by Adam Dawson
Hello! I’m Adam, the other half of this party. Emily and I are so thrilled to be a part of the community on Blogging Away Debt. We have already felt such a warm welcome from the readers. Thank you to Jeffrey for the opportunity to share our journey with you. He has allowed us to team up for this project, as we consider our debt journey a team effort in our house.
As you’ll discover as we bare our financial souls here, we need this community’s help to stick to our payoff plan, get back on track with budgeting and spending, and to navigate through some of our recent changes: a new job for me, buying a fixer-upper first home, and preparing to start a family. There are so many new financial demands that it’s almost like we are starting our debt payoff all over again.
By way of background, I grew up in a small town in Indiana, playing a bunch of basketball and becoming surprisingly creative with cornfield-based entertainment. My family didn’t have much money, and some difficult circumstances in my parents’ lives have unfortunately led to them entering retirement in a financially unstable position. I was a good student, and went to an expensive little college, borrowing a lot of money to do so. After college and 5 years in the professional world, I went back to a highly-ranked business school to earn my MBA. I remember browsing the admissions materials of all the top schools and watching the dollar signs flash before my eyes when reading about the salaries freshly-minted MBA grads earn. Unfortunately, nobody cautioned me that borrowing the entire cost of my degree would impose a huge burden on me for several years after school. Going to a great school was a life changer, both professionally and personally, and I don’t regret it. But Emily and I are now paying the price for the financial folly of borrowing so much money.
Now, we are just turning the dial over into our 30s. Three years ago, Emily’s dad canoed her across a lake to give her away at our wedding, and as she mentioned, our journey brought us to Austin, Texas for our first few years together. So far, it’s just us two and our dog Jake, but we do plan on adding some chickens and maybe a couple of goats at some point. I work in the technology industry, enjoy Tex-Mex, drinking coffee on the porch, keeping up with the news, going to the farmer’s market, and rooting on the Indianapolis Colts. Also, I have Barnheart. Sheesh, this sounds like an online dating profile – I’d better stop there.
Emily and I share a faith that teaches us that you can’t be bound to an earthly master, and that borrowers are slaves to their lenders. As a response to this, we decided that we must become debt-free and live within our means. My desire is to make sure our children don’t worry about our family’s bills like I did when I was growing up. We want to be free to pursue the path of our choosing and to serve those around us. Being wealthy isn’t our priority. Being unencumbered by debt, and living a simple, generous, family-oriented, life is.
We’ve followed both Claire and Beks in their journey on this blog. The about-face Claire made in her time here was just amazing. We are inspired by their stories and hope that the community of readers and commenters can help us out on our journey too. Thank you so much for being here for the previous bloggers, and we are so excited to get to know you ourselves over the next several months!
