When I Woke Up and Smelled the Coffee
Posted by Lynnae on February 26, 2008
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Some people can pinpoint a moment in time when the lighbulb comes on. My financial awakening was more of a process.
There’s an interesting post up at Gather Little by Little today. Gina wrote a guest post about her financial epiphany….the day she knew she had to get in control of her finances. Then Gibble challenged his readers to respond by writing a post on their own financial epiphanies. So here is mine.
I can’t say there was one moment in time when my husband and I realized we needed to get our finances in control. I got into debt largely through a lack of knowledge. I knew that not paying my credit card payments on time would result in a bad credit score, but I thought having credit card debt was important for building a credit history. I thought that as long as I could afford the monthly payments, I was in good shape.
I also bought into the idea that a college degree was necessary, even if I had to take out a student loan. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that I should have picked a major that would allow me to get a good job, so I majored in sociology, because I found it interesting. There’s not much you can do with a B.A. in Sociology. Right after I married my husband, I decided to go to graduate school to get my special education teaching credential. I took out $10,000 in student loans, but I never finished the program. That’s how we got into debt.
A few months after we got married and I had dropped out of school, I picked up Larry Burkett’s Complete Financial Guide for Young Couples. I devoured it. I think that’s when I realized I was interested in learning about personal finance. I checked out every Larry Burkett book I could find from the library. I remember listening to Dave Ramsey on our local Christian radio station, before he was really popular. I heard Mary Hunt for the first time on that same Christian radio station, and soon I was reading everything she had written
Soon I was very knowledgeable about personal finance. And since my husband worked at that local Christian radio station, we knew all about frugal living. Working in Christian radio is a great thing, and my husband loves it, and I support him wholeheartedly, but it’s not something you do for the money. :) We became experts at making ends meet despite a lack of money. But we weren’t getting ahead in paying off our debts. In fact, at times we went backwards, since we had no emergency fund. It was frustrating, to say the least, and the task of paying off our debts seemed impossible.
I’d say the moment we got serious about paying off our debts was in late 2006 when my father-in-law passed away. He left us a small inheritance, and before he died he told my husband he should use the money to pay off our debts. Jim and I agreed to doing just that. The inheritance wasn’t enough to cover all of our debts, but we cut our debt load in half. And for the first time in our married life, it seemed like getting out of debt was an achievable goal.
Since then, we’ve had many ups and downs. But it seems that once a person gets a taste of success, a taste of reaching the goal, it’s a hard goal to give up. So despite a couple of job losses, despite the fact that we owe a lot of taxes this year, and despite the fact that we are once again living on a very tight budget, we are not giving up. I’m looking forward to being out of credit card debt by September and completely out of debt by the end of 2010. I know we’ll make the September deadline for paying off the credit card. Time will tell if we’ll be able to pay off the student loan by 2011. But it’s good to have the end of our debt in sight.
Photo by Vox_Efx.
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17 Responses to “When I Woke Up and Smelled the Coffee”
Trackbacks
- Bad Debt » Blog Archive » When I Woke Up and Smelled the Coffee
- my financial epiphany
- My Financial Epiphany | Debtbeater
- Saturday Roundup - March 1st, 2008 - It's Getting Warmer edition | Credit Withdrawal - Helping You Kick the Credit Habit
- pfblogsround 2nd March 2008 | plonkee money
- Carnival Of Debt Reduction #129
- Me vs Debt
- Carnival of Money Stories #50
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I am not a financial expert. I'm just a wife and mom doing the best I can to live a frugal life and get out of debt. Like any human, I make mistakes. I write this blog out of my own experiences, and nothing I write should be taken as expert advice. If you need financial advice, please consult a professional.
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Larry Burkett was my first PF Book - and he hooked me on wanting to learn more. I believe when you get a taste of this kind of knowledge, it does create a desire for more.
Stay the course Lynnae - you and your family are doing very well!
Remember it’s consistency that wins this race…
I wonder if getting smacked by the brick wall, brick by brick, is easier than catching it all in the face at once?
Good blog too, added to my RSS reader…
@Mike - I love that analogy! LOL Thanks for subscribing!
I admire your courage to keep working on your goals despite all the adversities thrown your way.
I’m afraid to say I never heard of Larry Burkett. So, I’m off to google him now.
great story - thanks for sharing!
Thanks for telling your story. I must say, I admire the fact that you can keep a budget with your income so up and down. We had a budget when we had a set salary coming from the church that my husband pastors. But then, about four years ago, attendance dropped and our salary was cut in half. Because we had several credit cards and loans, and many bills, we were in trouble,in way over our heads. We ended up filing bankruptcy.
I know many people oppose dealing with finances this way, but we really didn’t have much choice, to be able to survive. Anyway, I guess God used it as our epiphany, because since then we’ve realized we don’t ever want to be in bondage like that again.
We still have our truck with a year of payments left, and our mortgage with 10 years left on it, so we still have those debts, but I know eventually we’ll get those paid. I receive a lot of encouragement and ideas from this site and others in the network. Thanks again.
Losing half your income is really difficult, and though I’m definitely not a fan of bankruptcy (is anyone really?), I think the bankruptcy laws were originally made for people who found them in situations like you did, where your income suddenly takes a dive. I think that today the laws are often abused.
That’s a great story — keep up the work! Staying positive and not having a defeatist attitude is so important with finances. I had my epiphany moment a few months ago. I was freshly out of college and on my entry-level salary for a few months, struggling to learn how to budget and make the money last all month. I was doing OK, but then the holidays hit, and then January had a lot of unexpected expenses. I was a total wreck and gathering debt, and amidst a fit of tears, I finally had a moment where I realized that isn’t where I wanted to be. I want to travel and live comfortably — not waste my hard-earned money on a pair of shoes I don’t need and other miscellaneous purchases I realized I was slowly but surely spending draining my salary on. Since then, I’ve really gotten my act together. I try to keep my credit card balance at less than $200 at all times, I have started babysitting for some extra spending money, and I’ve started socking away money in both an emergency fund and travel fund. I’m finally getting the hang of budgeting. Whew! Getting to that epiphany moment sure sucks, but once you’re there and realize what you have to do, it’s pretty invigorating.
Hi,Your post brought back memories for me I was also in the debt trap mainly through credit cards. My light bulb moment came when I realised that God in His word said: “owe no man any thing” Romans 13:8. We tend to buy things we WANT instead of buying things we NEED. God says He will meet our needs, but He never said He would meet our GREEDS. Makes you think doesn’t it?