With the turmoil in the economy over the last five years, Tracy and I have been working the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Plan. Although we didn't have much credit card debt, we paid that off first, then we paid off my car loan, which was through our local credit union. Once we did that, we were debt free with the exception of our house. We then built up our emergency fund of over 6 months of income to make sure that we were covered financially.
With the financial markets being so crazy, we decided to use money that we had set aside for investing to pay a big chunk (about 40%) of our home loan, which I am happy to report occurred today with me walking over to our credit union with a farely large (for us anyway) check. The clerk didn't know what to do with the check, but with a little help from her manager, we got it all straightened out. Appears that this type of thing doesn't happen every day.
As I walked back to my office for lunch, I couldn't help but feel blessed and excited that we could make that size of a payment and avoid what I calcuated to be about $70K in interest payments over our 17 year loan. As it stands now, our house will be paided off in 8 years, which will hopefully enable us to be that much closer to our dream of spending more time exploring this great country in our RV.
Dave Ramsey talks about paying off debt with "Gazelle" intensity...I'm not sure that Tracy and I have been a Gazelle in our efforts, but maybe a Yak or Water Buffalo.:)
All in all this has been a great day and a good week so far...I hope that yours has been equally as good. Take care and thanks for stopping by!
Congratulations. You have done really well on the debt issue. Isn't that just the most ownderful feeling?
ReplyDeleteSandie - it is great...can't wait to pay it all off!
DeleteGood for you! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThat is so vry cool, my wife and I are on a plan as well but we have high credit card debt so we are working on that first and the cars as well. For the bulk of our debt we will be through it in 5 years.
ReplyDeleteTHen we have one more big one and the house. We got ourselves into this and we will get us out.
I am reading Dave's book now and hoping the wife will help adjust more of her spending habits as well.
Congrats on being on the right path!
Erik
Erik - Glad to hear that you are on the program, it really works. Tracy is the saver and I am the spender, so this has been a real transition for me, but it is well worth it. I was telling Tracy on our walk this evening that it was such a wonderful feeling paying off such a large chunk of our mortgage, I can't wait to walk out after paying it all off! Anytime I can be of help to you, please don't hesitate to let me know and keep up the good fight!
Deletei am all in agreement with getting rid of all debt... the only debt I carry is a rent house and someone else pays that note...
ReplyDeleteWe have just entered retirement. We have no debt other than a modest mortgage, but really don't feel like the money we do have in 401K will last long enough. We HAVE to sell the house if we want to do any traveling. Full time RVing looks like a good plan if fuel prices don't kill us.
ReplyDeleteCongrats! Job well done. So, what are you going to go out and buy now? How about a nice $500,000 MH??
ReplyDeleteWe basically did that a few years ago. It was amazing to be debt free. Then savings grew, until we just said, I think we can quit working and go fulltime rving. And have been wandering aimlessly for the last six years and loving it. Keep up the good work.
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