This year we continued to go against the grain of society.
In April 2019, Kevin and I were able to achieve our goal of becoming debt free of everything but our house.
This was so liberating but, knowing me I was already thinking ahead to what’s next. I think Kevin asked me, “how does it feel knowing we won’t be paying any more money to debt?” My awful answer was something along the lines of “that was expected, it feels fine.” I am constantly thinking about the future and how we are going to get to the next goal that I didn’t really stop to celebrate that huge achievement.
We paid off $50,000 in 7 months. Holy moly.
That took dedication, hard work and sacrifice.
Nope, Amanda was already trying to figure out how long it would take to get our emergency fund fully funded (which we did by June). Then I moved on to setting up our retirement withdrawals, Eloise’s college fund, and then started paying extra towards the house in July.
This is exactly what Dave Ramsey says you are supposed to do, stick to a budget, follow the Baby Steps and you will succeed financially in life.
Well, he forgot to account for burnout and life?
We went from 0 – 60 paying off debt, saving for our emergency fund and jumping into funding our future that we forgot about living. We are saving for things that we want, traveling as a family and Kevin has a sinking fund for a new mountain bike, but after saving for retirement, college and the house we had nothing left. We were flabbergasted by how we felt we had no money left over with a healthy income. This year has been a financial whorl wind of liberation, excitement, realization and disappointment.
Now we are trying to find our groove. This is so much harder than I anticipated. We are only human and figuring out how to adult is hard work. We are continually reconfiguring our budget so we are not feeling without but living below our means so that we can reach the financial goals we have set for ourselves.
Stay tuned to see what we figure out in 2020.
–Amanda J.