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Why Getting Out of Debt is so Important!

As a person who struggled with financial debt for too long, I can say that paying off the final debt in August 2020, our mortgage, was the second best day of my life. The first being the day I wed my high-school sweetheart exactly 35 years earlier. Like 80% of Americans, we always had debt and believed the lie that debt was a fact of life.

Ten years ago, while teaching Personal Finance at a community college, I discovered Dave Ramsey and his solution to living a better life being debt-free. Dave’s 7 Baby Steps to Financial Freedom really work. Ron’s 14,000 Man Steps to a life riddled with debt and the stress and anxiety that comes with it, wasn’t working.

Like most Americans, we had the ubiquitous in-over-our-heads first mortgage shortly after our wedding, a new car that was totaled within four months that led to a better understanding of what Actual Cash Value (ACV) auto insurance meant (left us with $4,000 still owed to the bank), Credit Cards to pay for things we couldn’t afford to impress people we didn’t know or like, Vacations we couldn’t really afford, 90-days-same-as-cash appliances and jewelry that turned into 27% interest loans over 2 years, you name it – we did it.

Except Student Loans. My parents could not afford to send any of their four children to college. As the youngest, I knew what was coming so I worked and saved like crazy. Because I worked all through high school and took a Gap Year before starting college, I was able to pay for my first undergraduate degree with cash. Then after beginning my first career as an engineer, my employer(s) helped pay for my three subsequent degrees, culminating in a PhD in Leadership. I never had to take a student loan, which was the best graduation gift my parents could have given me – the common sense to work and save for what you want. I started working for other farmers at age 9, bought my first motorcycle at age 12 and my first car at age 15 (all with cash). Until I got married, then like most young couples, we expected a home and lifestyle similar to our parents even though they had 25 more years of working and savings than us.

Of all the Financial Gurus who tried to lead out nation out of the Dot Com Bubble, Housing Bubble, and the Great Recession, only Ramsey Solutions’ 7 Baby Steps Plan worked. It worked, and it worked every time, and it will always work. Yes, there are more complicated plans based upon sound mathematical principles, but math is not our problem, our problem is our behavior. If you want to better understand why we do what we do with money, read some of the latest books on Behavioral Economics. Like Dave Ramsey says, “Our money problems are only 20% knowledge, but they are 80% behavior.”

Over the course of almost 10 years, we paid off $20,000 in credit card debt, $20,000 car loan, and $78,000 mortgage. We had the highest annual earnings ever the year we paid off the mortgage – God rewards good behavior. We truly reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7).

If you want to know more, if you want help reducing the pressure, stress, and anxiety of financial debt, contact me. I’d be glad to chat with you. I want my story to be your story. Every morning I get up and do what I want, where I want, because I have no debt forcing me to work a stressful job I don’t like. I still have 4 part-time jobs, but I work my own schedule – I am in control of my life, not the bill collectors.