I paid off my mini van this morning!
A year ago, I was pregnant with Anders and came to the sad realization that my Toyota Rav 4 would no longer fit our growing family.
I complained for weeks on end, I was NOT ready to be a mini van Mom and I was TERRIFIED of going further into debt to afford the upgrade. After weeks of back and forth, we broke our promise of NO MORE DEBT and took out a loan.
That brings our total debt pay off to $74,788 since April of 2019. I could just cry writing that.
Four years ago we were scared shitless. I went back to work 3 weeks after my c-section. We would run out of money the week before pay day and use credit cards to buy groceries. Craig didn’t even know about one of the credit cards I was racking up. I didn’t know about the tools he was buying.
Four years ago Gannon was hospitalized at Mayo for a week. We were so incredibly stressed over leaving behind this precious, sick newborn to go home and go back to work because we couldn’t afford to not work and stay in the hospital with him. We couldn’t even afford food from the cafeteria at the hospital. I’m so ashamed to even write this, we literally borrowed money from our 2 year olds savings account to scrape by until pay day.
On the way home from Rochester we sketched out on a notepad what we owed and how much. For the first time, we were totally honest and had to come clean to each other about how deeply in debt we truly were.
Our entire lives changed in April 1st, 2019. We cut up our credit cards. We changed jobs and then I changed jobs again. We quit eating out for that first Summer. Slowly but surely the debt started melting away.
We worked our asses off. I would work night shift (7a-7p), sleep for 6 hours in an empty patient room and work another 6 hours. I commuted an hour and 20 minutes BOTH WAYS to get a higher rate of pay. I picked up hours not only in the ICU but started PRN in the ER to make even more of a difference. Every single overtime check and bonus Craig got went immediately towards the debt.
WE. DID. IT. $74,788 LATER.
We have two debts left, our biggest one: my student loans and our mortgage. We will hopefully hear the supreme courts decision on student loans in the next week. If it isn’t forgiven, we know how to put our nose to the grindstone and knock that down too.
Medical debt, UGH. We were completely medical debt free last year at this time but we’ve accepted that we are ALWAYS going to have medical debt and are set up on payment plans for that.
If you’re one of the 63% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, there is hope. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
We started out by reading Dave Ramsey’s book – The Total Money Makeover. We’ve had a love hate relationship with Dave throughout our journey. Sometimes we totally agree with him and other times we seek advice elsewhere. Regardless, this book is a great foundation on the path to financial freedom.

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