Thanks For All The Positive Reinforcement!

Yesterday's post Working The Plan With Yak Intensity! received the highest number of comments to date, so I know this topic is top of mind for many of us.  

I won't pretend for a second that I have this down or that it was easy, because I am the spender and Tracy has always been the saver in our relationship.  So, needless to say, this process has been somewhat painful for me, but none the less, absolutely necessary if we have any hope of not having to work until our last day on earth.  I want to thank you for your messages of positive reinforcement, its nice to know that we are not alone out there with this challenge.

The toughest part for me has been living on a written budget, which I have not been very good at, especially when I see something that "I have to have".  I have found that much of the success of this process is getting past the mental "have to have" and taking a deep breath and walking away.  Automobiles have been my biggest challenge as I grew up in that industry and have always loved that "new car smell".  Of course, it helped when they came out with a report saying that "new car smell" could be linked to cancer, so buying a slightly used car that has less of the new car smell works for me:)

The other challenge is credit and how easy it is to get sucked into buying something now and paying for it later.  That instant gratification has always been a real challenge for me, starting very early in our marriage. I have always avoided looked at the interest payments until just recently, which caused me to realize that I could either invest our money safely and hope for .5% return or work to payoff our mortgage earlier to avoid thousands in interest payments. With the recent real estate appreciation in our area, the later seemed to be the best way to go for us.

I know that with many of us taking this approach of paying off debt, not buying everything that we want, holding onto our vehicles longer, etc., that we are not helping to bolster the economy with our spending, but it seems like the best individual decision based on what is currently going on now. 

It is my hope that we will be completely debt free in five years and then can really get to work on Step 4 of Dave Ramsey's Plan to build our retirement savings.  As some of you indicated, our 401k's are not going to provide us with enough income to retire comfortably, so we have to do something else. Its finding that something else that I am struggling with! 

Hope you are having a great week and enjoy your weekend ahead.  Thanks for stopping by for visit.