and bean and ramen route.
We drive older (paid off!) vehicles and will save for newer ones when we need to. I hope that answers your questions. 🙂
Andrea says
It does, thank you! I find your experience refreshingly realistic from some others’ experiences…it seems disingenuous, to me at least, that people say, “I paid off all this debt!!!” and they live in some rural, Midwestern town. For what it’s worth, I live in Wisconsin, so it isn’t horribly expensive here…but real estate stinks, and we know we’ll take a hit on our condo when we sell it. So there’s that.
I was lucky and didn’t have student loans after my undergrad either, but that’s what happens when you and your husband both have double masters’ degrees. 😉 At least ours will be forgiven after a certain amount of time.
It’s good to hear results and stories like this from people who don’t homeschool, etc. I work part time as a paralegal, and my husband works full time – the kids go to Catholic school (we have a grant for my eldest, my youngest gets a tuition discount for preschool. Can you tell we really value education?? Hehe.). I coupon, but do a LOT of shopping at Aldi as we’re both very physically active, and eat “clean”. Thanks for sharing, and congrats again!!! 🙂
Anne says
Andrea, I am already thinking about Catholic school tuition. I left teaching this year to stay at home with our 7 month old. The cost here is $5,000/child (western Washington). I better find some at-home work or I will have to go back to teaching just to pay for tuition!
Nichole says
Can you apply for tuition assistance or start purchasing SCRIP towards tuition?
Nichole says
Hi Andrea,
Just wanted to say that I live in WI also and my son also attends a Catholic school. I agree that the real estate stinks (we’re in the Milwaukee area) and it doesn’t look like we’ll be moving anytime soon. Just wanted to say hello!
Rebecca says
Congrats! Wish I had known about DR as a kid! Just turned 34, am debt free except for my house and working on my future. Never too late to start but oh how life would have been different if I had only known. 🙂
Heidi says
That is so true! I’m 34 as well and was lucky enough to have my parents pay for my college as well as my inlaws paying for my husband’s so we started out debt free. We are paying for our son’s college as well and we do practice Financial Peace Junior with our boys. 🙂
Guest says
Congratulations on this wonderful milestone, Heidi!
Heidi says
Thank you!
Whitney says
Great job! I do wish so many people weren’t “shocked” when someone pays off a mortgage early – but it’s reality that so many people don’t even attempt to pay ahead! We hope to have our mortgage paid in full in 3 and 1/2 years (21 and 1/2 years early!) and the idea of such a thing is indeed “shocking” to people. We plan to revive an old tradition when we do – a mortgage burning party!
Heidi says
That’s awesome!! I had to tell the banker about Dave Ramsey. LOL! We hope to have it paid off before our boys are in college.
L says
We are paying double on our mortgage payment to be done 20 years early! IT CAN BE DONE! Kudos to you for making that a priority!
We are also planning on helping our kids through college. (Our kids will also help pay for part of their education. They have had babysitting jobs when they were younger, and found part-time work when they were able to drive.) I wish we had the money to save for them when they were little (we were aggressively paying on our business) but to any young couples, definitely try to put $200 away each month for college. You won’t regret it! Our oldest is beginning college this fall and we are planning to “pay as we go” and this will be do-able for us. (But it certainly would be nice to have some of that money in an account. COLLEGE IS EXPENSIVE!)
Mother Frugal says
It is hard to describe the feeling of peace you have when your debts are paid in full. It sounds like you have a great plan in place to be there soon. Congratulations Heidi!
Heidi says
Thank you!! We are very excited! We do financial peace junior with our boys and it’s nice to see the lessons they are learning. Our oldest just saved up money to purchase a rather expensive Lego set himself. He was so proud of himself and so are we!
Julie @Logger's Wife says
Good job Heidi!
We paid off the smallest student loan and my husband’s car this year. We still have a huge pile of debt to get through, but so exciting to see some of it go away. 🙂
Heidi says
Congratulations! It feels so good to see the debt going down!