Cha Ching, Cha Ching--Some Happy Financial News for Once!

So after all the posts I've shared about our living-on-one income financial pitfalls, I've got happy dance money news to share!

One of our financial goals is to become debt-free. There is a simple step-by-step approach to getting your money under control in Dave Ramsey's book Financial Peace (or the updated one, Financial Peace Revisited). Basically, step one is to save up $1000 in an emergency fund so that you aren't caught in a pickle using credit when your washing machine dies or your Suburban needs a huge repair. Step two is to use the "debt snowball" which is simply paying all of your debts, but adding on as much extra as you can each month to the smallest one. Once that smallest debt is paid, use the money you were paying on it to apply toward the next smallest one (plus whatever extra you can throw in each time). On and on you go until all you have left is your mortgage, and then you do some bigger saving (like 3-6 months of living expenses) and then saving for college or other long term, expensive goals. Then you go crazy and beat down your mortgage as fast as you can, and life is grand by then, I guess.

For people like us, with so very little-to-none extra every month, our outlook on this philosophy was basically that we would do the little debt snowball thing as we were able, and eventually (like, in a hundred years) we'd get the debts paid off.

It's not that we had a lot of debt. Just a lot for us. Two stupid small credit things (about $3000 total) and then the car repair bill of $1000. Aside from that we owe on our Suburban, our stupid student loans (that get bigger and bigger every year thanks to the interest rate), and our house.

Well, times, they are a-changin'.

First, we got our mighty tax refund yesterday. My husband called his dad to tell him that we were sending back the money that they had loaned us last year. His dad said not to pay them back and to just use it toward something we needed to pay off. Cha-ching!

So that left us our entire refund, which was more than enough to pay the two credit bills plus the auto repair bill--gone, gone, gone for-ev-Ah!

The next kicker was that his parents have taken an interest in the student loans. 90% of what we owe is from my husband's years in school. His parents had told him way back when he was accumulating these loans that they would help him pay them off. Well, here we are all these years later and.....(drumroll please)......they are PAYING OFF the student loans. Entirely! Entirely!

Can you say WOW?

Can you say Boy-oh-boy do I feel blessed?

So in one fell swoop we went from 5 debts aside from our mortgage, to one. Only one! That is too cool.

So now we will snowball our brains out, throwing money at our car loan, until we can do the happy dance and say that this too is all paid for. It feels good when financial weights are lifted from one's shoulders.