Hey all! I'm in!
Background: I'm 33. My bride and I have been married for 4 years and currently have 2 children with baby number 3 expected in July. We've been pretty frugal since the beginning of marriage out of necessity due to starting married life with combined student loan debt of $130,442.94. I was very into Dave Ramsey prior to meeting my wife, and she was on board with getting out of debt when we got married and combined our finances. We've been attacking the debt like crazy whenever we are not expecting a new little human and hopefully we will be able to claim debt freedom in 2019!
Since it is my first post here I thought I would share the full monthly tracking thus far on our journey and hopefully some others will find it motivational or helpful. If not please ignore my ramblings. So without further delay..
2014
Jan: (129,703.05)
Feb: (127,746.46)
Mar: (126,954.96)
Apr: (125,962.65) (Baby #1 discovered to be gestating!)
May: (125,133.32)
Jun: (124,129.06) (Noticing there would be an extra mouth at the table during meal times I decided to float the resume in June and discovered a company willing to pay me 46% more than I was previously making)*
Jul: (123,013.92)
Aug: (121,844.95)
Sep: (120,792.34)
Oct: (118,271.42)
Nov: (117,923.50)
Dec: (116,441.29)
2015
Jan: (115,355.51) (Baby #1 arrived this month!!)
Feb: (109,852.25) (Since birth was normal with no complications we were able to reclaim a pile of savings and blast the debt. We paid off 2 and a half loans this month. Fun!)
Mar: (107,412.93)
Apr: (103,171.56)
May: (101,980.96)
Jun: (95,096.99) (This little jump was due to switching to YNAB from spreadsheets and the checking account balance started getting tracked)
Jul: (93,896.20)
Aug: (92,590.26)
Sep: (92,030.22)
Oct: (87,217.98)
Nov: (87,373.87) (One of my wife's good friends got married, we cash flowed the trip. First month of married life where we did not end wealthier than we'd ever been...)
Dec: (83,899.96) (Back on track!) (Due to some drama at my wife's job and knowing that 100% of her pay was going toward debt reduction, we decided to FIRE her. This would not have been possible with our initial level's of debt.)
2016
Jan: (82,545.00)
Feb: (82,683.59) (Had discussed with wife that our car repair savings was getting hefty and maybe we should slow down saving there... Car 1 went in for oil change, also needed brakes... Car 2's alternator failed a few days later... bye bye car repair savings... but that's why it was there)
Mar: (80,800.29) (Also Baby #2 discovered to be gestating)
Apr: (79,571.19) (On road trip to another wedding with now again pregnant bride noticed back seat of 5 passenger vehicle would only physically support 2 car seats, began saving this month for most likely need for 3 car seat supporting vehicle)
May: (25,718.53)**
Jun: (21,410.86)
Jul: (18,479.20)
Aug: (11,902.38)
Sep: (8,858.50)
Oct: (8,479.81) (Welcome baby #2!)
Nov: 131,47 (Welcome positive net worth!!)
Dec: 3,597.46
2017
Jan: 2,693.77 (Hello baby #2 hospital bills)
Feb: 6,133.17 (Now that those are taken care of ^)
Mar: 8501.30
Apr: 11,006.11 (0 - 10k achieved!)***
May: 11,397.26
Jun: 16,216.09
Jul: 23,716.66
Aug: 26,095.72
Sep: 30,643.51
Oct: 34,061.55 (Baby #3 discovered!)
Nov: 38,850.30
Dec: 43,056.75 (Began watching market for new to us family vehicle)
2018
Jan: 48,429.84
Feb: 39,863.96 (Acquired new to us mini-van at low end of our price range and at low end of mileage for vehicles in our price range)
Mar: 44,139.97 (Onward!)
At this point for net worth I am tracking all our liquid assets. We do not yet have a house so we're still renting. Once baby #3 arrives will will continue aggressively paying down the remainder of the student loan debt and then further develop our stash for the eventual home purchase and FIRE date. Sorry this is so long! In future updates I will only post the months which are applicable to this race!
I'm looking forward to hearing more about other's successes and being able to cheer everyone on!
*New company paid bi-weekly instead of semi-monthly resulting in glorious 3 paycheck months. Despite that we continued living on 2 paychecks per month allowing for fun pay down months where an entire paycheck could go toward debt.
**Unfortunately due to health issues my father is considered permanently disabled. Silver lining the parent loans he took out in his name for my undergrad were forgiven (~21k windfall for our balance sheet). Also, started tracking IRA balances with NW (they were ~27k at the time). Why had I not done this before?! Also also, this was the month I discovered MMM after a co-worker mentioned in conversation I should check him out because of the way I talked. After a few hours of binge reading past blog posts, I decided that was a compliment, and that we had room for improvement with our finances.
***First 140k down....