About a year ago, I stumbled onto the blog and promptly realized that MMM was perfectly aligned with my theoretical values but not with my actual lifestyle. Fortunately, having gone through a 100-lb. weight fat loss a few years back (and successfully maintaining it), I had some experience with pressing reset and getting things together in short order. My wife has been completely on board, and things have gone our way more often than not. We started in a bit of a hole, but we had some advantages on our side, too. So, one year on from my first read on the blog, here's how things have gone:
- Sold our paid-off small SUV; kept the small sedan and finished paying it off ($10,000 owed a year ago)
- Bought a bike (new) and a trailer (Craigslist); switched all of my driving - including commutes, groceries, and errands - to the bike
- Dropped AT&T, switched to Airvoice (net savings ~$130/mo)
- Dropped cable, subscribed to Netflix (net savings ~$64/mo)
- Changed car insurance companies (net savings ~$30/mo)
- Moved up the thermostat despite the TX heat
- Quit dining out entirely (I like to cook, so this was not a huge sacrifice)
- Got a Costco membership and moved to more bulk buying
- Quit complaining and started doing stuff
We paid off the car loan plus 5-figure credit card debt accrued while I was pursuing a graduate degree of questionable value. We also continued putting money into my wife's 403B plus education accounts for the kids and a nominal monthly amount in money market accounts. These were habits we started before hedonic adaptation set in. The thing is, we have dipped into these accounts a couple of times for stupid reasons, and the trick the past year has been to pretend they don't exist so that all we could see was the debt number. We paid off the last extant debt at the end of June, meaning we annihilated over $25,000 debt in 10 months. Since we acted all along like there was no money there, hitting a $0 debt was a double whammy. We looked at our bottom line, saw a comma in the plus column, and started turning handsprings.
We may have been able to move things along more quickly if we didn't tithe from our salaries, but as I said, this is about getting our lifestyle to align with our values. At any rate, assuming we can save at the same rate we have paid down debt on top of the small amount we have already set aside, we will be very happy, but I know we can do better. We still spend too much on beer (a product of tiny details exaggeration syndrome) and dry too many loads of laundry. We still spend too much on birthdays and Christmas. We could drive less (to that end, my wife just got a usable bike in honor of the debt elimination and plans to begin commuting that way whenever possible). But we have made tremendous progress, and most importantly, I felt a shift in our thinking and our approach to decision-making sometime in mid-winter, such that the default now is to not spend money, to find a way to do it cheaper, to find a way to do it ourselves. I like DIY, efficiency, and thrift anyway; I'm just thankful to MMM and the community here on the forum for ongoing inspiration and information regarding how to do it. It's been exactly the kick in the pants punch in the face I needed.
Some fringe benefits of getting the financial house in order:
- so much more time with our kids - less TV, less car time and restaurant coloring pages, more actual conversation and making craft projects and playing games
- additional fitness from cycling all the time
- knowledge about bike repair and other DIY projects
- remembering how much better homemade bread is
- reduction in alcohol consumption
- picnics (best Mother's Day brunch ever - overlooking the lake, eating shrimp and fruit salad and hardboiled eggs on a blanket and then playing soccer with the kids, all for less than the cost of gas to get to the damn restaurant)
There are lots of analogies to huge fat loss, including the fact that the hard part - maintenance and lifelong moderation - is yet to come, but right now the one that stands out is this: I got 99 problems, but my fat ass debt ain't one.
Thanks to all here on the forum and to MMM for helping us do a serious life 180.
Life is good.
T
