Our Financial Journey: Part 1

I’m going to be really open about our financial journey, because I think it may be helpful to people. I feel pretty comfortable giving numbers as well, because I think it gives more of a frame of reference and perspective. So, without further ado, here’s our entire financial journey, from our college days to right now, July 2019.

When Dave and I were engaged, circa 2009, we took Financial Peace University, a course through Dave Ramsey that was offered through our church. This was a huge help in getting us on the same page financially prior to being married. We came from very different families financially-speaking, with my family living and saving without debt, and his family, well, not living that way. Since we agree on how we want to conduct our finances, we haven’t really had money issues in our marriage, which is pretty amazing. Dave Ramsey often talks about how money issues is one of the top reasons for divorce. I’m so grateful that we started off on the same page, and continue to agree on our financial goals and habits.

I received a full-tuition scholarship for my undergraduate studies in occupational science at Keuka College (2006-2010). That meant I needed to cover room and board, plus the tuition for my master’s year in order to obtain my degree in occupational therapy. My parents helped cover a portion of room and board, and the rest I was able to pay for with income I made from work study jobs on campus.

Dave began his college experience in 2004, where he attended a community college on student loans. Under the guidance of his mother, he took out the maximum that he could through student loans, so that he would “have money.” He began in music and recording, then changed his major to horticulture after breaking his hand. Unfortunately, through some miscommunication and lack of guidance from his adviser, he improperly withdrew from his music classes, resulting in a grade of zero for those courses. This placed him on academic probation. Dave never had a great experience with school in general, as learning in a typical classroom setting was always a struggle. This experience was also not very positive. While he completed coursework in horticulture until around 2007 or 2008, he didn’t finish his degree. This resulted in over $20,000 in student loans.

In 2010 we were married, I graduated with my bachelors degree, and I began my master’s degree year. There was a lot in that sentence, so I’ll go back a little. With the help of my parents, we had a very nice, budget-friendly wedding on a Saturday morning at our church, followed by a buffet lunch reception at a venue nearby. We had talented friends help us with many aspects of the wedding, cutting our costs. We went on a honeymoon cruise to the Bahamas, which we saved up for and paid for in cash. I was able to graduate with my bachelor’s degree without any debt.

I took out a student loan to cover my master’s year, which was just over $20,000. While I was in school completing fieldwork internships and classes, Dave supported us by working for a landscaping company. We lived in a tiny apartment for $450 a month. We lived on a bare-bones budget, really only buying necessities. We basically paid for our rent and utilities, gas, food and toiletries, our cellphone service, and basic internet service. We would bring laundry to my parents’ house on the weekend, we would pack lunches, cook dinners at home, and our entertainment was checking out DVD’s from the library (or splurging to rent from Redbox for $1). For people who like numbers, during this time our grocery budget was $80 per week. We made minimum payments on Dave’s student loans. I believe that year our taxable income totaled $22,000. We were living on beans and rice, rice and beans.

In 2011 I graduated with my Master’s in Occupational Therapy. I got a job with a school that summer earning about $38,000, plus about $5000 for working the summer program. This is when we were able to be “gazelle intense” and attack our debt. We had a significant increase in our income, but we continued to live as we were already living, so pretty much all my income went toward our debt. In just over a year, I believe about 14 months, we had paid both our student loans in FULL. We tithe a tenth of our income to our church. We extended our journey slightly to the 14 months, as we felt called to gift a significant-to-us amount of money to a couple causes, as well as purchase relatively “expensive-to-us” equipment for our involvement in music ministry. On August 13th, 2012 we announced to everyone on Facebook that we were debt free, paying a total of $46,442.87.

We decided to celebrate being debt-free with a trip to Disney World, which we obviously paid for in cash.

