I have been reading a lot..and I mean A
LOT, of Mr. Money Mustache’s Blog lately. I am intrigued by his lifestyle and
though I am in no rush to retire – I’ve finally started my career job doing
something I love – I am ready to stop paying for money spent in the past.
I can’t really complain because we have
been living rather “luxuriously” on mostly one income for the past 5 years,
complete with: 2 cars (albeit they aren’t anywhere near new), an upgrade from a
$150,000 1200 sq. ft. 1920’s fixer upper to a $300,000 10 year old 2200 sq. ft.
house with a huge – by city standards – lot size, rather new appliances, a
couple of Apple products, cable tv, designer clothing, and a part-time
Montessori education for our oldest son. All of these were choices we made
based on the happiness having such things provided us with. Long story short,
we acquired $64,000 in debt along the way. Believe it or not, we made plenty of
tradeoffs. I cannot imagine what our debt load would look like if we had taken
the alternative route. Some of these tradeoffs included:
- Having older vehicles, each under $5000
- Spending 3 years renovating our 1920’s fixer-upper in the evenings and weekends – gutting completely and rebuilding it ourselves with much blood, sweat, and tears and plenty of knowledge gained. We did everything with the exception of mudding and taping, tying everything into the electrical panel and hooking up to the natural gas line.
- Furnishing this old house with mostly hand me downs until they broke or no longer served our needs and we were forced to upgrade bit by bit.
- Thrifting for good used clothing and baby/kid items and shopping only sale items
- Not taking many vacations or dining out
Since I began working full-time in
September (also still in school full-time so have the added bonus of loan
repayment delays and interest-free periods), my additional income means that we
have the ability to quickly pay down the $64,000 of debt, increase our savings,
and make some upgrades like buying some new(er) (to us) vehicles if we make
wise choices. If we follow some “mustachian” principles, we may well pay off
our debt by the time we are 30 (4.5 years) and then go onto pay off our mortgage by the
time we are 35.
I am taking some inspiration from a couple
of bloggers I admire. Firstly, from Kelsey over at Rising/Shining. Like her, I will
be posting shortly on our income and budget figures - open book finances as she calls it. Money talk is always so
hush hush. I think sharing is liberating and I’ve enjoyed comparing what others
who do share earn/spend to my own family numbers. It helps to show where you’re
doing well and where you could be improving. Secondly, like Sarah at Sleeping is for Losers, I will be sharing my goals in the hopes that it will make me more
accountable. She has been seriously kicking butt with her weight loss goals.
Let the games begin?
2 comments:
Awesome! As you said, I think it's liberating to share finances and keeps you accountable, you can't hide from them! Plus it will be helpful and informative to readers.
I have a question, does your $64,000 include any house and student loan debt?
Thanks Kelsey. Good question. About $30,000 of it was put toward renovating our last house. Which we sold for a good profit, however the profit was used to pay the downpayment on our new house along with real estate fees, and a hefty $10,000 buy out from our old mortgage provider so we could switch to a lender with a lower interest rate.
$10,000 of the debt it was for..cringe.. my first car (which we no longer have - and I have only paid interest on since 2005 being a student and then having employment gaps staying home with the boys). I was lucky that my mom covered all of the expenses (tuition, books, living) for my undergraduate degree so none of this debt was incurred for my schooling. $2,000 was my husband's debt from attending college. $2,000 of it is what is left as payments on our current vehicles and the other $20,000 is mostly made up of bad purchasing decisions or covering large expenses like "unforeseen" vet bills, car repairs, etc.
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