I don’t know about you, but I’m loving the weather this past week or so! The birds are chirping (my favorite way to wake up!), the sun is rising before 6AM, our windows are open in the house, even through the night. The heat has been off for a week! I repeat, I no longer have to pay for heat! Ahhhh, life is good. Spring is a favorite time of the year for me – so green and warm. I remember being a kid outside waiting for the bus in weather like this, thinking nothing could be better than waiting without a coat on.

I’ve rounded up a list of things that are additional favorites of mine from around the Internet – happy surfing! xo

Now that we’ve finished binge watching Queer Eye on Netflix, I’ve become obsessed with the History Channel’s Alone. We’ve just finished season one and I’m admittedly learning a lot about wilderness survival! I’m excited to see season two start because there will be three women attempting to win the cash and survive the longest.

And because I should always be focusing on watching less and reading more, this book is STILL on my dresser and WILL be read this season. Do you manifest materialistic things into your life? Interested in having me share more? Because I totally think I do it on the regular – and I think you could too!

Speaking of books, NPR’s best books of 2018. I’ll be adding a few to my list!

I’m a woman of influence, which means speaking up instead of falling silent. Regardless of what political party you align yourself with or how discouraged you are, I encourage you to read and to continue to show up at the polls. It’s very early, but here’s a list of candidates who have thrown their hats into the presidential race.

I love this company and want this coat in my life!

With an empty house, the beau and I are finally starting to dream about settling in to our home – aka buying furnishings that a cat once ruined. First items up on the list: a couch, an area rug for the living room and bedside tables. We found this company that makes couches out of recycled plastic bottles! We’re going to visit the store in NYC this summer to give them a test.

This lamp is the bedside lamp of my dreams – and it’s on sale!

I’m officially on the hunt for a special dress for dinner at NOMA. I’m looking for something that I’ll be able to not only wear that evening, but throughout our holiday and back home at work. When I’m looking for something, I can’t seem to find it… but when I’m not shopping / don’t have the cash, my list is forever long. Does that happen to anyone else? Do you have any suggestions? I have stumbled upon this dress, this one, this color block one, this bright red one and this one – but they aren’t all work appropriate.

Help a girl out! Where’s your favorite place to shop for staple, long-lasting items (that can’t be purchased in the mall)?

We’ve officially received documentation from Navient that our last loan is paid in full – whoop whoop!

So many people have reached out to us, sharing kind words and congratulatory wishes – thank you to each and every one of you! The number one question we’ve been receiving is HOW DOES IT FEEL?! 

Similar to marriage when you were already living with your partner before the big day, doesn’t feel much different. Ha!

But really, not much has changed.

We’re still making and following a budget AND we’re still living pretty frugal.

We are now on Baby Step 3: Fully-funded Emergency Fund
Up to this point and over the last 16 months, we’ve only had $1,000 saved in the bank for emergencies. Thankfully we never had to use it (remember, Christmas and snow tires are NOT emergencies), so now we can focus on saving 3-6 months of cash to cover expenses should the worst happen. Because life does happen.

For us, our minimum monthly living expenses including our mortgage is about $2,900. And that’s with $200 worth of personal cash added in, me expecting to spend $300 on oils and $250 in sinking funds. So realistically, rice and beans-wise, we’re at $2,300 a month. That’s all we need to pay the mortgage, keep the lights and heat on, and eat a somewhat healthy vegan diet. That’s basically how we’ve been living the last 16 months and that’s how we paid off our debt so quickly.

I’d prefer to have 6 months worth of savings in the bank, or $13,800. But because I’ve literally never had an emergency fund before in my life, I’d be comfortable with $25,000. Again, this is money just for emergencies. This does not include house renovations or a new wardrobe.

Since we already had $1,000 in an online savings account, we only have $24,000 to go! Once this is saved, we’ll then be able to loosen the reigns even further and start investing for retirement, start saving for vacations and home projects, and paying off our mortgage. And giving! Giving is at the top of our list! The average couple going through this plan has their debt AND mortgage paid off within 5-7 years. I can’t wait to be one of those statistics!