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The next several years were spent working and saving the extra money that we earned. However, I also feel that we became more lax in our budget during this time (it’s so easy to do). We were able to spend a bit more on groceries and go out to eat here and there, and we increased our gift budgets for each other, like for birthdays and Christmas. We moved to a small rental house, which is where we are currently living now. We have our own washer and dryer in the basement. I’m still grateful for this little blessing every time I do laundry! We don’t have neighbors that share a bathroom wall, and we have space for a vegetable garden. We got a bit of a discount on our monthly rent because Dave is quite handy and also does the lawn care himself. We are paying $300 more in rent than we were previously. After working the first two summers, I elected to no longer work the summer programs. I chose to do this because we could financially and for my own mental health. Working with students with severe and intense needs is a huge challenge mentally and physically, so if you’re in that field as well, or are a parent, I feel you. Over the summers I rediscovered my love for reading, enjoyed learning how to coupon and craft, and all that jazz. I mention this because so many people were confused about why I didn’t work summers, especially when I didn’t have kids yet.

After 4 years at my first place of employment, I got another school-based occupational therapy job, which was closer to where we lived and such a nice fit for me. It has even better health benefits, which I’m so thankful for. Dave worked for another landscaping company for a couple years and always had in mind trying it out on his own.

He began Roland Landscaping as a side business around 2015 or so, completing small projects for people. In March of 2015, we were able to buy a used Chevy Silverado truck with a plow for Dave for $3500 and eventually sold his old-but-still-runs 1999 Jeep Cherokee for $700.

Somewhere around this time, I got a Silhouette CAMEO cutting machine for Christmas and began to dabble with selling crafts on Etsy, never really making a significant profit from it, but enjoying it nonetheless. While I was always a natural saver, I began couponing more intentionally as well and really enjoyed it.

Since we were not paying toward debt anymore, we were able to save regularly. By April of 2016, we had saved up over $10,000 and decided to upgrade my very first car, a 2001 Dodge Neon, that I had purchased in 2006 before leaving for college for $5000. It had manual windows, manual locks, and a cassette tape player (which was eventually upgraded to a CD player by Dave). But it got me from point A to point B. We were able to sell it for $1100. We found someone selling a 2008 Ford Edge right at the top of our budget, $9500. It’s a great car, and what I’m still driving at the time I’m writing this (July 2019). My husband Dave is absolutely amazing at taking care of our vehicles, often doing the maintenance he is able to on his own. For more complex problems, we have a trusted garage where we take our vehicles for repairs. I’m so thankful for Dave’s mechanical mind, which allows our cars to literally go that extra mile (haha).

We continued to add to our savings.

We also bumped up our grocery budget here and there, ending at $120 a week, which is what we still currently use. This also includes paper goods (like paper towels and toilet paper), toiletries, and vitamins/supplements/medicines.

At the close of summer of 2016, I found out I was pregnant, due April 2017. I worked full-time up until the baby was born, then took off the rest of the school year for maternity leave (May and June) and went back in September working part-time at two days per week. Dave and I had discussed our priorities in raising children verses making money verses using childcare, and we both agreed that if we were able to, that we’d like to stay home with the baby as much as possible. Both of us.

Being debt-free and having a substantial amount in our savings account gave us the freedom to choose how we wanted to live our lives.

It also allowed us to take a pretty big risk (for us) financially. In the fall of 2017, I went back to work part-time, which already significantly reduced our income, as I brought home the majority of our income. At this same time, Dave left his job and went full-time with his own landscaping business. In our savings account, we had $36,000. This “nest” gave us peace of mind as I took a substantial pay-cut to stay at home 3 days with the baby and for Dave to start a business, which would very likely be a pay-cut as well, especially starting out. Since we don’t use debt in our finances, Dave began his business the old-fashioned way, where you start with what you have to earn money. Then, when you have earned enough, you buy the equipment you saved up for. This is how he was able to make a profit in his first full year on his own (2018), though a relatively marginal one. In 2018, Dave was able to purchase a $7000 dump trailer to help him in his business endeavors. Deducting the cost of the trailer and other materials and equipment, he earned $10,000 in taxable income in 2018. For just starting out in his business full time, that’s is pretty good. On the other hand, it’s hard to sustain a family on that, so the goal is to increase that this year.

