How I Paid Off Over $70,000 in Debt and Quit My Job Part 2
View Part 1 of the series on how I become debt free?here
A Debt Free in December?
We paid off the first student loan very quickly. It took a few months to pay off the Jeep, and it felt so great to eliminate two payments per month. Then we had the two huge loans next.
We decided to pay off the home equity loan first, A because it had an adjustable interest rate, and the student loan was fixed at 2%. Even though we were putting a ton of money each month towards it, the loan was so high it felt like it took forever. Sometimes I would put money on it weekly to try to keep up my motivation by seeing the balance go down.
We eventually paid everything off but the student loan, but I didn’t want to pay it off. We started putting all of the money into our savings. If we did put all of our money to that debt we would have no cash if there was an issue with the pregnancy. I wanted to make sure we had the money in case we needed it for medical bills.
A Don’t know what to do? Call Dave Ramsey!
So I called Dave Ramsey and asked him what to do. I finally got through and asked him my question about paying off the student loan and becoming debt free or keeping it until the baby was born. He actually said to keep it. He suggested we wait until the baby was born, and until all of the medical bills came in. Then we could pay off the medical bills and the student loan right after.
We didn’t hit our goal. We weren’t going to be debt free when my son was born. We weren’t technically debt free but we had $23,000 in the bank in case anything went wrong. That was a great place to be.
I can’t imagine where we would have been if we didn’t start our debt free journey!
The Next Financial Problem of Quitting my Job
The problem was, even if we paid off ALL of our debt, my husband’s income didn’t cover the bills. I wanted to quit my job but I couldn’t if we couldn’t pay our bills. Cutting our income more than 2/3rds was more than hard. It seemed impossible.
The new goal became to stay home with my son for the first year. Even if I had to go back after that, the first year home to me was very important. I knew I couldn’t keep my current job traveling around the country but if I had to go back to work after a year I could find a ?job closer to home?if need be.
Our Solution
That $23,000 became the safety net. I could use that money, instead of paying off my student loan to pay for bills within that first year if we had to. I called it the baby fund. It would make it possible for me to stay at home. We wouldn’t be debt free, but I would be able to hit my goal of staying home with my son, even if only for a short period of time.
I had a healthy baby boy on December 11th. I was paid 60% of my salary for 6 weeks, and I took 12 weeks off. I figured out that if I went back to work for 2 and a half months then I would be able to pay off the student loan and still have a large enough baby fund to last a year. While it was a very hard decision to leave my three-month-old son, I was able to have my husband with him most of the time.
So I decided I would go back to work and hope that I wouldn’t have to travel for the first few months.
A?Debt Free and Quitting My Job!
It’s amazing how things can work out beautifully. I went back to work for a little over two months and did not travel at all. We received our tax refund back. My husband started to book more work than he had in the past.
It turned out that as of April ’07 when my son was 4 months old, we became debt free. We paid off my student loan and still had $23,000 in the bank. The other amazing news was that we had about $6,000 over that sum. Which we then used to upgrade our Jeep Cherokee that kept breaking down. We sold the Jeep outright for $6500, added our $6,000 and was able to get a ’05 Pontiac Vibe with cash.
We were debt free, I was a stay at home mom to a beautiful boy, and we had our family car again. It gives me chills now realizing how everything worked out.
Stay Tuned for the final post How I Quit and Now Live My Passion
Tags: Budgeting, Debt Free, debt freedom, finances, Personal Finance
Categories: Debt, Debt Freedom, Finances, Goals
12 responses
Looking forward to reading about your final entry! I think I’ll highlight this series in my round up.
cheers, Sam
.-= Financial Samurai´s last blog ..Doing Anything You Can to Survive – Silence And Surprise In The Night =-.
That’s an awesome story. I just saw your video via GRS and left you a comment at YouTube, but now I have my answer. Wow! I think its amazing when people find the inspiration to stay on course and complete such a hefty goal. Millionaire, no doubt in your future. 🙂
.-= Money Funk´s last blog ..Money Funk goes Comic =-.
Thanks so much. It’s so fun to tell your story (as I’m sure you know) and what is even more amazing is to hear from someone like you that says, Millionaire no doubt in your future! You made my day too.
If you ever need anything, or just want to chat about it let me know. (Love you Comic too!)
Warmest,
-Jaime
Gee! I am glad I stumbled upon your site. It is great and inspiring, now I have more information that could help me in weighing . So far those that I have read in here have been worth it, it made me reflect about how life should be. Thank you so much for people like you who are not hesitant to share. I hope someday I too would be an eventual millionaire. God bless and keep on inspiring.
I’m inspired by this post!!! I am not good with budgeting but you made it clearing without saying… once you put your mind to reach a goal..you will work extra hard to reach that goal!
Not impressed for a simple reason. Who makes over 100k and then says they are broke and cannot pay for things? This a case of the so called rich claiming poverty. If you cannot afford a baby, do not have one! Pay off your bills and work like real people do.
I feel the same way! Very misleading. Good for them but not everyone make 100k a year.
Your husband couldn’t fix the Jeep? 🙂