That's only 19 months from now.
I've been wanting to go to this class at church called Financial Peace University. It's a Dave Ramsey class. Eli doesn't really want to go, because he doesn't think he'll learn anything new. We seem to be pretty knowledgeable about personal finance. I've read all the hot books -- Pay It Down by Jean Chatzky, The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, and now The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I'm a class learner. I want reassurance that what I'm doing is the right thing and that someone else is doing worse than me. So, in January, I'm going to the class (possibly solo).
After our first year of marriage with two incomes and no savings, I decided that I needed to educate myself. We've been married 4.5 years, and have been living off 1 income for 3.5 years, and we're paying down our debts.
I realized the other day that when Eli graduates, we'll have all of his undergraduate and law school loans to pay off (that's somewhere upwards of $60,000) in addition to my loans and the car payment. Yikes!
We've been saving for the last two years, trying to come up with a sum of money for a down payment on a house whenever that may occur, and an emergency fund. After crunching the numbers on his loans, I decided that we'd just better get out of debt before taking out a mortgage. So, I manipulated a few numbers and realized that if I just divert my monthly savings to paying off my student loans, then I would have all my loans (plus the car!) paid off by May 2009--one month before I'm thirty.
I also realized that if we start paying on Eli's loans and we're making two incomes, that we can pay off ALL our debt by the time Eli turns thirty. That gives us 31 months to pay it down.
Can you imagine being debt free? Just thinking about it makes me feel weightless.
3 comments:
At least have Eli read The Total Money Makeover. I would not recommend going to the class alone, for many reasons. Tell him, the guy on page 116, told him to read the book, lol. Especially if he's getting out of law school. I wish, so much, that we had paid off our debts, prior to buying our first house. We would be mutual fund millionaires by 40, if we had done that.
whos debtfreesteve? just curious
Just came across your blog, as I also have the goal of being Debt-Free by 30! I love seeking others advice, and seeing what is working for others. I wish you the best of luck, and would love for you to check out my story........
http://debt-freeby30.blogspot.com/
If you believe, anything is possible! Cheers! Melanie
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