Financial Freedom: Our History

Neal and I recently shared on Facebook that we are officially debt free.  Woop woop!  It is such a feeling of joy and FREEDOM to not owe anyone ANYTHING. Ahhhhh. Debt freedom has opened up doors for us to be able to give as we see fit and plan for our family's future in ways we otherwise would not have been able to.  

We were sent a lot of messages and received a lot of questions asking "How'd you do it?!" so we agreed, it was time to tell our story.  We haven't shared a ton of details about our journey to debt freedom thus far, but we've agreed that we want to help as many people as possible reach their financial and personal goals, so we plan to share our story here to hopefully just show you our journey, give you LOTS of encouragement, and share some tips we learned along the way.  We are going to try to be pretty transparent about our journey thus far but if we leave something out that you'd like to know, don't hesitate to ask.  If we aren't comfortable sharing, we'll just say so.

First things first, here's a bit of our financial background.  We both grew up in households where our parents managed finances well.  My parents were extremely open about money management and while Neal's parents weren't quite as open as my parents, they definitely taught him to be wise with his money. 

As long as I can remember, I've been a saver.  Neal's much more impulsive with his money.  I was always afraid I was going to spend my money and then find something I liked way better and regret spending it on the first thing.  Neal? Not so much.  Haha.  These traits definitely stuck with us into adulthood. 

Once we began working full-time, after college, I was pretty good about sticking to a strict budget.  Neal also set a budget but was a little way more lenient in his spending than I was.  He's naturally more spontaneous, and that was evident in his spending.  I'm naturally a planner and far less flexible than he is, and that was evident in my spending.  These patterns continued as we began our marriage and our life together.  Honestly, it was a little difficult at first.  We're very opposite when it comes to spending and saving.  But recognizing these traits, and owning them, was key to creating systems that actually work for us in regards to our financial goals.  We try really hard not to criticize each other's traits, but instead use them as strengths in working toward our goals (we're not perfect, but we try!).  Sometimes that's really hard, but, to us, it's key to financial success and a happy marriage!

Our very last payment!

This is just a bit of our background and personality.  In the next post we'll get into where our debt came from, how much debt we were in, and then we'll get into the how of we paid it all off!
 
Thanks for being a part of our journey!