A review of December:
– We paid $3,287.49 toward debt (paying it off in full)
– We deposited $601.66 into savings (!!!) – that felt weird and good at the same time!

Being January 9th as I write this out, we’ve officially doubled our emergency fund since December 13th. As we get paid throughout each month, I’ll continue making transfers to savings just as I did to debt.

Changes to our monthly budget now that we’re consumer debt free:

• Less sinking fund envelopes: I went back and forth on this topic for the first week or so of the month. Ultimately I decided that we don’t need envelopes/savings for smaller reoccurring expenses in our life i.e: haircuts, the quarterly water bill, the bi-annual trash fee, and car inspections. We have more than enough money to cover these expenses out of pocket when they arise and will not feel guilty paying them and saving less that month because, well, they need to get paid. We will continue to use two envelopes as they are higher amounts (and honestly, it feels good to have the money to cover these!): car insurance and Christmas / gift money. We already have one wedding save the date… I know there’s going to be at least one more! I can’t wait to save up and splurge on my friends!
• Personal money: Over the past 16 months neither one of us had a monthly allowance or personal cash to spend freely. That means we didn’t buy any clothes, large unsweetened iced teas from Dunkin’ Donuts or any other misc. items that didn’t fit into our budget. Starting this month, we’ll each have $100 cash to spend on anything our little hearts desire. We won’t need to consult our partner before making a purchase! Freedom! Ha! I joke, but really, this has been the weirdest part of all. Let’s just say on January 1st I placed an online order for two new dresses and when they finally arrive, I’ll only have enough cash to keep one. The suspense is killing me! Then I may get my nails or eyelashes did. Oh, the possibilities are endless!
• A little more wiggle room in the food categories: Our food budget each month has been $400 – a little less when we subscribed to a local CSA this past summer. This has been more than enough for us, however, it didn’t allow us to keep food in the pantry. We added $50 to this category so that we could buy some of our favorite non-perishables to keep on hand for when we want to be spontaneous / not stick to the meal plan without blowing the budget. We also added $50 to our going out budget, which had previously been set at $195 per month. We both love eating out locally, and we love supporting our local brewers. Ha! $50 gives us a little more without being extravagant; we by no means will start eating out on a weekly basis = it’s a money trap! AND it doesn’t make the act of going out special.

Oh, and I dropped a side hustle. My Saturdays are now free to run, wander the Farmer’s Market and hike, as I’ll no longer be working for Annick. I’m super thankful for the opportunity she gave me over the last 7 months. Didn’t always feel like an opportunity when I was committed to something each Saturday of every week, but without that job, we wouldn’t have been able to pay off everything when we did.

I’ve decided to keep sharing our month in review to not only keep ourselves motivated toward saving / staying the course, but also help motivate all of you! Just this morning I received a PM via IG with a debt snowball update from a friend and golly, it really set the tone for my day! I LOVE seeing y’all win with money too!

Confession: I started writing this post on June 22, 2018. THAT’S how motivated I was to finish this thing.

This is it. This is our debt free scream! We are officially consumer debt free!!!

Here’s a little recap, written as if we were live with Dave Ramsey:

Our names: Taylor + Jona

And where do you live? Troy, NY

Total amount of debt paid off: $89,075.45!

And how long did it take to pay off? 15 months and 13 days!!!

What was your range of income? We started at $90k and ended up at $127,000ish

Woah! That’s an average of $5,567 a month, did you sell something? We did not – but we did drain our savings down to $1,000 (we had about $15k in savings, so with that amount deducted, that’s still about $4,630 a month paid toward debt) and Jona did get a new job one month into the process.

What do you do for a living? Taylor does graphic and web design for a local property management company and Jona is a manager of administration and finance for a local non-profit. Taylor took on an extra freelance job as a side hustle and Jona worked Saturdays at a local jewelry shop, volunteered for market research, Young Living – IWOW = I WORK ON WEEKENDS!

What kind of debt did this include? $6k was Jona’s old credit card, $10k was Taylor’s car and the remaining amount were Taylor’s student loans. We were pretty normal!

So what happened 16 months ago to get you started on this journey? Jona – Well, prior to getting married in February 2017 I knew Taylor had a massive amount of student loan debt and fully accepted that he’d be paying them off for at least another 15-20 years. But once we were married, we combined bank accounts and while it did take a couple of months to see and get use to each other’s spending habits, I knew we could do more. I had used the Dave-ish program to pay off my student loans prior to my 30th birthday (ish because I was still racking up credit card debt), so I wanted to see how fast we could pay off Taylor’s loans. I checked out and read The Total Money Makeover from the library and was instantly hooked! We were ALL in! I remember in August 2017 putting everything into spreadsheets and guessing we’d be debt free within 5 years; April 2022 was our initial goal. We made our first household budget for September and never looked back.

Taylor, did you think Jona had lost her mind? Nope. I was on board to get rid of those loans.

What do you think is the key to getting out of debt? Jona – sticking to the budget! Creating a budget was the easy part (I’m the nerd with the excel spreadsheets), but sticking to it was the hard part. We said no a lot over the last 16 months but we did sneak some fun into the budget to keep us both sane. We’re looking forward to “loosening the reins” a little as we progress through the remaining baby steps but we’re officially convinced that budgets work, so we’ll continue to make one each month for the rest of our lives.

Taylor – I feel the same way, that’s all it really is, sticking to your plan.

Did you have any naysayers or more cheerleaders? Jona – We definitely had a little bit of both. I was very open on social media each month about how much was paid and how it was done, which seemed to inspire many but I also received plenty of push back about our methods. I had to remind myself that their opposing opinions had zero impact on our success. But the good far outweighed the bad: I gained a couple of amazing supporters throughout this process. I taught FPU twice over the last 16 months and have made new friends who understand how hard this journey can be. And I’ve reconnected with others via social media who have started this journey after seeing our success and I have to tell you, receiving their random text messages with their wins is one of the best feelings ever.

Taylor – Cheerleaders.

Who was your biggest cheerleader? Taylor – my parents. Jona – I mean, I know my family supported us but I don’t think they fully understood the sacrifices we made, why I just wouldn’t spend money on myself. Yes, I knew we were working hard and “deserved” a dinner out, but I think that’s what gets a lot of people into this mess; we oftentimes think we deserve a reward when really, you’re just doing what should be done in the first place. My biggest supporter was someone I reconnected with thanks to social media, shout out to Rhi! She started this journey with her husband about 9 months before us, unbeknownst to me, and fully understands the process. I cannot wait to hear their debt free scream next month – they are so so close!

Next chapter in our story: Jona – to become millionaires and that’ll be easy now that we only have our monthly mortgage payment! We know this will take a couple of years (okay, my goal is to be a millionaire by the time I’m 40!) and will continue to progress through the baby steps as follows:

• Baby Step 1: save $1,000 cash
• Baby Step 2: pay off all consumer debt
• Baby Step 3: save for a fully funded emergency fund, cash (my goal is $25,000 because doesn’t that sound bangin’?!)
• Baby Step 4: invest 15% of our annual income for retirement – this happens for the remainder of our working careers!
• Baby Step 5: save for college (no kids, skip!)
• Baby Step 6: pay off our mortgage!
• Baby Step 7: live and give like no one else! *We’ll be giving 5-10% of our annual income once we officially reach BS4

Added as if we weren’t on the show: you should have ZERO shame about wanting to become successful with your money. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being prepared for emergencies – because they WILL happen, saving for your future – because you will grow old and need assistance, living how you wish – because you are spending so much of your lifetime working and earning money, might as well learn how to maximize it’s benefits and living the life you’ve always dreamed of living. Yes, money does NOT bring happiness, this I know, but it does bring freedom.

Let’s hear a debt free screaaaaaaaaaammmmmmm! 

WE’RE DEBT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! (You can actually hear our live #debtfreescream on my IG account – edited to say: we did our debt free scream live on IG but didn’t think to save it, boo. If you’re tech savvy and know how to access this video, please please please let me know.)

Are you getting sick of these monthly updates? If so, you’re in luck because there will only be two more. Two! Well, fingers crossed there’s only two. I don’t want to jinx myself or anything.

October was a stellar month for us. Despite barely working at my side hustle (ugh, rain), we still managed to put $6,365.74 toward debt! Boom pow!

This month was a three payroll month for me and we both got raises. Our annual gross salary increased by almost ten grand and I share this not to brag, not at all, but to be transparent, as I have this entire process. However, because coworkers visit this page (hello there, co-workers!) I’m not going to disclose who got what. Ask me how much I make in person and I’ll tell you, I’ve got nothing to hide. What I love most about Dave Ramsey’s plan is that it works, regardless of how much you make. Yes, if your shovel is smaller it may take you longer, but it works. You’d be surprised how much people assume we bring home in order to make this much progress… I can tell you you’re probably assuming wrong.

Rule number 3 of the Four Agreements: Don’t make assumptions.

YOU can do it, you just have to choose to do it.

We also got a boost this month in the form of a refund. $819.64 to be exact, from Navient. Looooooooong story short: one of the beau’s loans was eligible to have the last 6 months of payments refunded back to us once it was paid in full. This was a loan that was paid off back in September and we received the money in record time (compared to the 5 months we had to wait for a previous loan refund). That refund was applied immediately to the balance of the solo remaining loan; we chose not to have it deposited into our checking account.

Back to the stats!

This was our 14th month on our #financialpeacejourney and we’ve paid off a total of $80,937.71! That’s 90.86%!!

We only have $8,137.74 left to pay off! This month we hit the milestone of officially being under $10k!!

57 days until our DEBT FREE SCREAM! (December 26th)

Spending wise, we were pretty tuned in to what our budget dictated:

• but we did overspend on our grocery line by $14 and by $10 on the eating out/alcohol line
• the beau donated $10 for the Breast Cancer Walk through his employer
• and we spent $8.64 on Halloween candy (note: no pumpkins this year)

Fun was once again built into our monthly budget! We got two punches in the Nine Pin 26er Challenge and won free box tickets to see Phish at the TU Center. I can tell you that two beers cost us a whopping $23 at that show! Yikes! And we splurged and went out to dinner the night we got the refund from Navient. We used money gifted to us from Christmas last year (!) for this special date night. It was the first time we had been out to dinner together, just the two of us, since February! It felt funny and I was super conscious / aware of how much I could easily drop in just one night, but we made compromises and had a delicious meal. If you haven’t tried the impossible burger at The Shop, animal style, you’re missing out! And take the gamble on the $3 random cans of beer – they were a fun twist!

Personally, I continued strong with the 30 Day Minimalism Challenge. And despite not sharing each day individually on IG, I did complete 27/31 days. I did a giant email purge during the last week and let me tell you, that one felt oh so good! Logging in each day and only have 14 items in my inbox is a delight. I can now solely focus on what’s truly important. (For reference, I started with 788.) I also purged a shit-ton of trash, legit garbage, from my bedroom closet. Why I had been stashing wrappers, receipts and old band aids (not used) in a box, I couldn’t tell you. I’m continuing to make progress each week and have been focusing on small areas at a time. I know that storage container cabinet in the kitchen is calling my name… so.many.mason jars!

