our final blog

Wow! I cannot believe it has been seven months since we started this journey. In the past seven months, we have saved over $13,000, paid off over $20,000 in debt, started several savings accounts to save for future use, doubled our 401K giving and continued to tithe to local and international missions. Additionally, we’ve paid cash for two vacations, paid cash for Christmas gifts, helped our son pay for college, learned how to truly set up and stick to a budget, and most of all, changed our mindset on our finances and put into place good financial habits. Going through this process was not easy. I remember our coach saying, “Okay, so where are you going to get another $500 from your budget to put into this account?” I’m pretty sure I gave her a “you’re crazy look” and then realized she was serious. We had to make several sacrifices for the seven months in order to reach the goals we set out to reach. We set a very high payment goal to pay off our HELOC in seven months, but in order to do that, we had to make large changes to our other monthly expenditures in order to make that payment each month. I would say our biggest challenge was sticking to the grocery budget each month. Groceries are expensive and it’s easy to overspend on them. We learned that the best way to stick to it was to set weekly spending goals verse. monthly. It was easier to track and make sure we had enough for the entire month. The other unexpected thing that came up during the contest was the surgery I had to have because of an abnormal mammogram this year. Fortunately, we had money saved up in a Health Savings Account (HSA) fund. I cannot stress enough how important having an HSA is. If possible, you should try to put enough in the account to cover at least half of your yearly deductible. So, if your deductible is $8,000, like ours, putting $300-$400 per month into the account is a good goal. I did learn that I have a huge spending weakness this Christmas and that is on my kids. We are now starting to put money into our holiday savings account so that by next year, we won’t go over the budget like we did this year. Fortunately, we had some money in other savings to cover it so we did not use a credit card, but if we start saving now, we will have plenty next year to cover it. Our goals for 2020 are to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in Hawaii with our kids, pay off our car loans, save for a few remodels on the house, and stick to our budget. Paying off debt is one thing; staying out of debt is another. We are so thankful to Summit Credit Union for helping us create better financial habits and put us on a path to financial freedom!