While I work on Mondays and Tuesdays, Gabe is watched by either Dave or my parents. Since Dave has his own business, he is able to flex his schedule to stay home with Gabe on Mondays. My parents (primarily my mom, but often my dad takes days off now as well) had enough leave time built-up to watch our son Gabe each Tuesday during the school year. I love that he gets daddy time and grandma/grandpa time when I’m at work. This works out really well for us, since childcare is often so expensive. Also, though we pay more now, I am able to get health insurance through work, and we feel paying the extra money is definitely worth it. With the deductions like health insurance and such, my taxable income for 2018 was also around $10,000.

We are now expecting baby #2 in October 2019. You can check out our really cool gender reveal here (please note the awesome lyrics). Currently, we don’t make a lot of money. We make very little, actually, and we are choosing to live that way right now because time together as a family is a really big priority to us. We’ve definitely had to use some of our savings to support ourselves. We still have about $12,000 in our savings. Though I am aware all the time about our lack of income, I’m not really worried about it. I feel it’s a good motivator, pushing us to aim for making more while spending less. It helps us to evaluate what we really need verses what we want, and keeps us discussing our priorities. It helps us to intentionally manage our time and finances. We frequently reassess our situation, and if and when it’s necessary, we will pick up more working hours to make ends meet.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my personal goals and our goals for our family. I’ve been contemplating more and more about how we can increase our income, but still have time together as a family. I’ve been more intentional about my own personal growth. Through consistent encouraging input through sources like books, podcasts, and journaling, I have most definitely felt an increase in my motivation and a change in my thinking. This may sound slightly off-topic, but stick with me. You know those exercises where you’re supposed to imagine your life 10 years from now? Where you envision where you’re living, what you’re eating, how you’re feeling, the places you go, the things you do, all that? I’ve generally done pretty well creating a picture for all of the areas except for the “job” part. For some reason, I could imagine a beautiful farmhouse with fruit trees in the yard, a large vegetable garden, and a place in our house where we could record music, but I couldn’t picture how we were making money. Was it a really successful landscaping business? Was it me working full-time as an occupational therapist while my kids were in school? Was it selling more crafts? Was it recording our own music? It all was a big question mark to me, and I couldn’t figure out why it was so elusive. Well, I feel like my attempts at focusing on my personal growth and continually reading or listening to positive and inspiring messages has helped me to redefine my own goals, our goals for our family’s future, and even start to clear up the missing puzzle piece.

While I don’t know exactly what our future holds, I’m excited about it. We’ve decided that landscaping isn’t the direction we want to go in long-term due to the wear and tear on Dave’s body, the difficulties of working around the weather, and the super busy summer seasons. I believe that this blog will play some role in our future lives, and while I don’t know what that will look like specifically, I know what I can work on right now, which is what I’m focusing on. I hope to reach a lot of people with helpful information, and we’ll see where that goes.

I’m going to go back and recap a little bit. We paid off $46,000 in student loans in just over a year following Dave Ramsey’s baby steps. We saved $1000 for an emergency fund, then attacked our loans from smallest to largest. We worked and saved up money, upgraded to a larger rental, upgraded our vehicles, and switched jobs. We had a baby and I made the shift from working full-time to working part-time at two days per week. My husband jumped into his side-business as his main business. We were able to do this because we were debt free and had a significant amount in savings. We aren’t making a lot, but we are living life intentionally, the way we want to, because the money we make isn’t going toward debt (it’s going to US).

An essential part of keeping our motivation up during this time was listening to The Dave Ramsey Show podcast. We drifted from listening to that consistently once our debt was paid off, so we lost some intensity for awhile, financially-speaking. Fill your mind constantly with inspiration and encouragement related to the kind of person that you want to become. This has been an essential part of our journey financially, and writing this now is reemphasizing just how important it really is.

One thing has stuck with me from a small group study by Rick Warren called Transformed. One of the sessions talked about finances, and stated that your job is only one of the ways that God can provide for you. I don’t know why, but it really stands out in my memory (as we did that study maybe 5 years ago). God is our provider, not our job. I’m trusting God with our future and our finances, as He is our provider.

I’m looking forward to writing the Part 2 of our financial journey. Until then, feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments section or via e-mail!

-Alicia