Awwww you guys are awesome!!! I feel the comminity love. Thanks!
So I debated whether or not to show our numbers but decided I had nothing to lose so here is our amortization schedule sheet.
Column D is extra payment and the last column is obviously the loan amount.
I hope to inspire someone or at least amuse some of you!
@mechanic baird
Thanks for your kind words!
I think 99% of credit goes to my husband. He brought home high income every month, got 2 bonuses and multiple promotions in 2 years without a single complaint. He also encouraged and humored me when I wanted to give up. So first and foremost, high income helps, not required, though. (We were saving when we were making 30/40k many years ago).
I think the first wise thing we did was to decide to succeed in this goal no matter what. We believed we could do it and the only thing left to do was just do it. It sounds cheesy but it gave us no excuse to fail and forced us to come up with solutions when money was tight.
I just finished reading The magic of thinking big recommended by MMM and its first principle was believing. We agree!
And the rest, honestly, you guys know how to do it.
Just cut spending everywhere and use your brain to come up with creative ways to have fun or cut costs.
We didn't have cable or fancy cars/bags/fancy anything, cut our hairs, bought NO adult clothes, get kids clothes as gifts or handmedowns, use library, use energy saving bulbs and un-screw unnesessary bulbs. 1 bulb in the bathroom and 2 in the living room. I read in candle light for fun some nights, too. , homemade cleaners/detergents, homemade bread, etc.
I cut kids winter pants and made shorts out of them. Some of my friends sewed them back on for the next winter if their kids could still wear them.
I also got lots of freebies. Though, I have mixed feelings about this because freebies come in packages which I feel are big waste so I don't think I will be doing freebies from now on. But free shampoos/feminine products (awkward!)/dog food were nice.
Also do drugstore game like money saving mom.com if you have time and patience. I did only a few.
Christmas was tough. I didn't want clutter but still needed to exchange gifts, so starting November-ish, I started selling junk around the house to make money. I did craiglist, eBay, garage sale (collect shipping materials from your friends and family).
I did swagbucks search to get giftcards and made sure to use eBates to get cashback. I continued to declutter after holidays and made over $800 which went towards a few month of groceries.
We stopped remodeling our house, only repairs.
Our patio was falling apart and the kitchen was from 1970s and they are still like that today. Any car repairs were done by my hubby and his dad.
I would say watch little spending like $2 hotdog at a fair for example.
It quickly adds up to $100s. We always took lunch and snack everywhere. No bottled water. But don't forget the large stuff, either. I called Geico and save over $700 for 2 cars.
(Unfortunately we need 2 cars for now, MMM!)
I also sold some shares I bought years ago when I was working.
We used our cash reserve,too, after MMM convinced us we didn't need to keep $20K in low interest bank account.
We continuted 401k. We maxed out roth IRA, contributed to 529 and other non-retirement account until the last few months. We will start those again this friday.
The hardest part was social pressure. For example, nowadays parents love to throw expensive birthday parties. I really don't like to attend those or host one.
We didn't want to expose my kids to that environment so we turned down many invitations (they are small so we got away with it for now), but felt bad.
For our kids' birthdays, we had simple family get-together.
Any habit, you can acquire under a month. So after a month or two, we were used to this simple lifestyle and actually enjoyed it.
One time at a park, every kid was flying a store bought kite except for my son. We had built a kite together from scratch. I was so proud of myself!
As we saw progress, we got better and got extreme (well, our extreme. I'm aware I'm not as extreme as Jacob!). I got such adrenaline rush when I paid off $14K off the loan. It was great!
So think of it as a fun challenge!
Hope it helps. Sorry my writing is not as polished!
