Well, we've finally managed to eliminate all of our consumer debt with our only remaining debt being our mortgage. Technically we're not completely debt free as we still have accounts that we use and pay off each month but no balances are ever carried over and no interest is ever paid.

I got my first credit card in 1990 when I couldn't afford a plane ticket and I have been in debt ever since. Our debt always sort of roller coastered as we would get relatively close to paying it down (far closer than I was when I started hitting it hard) and then for whatever reasons it would skyrocket back up. I'm guessing my highest debt level was between $50,000-60,000. It was greater than $47k in January two years ago and took about $56k to pay off. It's disgusting that I've literally cost myself millions of dollars in retirement savings messing around and not managing our money.

It didn't help that I was raised by spenders and they had virtually nothing in retirement. Oddly, though, my father's difficulty maintaining a job and their being broke did influence me to not be the same. I have a good pension and benefits already, am debt free except the house, have a clear path to be debt free on the house soon, etc.

I mostly follow Dave Ramsey's wisdom, maintained a minimum emergency fund and paid my debts smallest to largest. I did kickstart the process by paying a vehicle off first as it freed up more monthly income and I consolidated several credit cards under one loan which was my final debt.

I totally nerd out over my Google spreadsheet. It's become a thing of beauty over the past two years. I've transitioned it to focus on our next goal of funding a true emergency fund which probably won't take too long, easily by summer, and principal reduction on the mortgage. Once the emergency fund is complete I'll begin to focus on retirement and saving for my son's education.

I'm sharing this here because, one, we're really happy about this and, two, to help motivate any others here that would like to do the same. I can tell you that the biggest thing that helped me was I had to have a fundamental mental change and that really has encompassed more than just our personal finance. I think it might even be obvious in how I post here now.

Congratulations, Wookie.

I'm happy to hear it. My wife listens to the Dave Ramsey stuff quite a bit, and he does a good job of getting people hyped up to pay off their debt, which is good.

That's awesome. Congratulations!

Congratulations! Huge accomplishment; must be so much less stress.

You probably recall a number of years ago I was motivated to do the same thing. We are free of credit card debt but decided against focusing on the stupid car loans and instead (when we bought them) decided to put significant down payments. The thinking was that we got ~0.9% interest and with a big down payment we could always sell for more than they were worth if things got bad. It's still a risk (if the entire economy tanks instead of just one of us losing our job) but we accepted it. Also my wife and I are making significantly more money than we were even just 3 years ago so we still have enough to save.

I did make a big financial mistake though. I was granted a significant number of stock options when I was hired at my company; all of which have since vested; and they were worth a whole bunch at one point and so we "bought" a boat. And when I say "bought" I mean financed nearly 100% of the cost. The plan was to then sell enough of the options to pay down 50% of the loan at the next opportunity (which is once every quarter). I'm sure you can see where this is going). The next quarter earnings tanked and our stock dropped and is now worthless so we are stuck. The plan now is to sell the stupid thing in the spring and hope we don't lose too much on it. The boat prices have been increasing every year for a decade so we're hoping we don't lose much more than the sales tax we paid on it.

Congratulations, Wookie!

Thanks everyone. Too further elaborate on my becoming a spreadsheet nerd, I wasn't even out of bed this morning when I decided to learn how to calculate mortgage payments. Shortly after, I made a spreadsheet to show me how adjusting my payments would pay down our mortgage and also finally learned how to keep my formulas from changing certain cells when filled down.

One thing that was a huge reality check is paying off my mortgage. If I want to just keep doing everything the same as now and focus everything on paying down the mortgage I can be done within three years. I just don't think we're going to be happy doing that though. If I add in all of the things we should be doing such as retirement, charitable contributions, etc, I triple the time required. Of course this relies on us not doing anything different income wise. At some point, possibly this summer, I think my wife will quit her job and go to school full time so she can actually obtain a job she's happy doing. Same school I'm at now has a pharmacy tech program. Hell, I might even do it. We're planning on traveling to Panama this summer so we'll have a plan for after the summer by then.



One thing that I realized just recently about Dave Ramsey versus many other personalities and systems out there is that he gives you all of his advice and tools for free. Of course he advocates many of his products but none of them are required to understand what he's saying and to use his "system". I say "system" because it's all pretty much common sense. He also focuses on behavior rather than math. For instance, he advocates paying off debts in the order of smallest to largest regardless of interest rates. Mathematically, not paying down higher interest rate debt faster means more interest paid. However, since paying off smaller debt first gives you small, motivating victories along the way it's more likely that you'll succeed doing it the "wrong" way.

I love spreadsheets. So nice for organization. So nice for analysis. Anyway, congrats!

I owe $10k for a car that got repossessed. They're probably gonna start garnishing my wages again.

Is the original lender harassing you for the debt or has it gone to collection? If it's gone to collection and you can manage any amount of substance, such as a couple grand, perhaps you can offer less to settle the debt. If it's the original lender you can do the same but unlike a debt collector they didn't purchase the debt for pennies on the dollar.

So not related to debt but that topic of "identity theft" is the other day I was in Sam's Club and I knew our membership would expire in days and that I had $100 in cash rewards in the account, the cost of the membership, so I planned to use that. Well, some ass clown in Tucker, GA used them all back in October which must have been very shortly after I had checked them online. I actually had forgotten all about them until a few months ago. We have some stupid Plus membership which gets you in the door early and access to some sales but you also earn cash rewards so it was cool to see that I had enough to pay for the cost of the membership. I've been emailing with them to get them refunded. We'll see how long it takes.

I dunno, the last I heard about it was in 2012 when Desert Schools FCU was garnishing my wages from Walmart. The car got repossessed in like.... 2009? Maybe they'll have given up by now. They were originally going after my parents (who co-signed) but they got a lawyer to leave them alone.

I also technically owe Capital One $1500, but they dismissed it without prejudice. And I owe Desert Schools another $500 for a line of credit, and Maricopa County Health Department $450, but those have both gone to collections.

My credit score is seriously like 300.

Just out of curiosity, what happened? Was it just a lack of income or did you have other drama? Anyway, if you don't already know, annualcreditreport.com is the official site to get a free copy of a credit report from each of the three bureaus. I generally just request one at a time every so many months. It won't give you a score unless you opt to pay which ever agency for the privilege. I have some accounts that so me two out of the three updated monthly. I don't really care about them other than out of a sense of curiosity. We're planning to go through and kill a bunch of our accounts in the next month or so. It will be interesting to see how that affects them.

Oh, Sam's Club did provide me with a $100 gift card for my stolen rewards. A few years ago we were receiving strange password requests which prompted me to go through and change many passwords, mostly to very strong passwords, and keep them written in a notebook that remains in the house unless I am traveling. I have not been good about changing them, though, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to go about improving my password security.

I was too busy doing meth and living under bridges to pay my bills.

There's a video on youtube of a chick that did meth for nine years but she quit and now she can crush watermelons with her thighs. True story.

Dammit, I quit after 6 and I can only crush apples and potatoes.