We Did It!

On Saturday we bought a new to us truck with 100% cash! What a feat this is for us, and this was one of our big financial goals for 2010! I am ecstatic, and I know Alex is thoroughly excited to have upgraded his vehicle.

New Truck

Alex bought this truck in 2002 before we were married. When he purchased this truck, I was a permanent fixture in his life, but not a fixture to help make those kind of decisions. He needed something that was more reliable, so he bought it on his own. Had we only known how long he would drive it:-)

Old Truck

Let us fast forward 2 years to our wedding. We got married, moved here to town, and quickly added up our credit card debt from college. I was thrilled to have a small amount on a card that I paid off every month. But, Alex was a different story. We started adding up his cards, and I might add it is fair to say he had no idea how many credit cards he had, let alone how much he owed on any of them:-(. When I was done totaling his cards, he owed over $20,000, and he had not a single thing to show for it. Fast forward 2 years, and I had managed to get our butts out of credit card debt, and we built our house! We had since paid off his truck, but I had totaled my car. In our naivity, we bought a brand new car (remember we were young and stupid).

About a year and a half ago, I found some information on Dave Ramsey, and I really started to understand how a family's finances should work. We'll just say that I had no idea what a budget was:-o I switched us to a cash system for our discretionary spending, started a spreadsheet budget, and started tackling our car debt like crazy. It took me right at a year to pay off $9,000. Remember we were paying 2 sets of graduate tuition throughout this as well. It was at this point that we realized we were ahead-kind of. We were in a place where we could begin saving for a new truck. So in July of 2009, we started putting all of our money we were paying on our car into a savings account marked truck. Anything extra we flung into savings. We continued to live on our budget and pay our minimums on our student loans-our only debt at the moment other than our mortgage. Eight months later-we have a truck that is 100% ours! It feels amazing. Our work is not done, though. At this point, we intend on tackling our student loans to get ourselves completely out of debt except for our mortgage!



We didn't get here overnight, and I am really proud of Alex for being as patient as he was. I know he was ready to just go buy a truck, and I know I had moments where I thought I would just go get a loan, but the wait was worth it. Our marriage is less stressed as money is not really a point of discussion anymore. We have figured out how to live within our means, and it is exciting!