Speaking of the kitchen, we had some great meals at home this past month! Here’s a look at some of the meals we ate (a number of photographs shared on IG):

• Mondays: Indian stir-fry, tofu scrambles with home fries
• Tuesdays: lentil soup, black bean soup
• Wednesdays: spaghetti squash with a tvp & mushroom “meat” sauce, quick veggie stir-fry, tofu and broccoli
• Thursdays: homemade sushi with spring rolls, beans & greens
• Fridays: tempeh wraps with roasted broccoli, “fish” tacos
• Saturdays: pizza!
• Sundays: eggplant parm., a tomato bake with crescent rolls, beet balls and a homemade “mozzarella”

I also baked a beautiful (and tasty!) cake for the beau. He had been gone traveling for work so I decided to surprise him with a treat the day he got home (a sweet for my sweet). I stayed up late to bake the cake one Thursday night and then got up early the next day to pick flowers from our garden and frost it. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Running wise, I only ran 45.3 miles. I don’t blame my running friend buuuuuuut she’s on holiday and I’ve skipped the last two weeks. I’m lazy and prefer to sleep when left on my own, ha! It’s pretty damn dark out there in the mornings now, FYI. Excuses, I know. BUT I did do two at home workout videos (Cardio Fix and Upper Fix) and it is SAD how sore I was following those workouts. Like, sore for days. Whelp. I need to do more strength training.

October also brought the finale of my second Financial Peace University class that I co-taught with my friend Rhi. It was a success despite only one person showing up and taking a chance on herself. I can’t wait to follow along with her on this journey! I’ll most likely be teaching one more FPU class in January – keep an eye out for that announcement soon! ((I do not get paid to teach this class; it’s 100% volunteer work. I will show up whether I have one person in the class or 50. You do not need to share your specific numbers/debt with me but I will share mine. You do have to show up to all 9 classes. You may have wandered into debt but you cannot wander out (there is no quick fix).))

Whew! What a month! The final countdown is on…

Oh, September.

September was a challenging month for me mentally. Our 13th month on this #debtfreejourney and Murphy paid us a visit: we woke up one weekday morning to find not one, but two leaks in our roof. Plaster is falling from our ceiling in two locations. And before I dive further into the specifics and frustrations of this house let me just say, breaking gazelle intensity is effing hard.

I cried during my last FPU class seeing the gazelle outrun the cheetah, despite seeing that clip at least 4 other times. Working so so hard and being so laser focused on a goal for over a year to only be sidelined is mentally tough to wrap your head around. It’s not like I shopped us off track. The morning we found the leaks I just walked out of the house and drove myself to work early, unable to look at what we now faced. And I must clarify, my frustration with this occurrence did not stem from fear. Had this happened a year ago, we both would have panicked over how we were going to afford this fix. Now, despite only having $1,000 in savings, we had a plan: we were to suspend all payments to debt (except minimums) until this issue was resolved.

I think we’ve resolved the issue… for now. More on that in a hot minute.

Our totals for the month
In September, we paid off $4,040.70 in debt! Boom!

In total, we’ve paid off $74,571.97 over the last 13 months (that’s 83.72%) and we only have $14,503.48 of debt remaining.

In 2018 alone, we’ve paid a grand total of $56,899 toward debt! To put that into perspective, that’s more than the gross total of one of our salaries. We’re essentially living off of only half of the other person’s gross salary. Yeah, really.

So imagine this: if you’re married, take the higher of the two salaries and split that in half. That’s the only amount of money you have to live on for a year. Every other penny will be thrown into the trash. That’s what it’s like paying off debt in our situation. That’s money we’ll never see again. But just think! Once we are debt free, if we continue to live the same way, every other penny will be put into savings, our future, or travelling! Can you imagine?! At what age will we be able to retire? How much of the world will we be able to see?

You may be asking, “how did you do this if you’ve suspended all payments?” Well, the leaks happened before the second pay days of the month. We had already thrown a huge chunk toward debt at the beginning of the month and then just let the cash pile up over the last two weeks until we knew what the plan was for the roof. Our plan: call every roofer we could find. And we did and only heard back from one guy who offered to come out for $425, for one hour, to tell us what the cost would be. Ah, no. Apparently this is the busiest time of the year for roofers, preparing and fixing roofs before the snow dumps down on us all in Upstate NY. So, we took matters into our own hands.

