No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on,
however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who
have been trained by it. - Hebrews 12:11
There are two types of people in the world...people that pull a Band-aid off one hair a time, and the people that rip it off all at once.
When my wife and I decided to change our money habits and get out of debt, we decided to go CRAZY...a "rip it off all at once" attitude. We decided that if we were going to feel the pain of change, we wanted the pain to be for as short a period as possible.
My wife was blessed with a mom (here's your credit Angie) that was able to save enough money to pay for her education as she went through. I was also blessed with a mom and dad who helped me out tremendously through college and the only Student Loans I "had" to take were to pay the actual tuition costs for 4 years.
As I said in a previous blog, since we had begun the process of being smart with money while still in college, the only debt we had upon graduation was my student loan totaling approximately $12,000. I knew that my loan payments did not have to be made until 6 months after graduating and EdFinancial was "gracious" enough to allow me to pay my loan off over the term of 20 YEARS?!
We decided not to have a student loan around for 20 years, so we sat down and did our budget. On January 2nd I started my first "real" job. Brittany didn't start her "real" job until January 25th.
We scraped, clawed and fought with EVERYTHING WE HAD! We used money we'd gotten for graduation, income taxes and EVERY DOLLAR WE COULD FIND.
AND PAID OFF $12,000 IN 60 DAYS...
I don't remember eating in this 60 day period, just kidding, but not much! We didn't make that kind of money. Looking back all I can point to is God blessing us for being smart with the resources he'd given us to manage.
I see people and even have family/friends that train for half or full marathons all the time. I've decided that I'm a sprinter and want to get whatever pain there is in my life over as quickly and intensely as possible.
WE DID IT...I even got to call into The Dave Ramsey Show and scream WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEE!!! It feels great and we will NEVER go back.
