Conquering Debt

If you’ve visited my blog before, you might have noticed that my husband and I have been striving for debt freedom. We have never acquired credit card debt, but did have student loan and home debts that we feverishly began working to untangle from. I’ve detailed our 5 steps to conquering debt awhile ago on the blog. Those 5 basics we used in our journey were:

1/ budget

2/ look for extra income

3/ set goals and strive to make them a reality

4/ be thankful and satisfied with what you have

5/ immerse yourself with inspiration

(You can read more about the 5 steps here.)

I am happy to report that this financial prescription does work! Early this year we paid off the remaining school loans (about $80,000 in total…private education isn’t cheap!), sold our home and freed ourselves from all debt! We recently purchased land with cash and are continuing to use the 5 steps to save for and build our home and homestead.

We’ve experienced a number of detours and adjustments to our financial plans along the way. In our almost 7 years of marriage we have had familiarity with minimum wage jobs, bouts of unemployment, medical emergencies and bills, etc. In reality, we could have been debt free sooner if we hadn’t invested in the cash purchase of our fixer, and bought (and then sold) our home in the city. Both of those endeavors were investments which we have made money on, but also required significant monetary contribution upfront.

When we moved out of our mortgage-free fixer, we rented it for awhile before selling it via owner-financing. We have been receiving a monthly check for that and it has more than paid for itself. Our second home was bought as Portland real estate began climbing in the summer of 2013. We sold that home a year later for $23,000 more than our purchase price (without any improvements to the house or land). Currently, we are renting a small place in order to save as much as possible for our homestead.

We are aware that some of our investments might have not turned out so well. If we could repeat things, we may not have done everything exactly as they occurred. Still, we have kept the focus on becoming debt-free and self sufficient. We detailed our goals and set the 5 steps into action. Life always brings it’s challenges, but with perseverance it is possible to untangle from debt!