After climbing up on the roof multiple times and consulting with my dad, the beau took some time off from work to fix it himself. Not only did we find a huge chunk of siding that was flapping in the wind, we found a portion of the rubber roof folded down and most likely the spot where the water had been entering the house. The theme over the last two years with this house has been SHITTY WORK: The tale of two homeowner’s who slapped shit together to sell a house. Seriously, everything seems to be done half-way. Or cheaply. Or in a hurry. Or however you’d like to put it. We saw this in little details during the home buying process, we just didn’t expect the scope of it. This past week it rained pretty hard and the adhesive the beau applied seems to be working… we just now have 3lbs of roof adhesive sitting in our basement. Ha! We now need to replace the drywall / plaster in our entire dining room / sun room and most likely one wall before painting and moving forward. But the good news is, we think we can do this after the snow arrives. We think. We’re going to ride it out over the next month or so to see if there are any changes before we jump to having any further work done. I can live with missing plaster on my roof, just like I’m living with drywall in my master bathroom.

With that, we took the $2,000+ we had saved during those last two weeks and dumped it toward debt. We can always pause later on again if needed.

September was a “normal” payroll month for us and I actually only worked at my side hustle three times this month. BUT I did sell the diamond! Dun dun dunnnnnnn. I won’t mention who I sold it to or for how much (that person or partner may read this blog), but I got more than what I would have gotten if I pawned it and I didn’t have to deal with social media. Win win in my book! I also sold a pair of 10k gold earrings with matching heart pendant from an ex-boyfriend. Seriously, they had been sitting in the box for YEARS in a closet. No hard feelings just not my taste.

Items we purchased this month that weren’t originally in the budget:

• Troy Turkey Trot 10k registration!
• fuel for my race
• the 3lbs of roofing adhesive
• a new-to-me cell phone (iPhone SE used via the internet)
• leaf bags
• personal items

Items paid for using our sinking funds:

• a gift certificate for my grandmother who celebrated her 90th birthday! (gift envelope)
• the second half of our garbage fee (garbage envelope)
• our 4th quarter water bill (water and sewer envelope)
• haircut for the beau (haircut envelope)

Stashing a little money aside each month really helps!

Let’s see, we stuck pretty closely to the dinner meal plan which included our favorite beans and greens served over rice, tempeh jalapeno wraps, plenty of pasta dishes with various veggies from our CSA and a delicious homemade tomato sauce. We even took out a freezer meal (pulled “pork” aka king oyster mushrooms) to use up what we already had on hand for variety. I started teaching another round of FPU on Tuesday evenings, so I’ve been utilizing the crockpot overnight on Mondays so that I have a delicious homemade meal to enjoy after work without having to go home.

We got two more punches toward becoming a 26er with Nine Pin cider – planned fun within the budget! Oh, and we visited the garlic festival in Saugerties with my mom and sister! We didn’t break the bank at this tempting outing: we only purchased one bottle of hot sauce and the beau enjoyed some perogies and a potato pancake. With money worked at my side hustle, we got Chinese takeout twice this month.

A personal challenge I took on this month was the 30 day minimalist challenge. Super easy: for each day of the month, you throw out (donate, sell) that many corresponding items. On 9/1 you get rid of one item, on 9/15 you get rid of fifteen items… and so on. Pretty proud of myself for making it 25 days! You can see each day’s worth of items on IG. Between Board meetings, FPU, running and working on the weekends, I don’t always have a lot of free time when I’m home. Golly, I grocery shop on my lunch breaks to avoid having to do it during my scheduled home time! This challenge has really got me motivated to tackle each room in the house and I’ve been cleaning and organizing throughout the process. I’m literally going through boxes that haven’t been touched since we moved almost two years ago! The beau has been a great sport and participating as needed. I’ve been using what I’ve learned from Marie Kondo along the way to make the process a little easier. HIGHLY suggest her first book if you have yet to read it. I’ll be restarting the challenge for the month of October because I still have more work to do.

Dream job: being a consultant that not only helps people get out of debt but helps them declutter.

I really do think the two of them go hand in hand.

Maybe one day when I’ve walked the walk.

Positive thought moving forward into October: only THREE more payments until we’re debt free! THREE!