Hey! Happy Monday!  Guess what?

That’s right! We’re debt freeeeeeee!

Its been almost two months since we paid off our debt, but it still feels so good – and so unreal – to type that.

I never thought that we would be able to pay off everything as quickly as we did, but looking back, it’s a great reminder of how the Lord provided SO much for us these past few months! From G being offered a job and an early start date allowing him to take leave time he built up in the USMC, to a rental house that was within our price range, there were so many answers to prayers and we are grateful for the opportunity to be living without the burden of debt.

When we began to work on paying off our debt in September {read: paying more than the monthly minimum on what we owed}, we hoped that we would be able to pay it off by our first anniversary but tried to be realistic and give ourselves until the end of 2014 to pay it off, just in case life happened and we had to put money towards other things. After all we didn’t really know what our next few months would like with G finishing up in the military.  

Some of the things that we did that were key to us paying our debt off more quickly:

1. Pay off smaller debts first. We read about this idea through Dave Ramsey, and it truly did give us momentum.  And who doesn’t put a cross through a line of debt once its paid off?
2. Create a spending budget off of less than your income.  If you make $100 a month, create your budget based on $60 and put the other $40 towards debt.
3. Reduce “fun money” spending. This may sound like a no brainer, but we worked over our budget a few times and tried to cut out things we could do without. While it definitely wasn’t fun to cut down on our “fun money” spending {clothes, home stuff, eating out more than once a week}, it was very worth it.  It even gave me time to gain new perspectives on needs vs.wants, buying things I love, and investing in quality items.  I’m definitely still learning though!
4. Evaluate spending every month. Each month, we would list out how we did on our budget, and make notes if we went over in certain categories.  This helped us stay more accountable and be realistic about our spending.

We still have a long way to go in learning about money {giving, saving, and planning} but we’re grateful to be doing it now without the worry of a payment!

What are some ways you tackle debt? Any tips?

ps – Want to read more about how we got started? Last fall during my 31 days series, I wrote about how we deal with money, communicating about money, goal setting, budgeting 101, a helpful tool, easy ways to save, and settling into a home on a budget.