About a year ago we were visiting my mom and dad in Virginia. Dad had been talking to us a lot about this guy Dave Ramsey and his views on money management. I feel like I have always been very sensible and conservative with money. I've never liked going into debt or living beyond what we can afford. But the last few years, since Michael had left the Army and we had 3 kids in 3 years, had become very tough. At that time things had been getting kind of scary for us. We had the help of the GI Bill since Michael had been in school and we had been getting by, making ends meet. But the GI bill would be ending soon and we weren't quite sure what we were going to do. I was only working part time at that point and we had more on credit cards then we were comfortable with. After listening to Dave Ramsey talk about his Baby Steps and seeing and hearing people talk about their journeys to being debt free we decided to take the plunge. We immediately paid off our credit card and took our savings down to $1000.00 for our emergency fund. That knocked out Baby Step 1. We didn't actually have a debt snowball because we only had one debt-our car. But we also knew that we needed to start stockpiling cash for when we had a gap in our income. I started looking for a full time job and found one within Wasatch Mental Health. I started working at Vantage Point as a case manager, but then after just a few months went back to Aspire and worked full time between Aspire and New Vista. I feel incredibly blessed to have been able to work in so many of the youth programs at Wasatch and have learned so much from my time in each program. Fast forward to November. Michael's grandmother passed away and left us a bit of money. We put this into our savings not quite sure what to do with it and we wanted to make sure we found the best way to honor her and his grandparents memory. Finances were still tight, even with me working full time. But the GI Bill lasted several months longer then we had expected so we were able to continue saving money so that we wouldn't reach a time when we'd need to take out school loans or personal loans. We paid for Christmas with cash-which felt amazing! And then we received some money from our tax return. We evaluated our current financial situation and decided to completely pay off our car loan and be officially debt free. We took the check into the bank and then went and got some pizza to celebrate. When we got home Michael checked his phone that he had left charging. He had a message from a Sacramento number. He called them back and was offered a job as a state auditor!! It was an amazing day!! When we decided to pay off our loan we had no idea what the future would hold for us employment wise. Up until that point we had always said the worse case scenario would be that I keep working and Michael stays home with the kids while he keeps job hunting. It felt so amazing to be both debt free and employed all in one day!!!
Fast forward again to May-just less then one year after we began following the Baby Steps and committing to not using credit cards or loans. I didn't think it was possible that we would be completely debt free by the time Michael graduated, but WE DID IT!!!!
 |
| I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook the morning of Michael's graduation and tagged it #goutes. While we were sitting in the Huntsman center Nathan said, "Mom there's Katelyn on the big TV". I looked up and saw this picture being shown on the jumbotron!! We figured out that they had pulled different peoples photos from the hashtags! So crazy!! |
 |
| Trying to figure out how to make the U! So cute!! |
 |
| Papa's always teaching someone to rock climb every chance he gets! Haha! :) |
 |
| So strong!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment