by Beks
Hi Friends! It’s Beks! I blogged from 2009 – 2012. I slogged through some pretty miserable debt during those years. I’ve been invited to do a cameo post. What have I been up to since becoming debt free?
Whelp, I went back into debt…to the tune of $70,000. And no, that’s not a typo. SEVENTY THOUSAND.
Yeah. Y’all would have lost your minds if I had still been here.
Around 30K of that was within 6 months of becoming debt-free. I was pregnant with my second child, incredibly emotional, and driving a car that died at stoplights. Rather than do something silly like fix my car or buy a car we could actually afford, we bought a brand-spankin’ new car. Then, because heck, we were already in debt, we just. kept. going.
We continued this irresponsible behavior until I was on maternity leave with baby #3. I could only afford 6 weeks with this precious bundle. I was looking at our debt payments and realized I could be a stay-at-home mom if we hadn’t been such financial idiots.
I felt sick.
It took three miserable years to knock out the debt the second time. We had baby #4 during that period (kids are awesome). We always followed Dave Ramsay’s advice to set aside extra debt payments until after babies are born. Without going too far into it, we learned why that was good advice. Emergency C-section, NICU, delayed recovery. All painful things that would be made more difficult without a financial buffer. We brought the baby home, paid off the rest of the debt, and cried really, really, really happy tears.
Here’s what I learned… living debt-free needs to be a lifestyle, not a temporary diet. It was a lesson we had to learn twice.
We have been debt-free for 2.5 years now. We’ve paid cash for everything since including two cars. We have an emergency fund. We invest. We have become more generous. We have peace.
In a couple weeks, my husband will become a stay at home dad. It took 7 years longer than I thought because of self-inflicted stupidity but we made it.
You can too.
