Our debt is something we’ve racked up together over the last six years. A majority of it is student loans that we took out while we were in school. The rest is a combination of credit card debt and a personal loan. It’s January 2020 and while we’ve been working on paying off our debt for a while, we are (re)committing ourselves to the baby steps and becoming financially independent. Cheers to the beginning of our debt free journey.
Debt bells
We took out a personal loan in 2017 to help pay for our wedding. We highly recommend not doing that. You can read more about why we think you shouldn’t have a wedding here. We had a beautiful wedding and we loved every second of the day, but we still wouldn’t do it again. We knew we wanted to pay for most of our wedding ourselves, so we got engaged a year and a half before our big day. Our plan was to pay for things as we went. That works out well for some people, but it failed miserably for us.
Wedding expenses spiral so quickly. We booked our venue early, and eagerly started making payments. We were both still in school. I was working part time in retail and nannying. Travis was a para at a high school, and once he graduated, became an elementary school counselor. We didn’t have a ton of extra cash to pay for the vendors, decorations, and gifts that came with planning a wedding, and we also weren’t at a place financially where we were budgeting well.
We got married on September 2nd. Just a few short months before the big day we quickly came to realize that, even with our family’s generous help, we weren’t going to be able to pay for everything before then. We applied for and were approved for a $12,100 loan. We just celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary, and as of today (Jan 2nd, 2020) we owe $5,837.31.
The pain in the ass first explorer
Plastic devils
Ah, credit cards. How easy thy are to use, how easy thy are to misuse. In all seriousness, the ideal use of a credit card would be to pay for things you can afford, and then to pay it off (IN FULL) every month. Why even use a credit card then? To earn points, mileage, or cash of course.
Honestly, some of our credit card debt is from unnecessary purchases we couldn’t afford. Dinners out, new clothes, etc. A majority of it however is either also wedding debt, or our favorite “the damn car broke down again” debt. When we were still in school at the University of Iowa we commuted often between Iowa City and the Twin Cities to visit family and friends. Our old explorer was a great in town car, but didn’t always handle long road trips well.
Between the two of us we have 5 credit cards. A Macy’s card (we opened to buy my wedding ring, and used almost exclusively for wedding expenses,) Travis’s bank credit card, each of our joint account credit cards, and an Ann Taylor Loft card.
We paid the Loft card off quickly, and I never carry a balance on it now. The other four we’ve been making payments on, but the interest rates were killing us. We recently applied for a SoFi loan (more info on that coming soon!) to help consolidate our credit card debt and pay WAY less in interest. We took out $17,000 from SoFi and completely paid off 3 out of the 4 cards. My credit card is still carrying a $646.29 balance.
This past summer we physically cut up each one of our credit cards. We didn’t close the accounts for two reasons. One, they still carried a balance and two, we didn’t want to negatively impact our credit scores. The physical act of cutting them up was pretty powerful though. We had a few hiccups in the first month or two where we over-drafted because a bill was due right before pay day, but we’ve managed to adjust and that hasn’t happened again.
Student Loans
Travis has two student loans, one from undergrad and one from getting his masters. One is at $3,815.94 and the other is at $268.12. I also have two student loans. One of mine is at $4,040.11 and the other is at $21,599.76.
We don’t regret taking out student loans; our educations are important to us and have benefitted us greatly. They allow us to each have a job we enjoy now, with opportunities to change and grow in the future. Even though student loan debt is considered “good debt” to your credit score, we want to be completely debt free, so we plan to pay this off quickly as well. Although it isn’t our first priority because of its docile nature.
Grand total
Here’s the current breakdown of our debt and the grand total.
- Wedding loan: $5,837.31
- credit card 1: $646.29
- SoFi loan: $17,000
- Caitlyn’s student loans: $25,639.87
- Travis’s student loans: $4084.06
- GRAND TOTAL: $53,207.53
Man that number hurts. It should. The frustration that comes with seeing it is what propels us to work harder to pay it off and be free of it. What’s helpful though, is that a year ago, that number was closer to 63k+. We’ve come a long way. There have been many bumps, bruises, and mess ups along the way, but we’ll get there.
Are you in debt? Or are you debt free? What’s your best piece of financial advice?
Thanks for reading!
with Love from our Wild,
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