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My Story: Our Success Story

contributed by Denise

I thought I would share our "success" story. Not rags to riches, but definitely a huge turn around in our lives.My husband and I met in 1997 and married in 1998. We went out to eat often and went on several "weekend trips" (some of which were driving 1000 miles one way) to go to concerts and music festivals. We bought as many CDs, LPs, and DVDs as we wanted. (Did I mention we're big music fans?) One time, shortly after I resigned from my job and we were down to one income, we flew to Los Angeles strictly to see a concert.

We bought a ton of stuff on sale. We were saving money, of course, because we were buying stuff on sale, but we were spending a lot of money on our "bargains." Plus, we didn't use everything that we bought.

We had a house with a mortgage, two car payments, college student loans for both of us, and a lot of credit cards. All told, we owed about $60,000 not including our mortgage. $40,000 of that was on our maxed out credit cards.

My husband and I have never made a lot of money. I was the "breadwinner" as a teacher, and as most people know, teachers don't make much money.

We finally decided we needed to do something. We entered consumer debt counseling and paid about $800 a month to the credit card companies each month.

Whenever we got a windfall, we applied it to the debt.

We were definitely living month to month, but we only asked to pay less than the regular amount a couple times, no matter how hard it was for us to make the $800 payments.

I worked my regular job and took a second job at a hospital working weekends. I even worked some overtime during the summer to get more money to give to the credit card companies. My husband worked overtime whenever it was available. He sometimes worked seven days a week for weeks or months at a time.

Luckily, we didn't have any children that required our time or money, and were able to focus all our energies on paying down the debt. If you're wondering if we gave up our music addiction, no, we did not. We still went to concerts and music festivals (even taking out-of-state trips. Only now, we were paying with cash and debit cards. (One of the requirements for the debt counseling was that we cancel all of our credit cards and we did keep a debit card so we could use it for hotel and airline reservations.) We used (and continue to use) places like Priceline, Hotwire, and Orbitz for our travel needs so that we spent as little as possible (and tried to stay with family as much as possible).

"Big" vacations were trips to parents/in-laws. One family lives in Prince Edward Island, which is perfect to visit in the summer, and the other family lives in Florida, which is great for a winter vacation. Flying to Florida in December 2001 was extremely inexpensive. We paid $160 for two people round trip.

We actually paid off our credit cards almost a year before we were scheduled (we were scheduled for five years). When we made the final payment, I called my parents to share the wonderful news, and my husband and I celebrated by going out to eat at a nice, but inexpensive restaurant and paid with cash!

We vowed we would never get into credit card debt again and we have succeeded. My husband and I both were also contributing to our 401k/403b plans during the whole ordeal. In addition to paying off our credit cards, we started a fairly decent sized retirement account.

We just finished paying off our mortgage early.

Our cars are paid off and still get good gas mileage so we'll be keeping them as long as possible. What helped us:

A sign printed on a computer with a motivational quote. We still have it on our fridge. We chose "When you're going through hell, keep going," which is a quote by Churchill.
We kept in mind that no matter how bad off we got, we were the ones who made the choices that got us into that position.
We also kept in mind that there were always people worse off than we were and we continued to contribute to charity.
We kept our most recent credit card statements posted on our fridge so we could see our progress.
We made huge payments on the smallest balance when we had windfalls.
We worked overtime and/or a second job.
We lived below our means and we still do this. We may be able to afford something at $35, but I'd rather wait for it to go on sale for $10.
I never took a credit card or debit card when I went shopping. I also avoided shopping for fun.
We did the little things. We took our lunch to work with us, drank water, ate vegetarian (which we do for reasons other than saving money, but beans are naturally much less expensive than meat), rolled down the windows in our cars, and turned up the thermostat in the summer and down in the winter.
We also did all the slightly bigger things. We got rid of cable TV, a land line phone, and home Internet. We watched local networks, had two prepaid cell phones, and we used the Internet at work (while on break) and at the local library for free.
We will continue to use our cars as long as they are running effectively and without damaging the environment. We have 230,000 miles on a 1997 Cavalier that we have never had repaired, but we have always taken care to have regular oil changes, and changed tires and brakes as needed.

So, that's it. We got ourselves into debt, we got ourselves out of bad debt, and we're working on being totally debt free. If we can do it, anybody can.

"My Story" is a regular feature of The Dollar Stretcher. If you have a story that could help save time or money, please send it by mailto:MyStory@stretcher.com

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My Story: Our Success Story

contributed by Denise

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