I am a married father of two beautiful daughters. E is 2 years old going on 13 and W is almost 3 months old. We have made financial mistakes in the past, there’s no doubt about that.
When we got married, R and I decided to put our honeymoon on the credit card. We had a great time but were still making minimum payments on that honeymoon years and years later. We put more and more on credit cards, eventually reaching a peak credit card debt of roughly $30,000. It wasn’t all wasteful purchases. A lot of it was spent trying unsucessfully to get pregnant (E was adopted and W was a tremendous joyous shock).
We have owned three different homes and made decent profit off each house when we sold it, and applied that profit to our credit card debt each time. But because we always still had debt left, we would inevitably run the credit cards back up again. We had overdraft protection on our checking account, pulling money from credit cards to cover our overdrafts. We just did not pay attention to our spending or our checking account register. We didn’t blow money to build up the debt, we were just careless.
In the last year and a half we have been in our current home, we overdraft-protected our credit card up from $0 balance to over $14,000. Enough was enough. Because we live in a booming area (Thompson’s Station), our property values soared in a year and a half. We were able to refinance our house at the end of 2006 and get enough equity out to pay off all of our credit card debt, and still have about $30,000 in equity.
So now we are changing our habits and mindsets, and sticking to a budget. But we have no savings, no retirement, nothing but what we make month to month, basically. So I have decided to get excited about Dave Ramsey’s advice: live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. I can’t ask my family to deprive themselves as much as I intend to deprive myself, so I will just be cutting back on my own personal spending and putting that money in savings in order to invest. Hope you enjoy my journey!
3 responses so far ↓
The 100 Most Inspirational Personal Finance Turnaround Stories Online | Credit Card Lowdown // June 13, 2007 at 8:01 am
[...] The Deprived Investor: The Deprived Investor ended up with some serious debt, but he paid it off in equity. With that out of the way, he and his wife are determined to change the way they think about money and to get serious about investing. [...]
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10 Satisfying Stock Stories for When You’re Feeling Unsatisfied with your Stocks | Stock Market Beat // February 18, 2008 at 10:00 am
[...] The Deprived Investor: The Deprived Investor and his wife started out their marriage on the wrong foot, putting their [...]