Monday Musing - Baby Step Zero - We’ve Had It.

I've been told that my blog would benefit from a step-by-step outline of what my little family has been up to, so this is it! I’m taking you all back to some day in February of 2019, when my family borrowed our last dollar. I don’t remember what it was for. Probably something stupid. I remember I was stressed to the nines. I couldn’t get my budget to balance. Christina and I realized that we had no money. That while we earned well, we had a consistent thread throughout our marriage - that we borrowed too much and too often and then would use “consolidation” loans to “con” ourselves into believing that our behavior would change. We had a spreadsheet based budget that we (mostly I) would use to “prove” that we could afford to take on another payment. Welp, we couldn’t. When we had houses, it was a race to the top - of our tastes and credit limit when we’d do extravagant renovations in the name of “repairs” or “updates”. With cars, my wife “needed” (my idea!) a brand new car when her 2007 Pontiac was getting “long in the tooth” (Autumn! A good car needs a name), and then another brand new car after failing to research our first car purchase a lot better. I’m not sure I can point to a specific “enough is enough” moment other than looking at our income and recognizing that we weren’t able to account for it - it was going out at least as fast as it was coming in and likely faster. What did we do? We read Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover”, and we decided to stop borrowing money. Period. We would work every angle and do everything necessary to not just avoid borrowing money, or calling it a last resort, but simply not do it at all. Borrowing money was off the table - credit cards, financing, loans, leases, lines of credit, buy now pay later, flexible payment plans, whatever you want to call it, it wasn’t for us. We discovered we had to be crafty to do this - things are well configured to keep folks borrowing - when we first started our journey I’d get hives walking through Costco - the “deals” were calling to me so strongly. Luckily our credit cards were closed and shredded, our lines of credit were getting nicely paid off (and are now gone and closed) and I wasn’t going screw that up! I have Christina to thank for reminders that I’m not sure I appreciated at the moment. Here’s an observation now that I’ve talked to a dozen or two folks about this - everyone who has “frozen” their credit card in a block of ice, “hidden it” in a sock drawer has returned to it and used it. Money is a matter of discipline, and you cannot outwit your future self. It’s trite but true - in order to get out of debt, quit borrowing more money.