I live, write, and garden in the PNW with my husband of 28 years, disabled daughter, adult son, and my 84-year-old mother. We have paid off $250,000.00 worth of debt (if you include the interest) in the last fifteen years and as of 6/12/2020 are 100% DEBT FREE!!!!Hard to believe it's been six years since I started this blog, but it has been. Six years ago, I don't think I ever thought I'd get here, almost out of credit card debt and making tons of progress on everything else.
I remember when I started this road, people told me I should just declare bankruptcy and walk away from our debt. That's never something that I wanted to do, but always something I was afraid I would have to do. Fortunately we never did. Instead we put our heads down and worked hard and sacrificed a lot and through a series of raises and job promotions and changing companies for DH, we have made it a long way from those first few tentative steps.
I remember trying to find $10 a week to save for a baby EF and how hard it was. Now I regularly send $100 a month to the EF and whatever else I can scrape up. I remember trying to scrape up minimum payments and wondering how we'd ever have extra to send to one card so we could make a little progress. I remember how discouraged I was whenever I had another surgery and we had to put yet another medical debt on the credit cards.
There are days I wanted to give up, but we stubbornly pressed on and here we are coming out the other side and almost there. I have learned a lot on this journey, but the biggest thing I've come away with is that you can move a mountain even if the only tool you have is a spoon. You just keep at it and keep at it and eventually that mountain is no longer in front of you, it's behind you and you've done it. Our mountain is now a hill and we've upgraded to a shovel and that hill is getting smaller and smaller every month. And pretty soon the going will be flat and level and hopefully we'll never have a debt mountain to move again.
Six Year Blogoversary
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Happy Blogoversary.
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You are an inspiration.
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