Finance

Of all the areas in my life, I am probably the most disciplined when it comes to finances. What can I say? I have a plan, and I stick with it.

When I think of the influences of my financial state of mind, I’ll admit that the first person that comes to mind is Dave Ramsey (check him out at daveramsey.com). You see, back when I was in college working on my Bachelor’s, I was working at a bookstore (I love books). One day, along comes this book into our stock and I start thumbing through it (did I mention that I love books?). From the first chapter, I was hooked. The way that Dave was able to detail his plan for success made sense and actually seemed possible. The premise is simply this: Most people don’t succeed financially because they spend too much on stuff they don’t need with money they don’t have. In other words, they take on debt. The plan? Get out of debt, save, invest, get rich, and give away money for any reason you want!

Because of the principles I learned in Dave’s book, I live on a budget and always spend less than I make. I graduated from college with no debt and began investing for retirement at the age of 21! Unfortunately, however, even the best plans can get complicated. You see, I gave into some pressure when I started working on my master’s degree and took out my first student loan. The problem was that I needed to have the money now to take classes now (not true)! So, my life of having debt began.

Thankfully, I still had a lot of knowledge and common sense and really started working hard to pay off this loan as fast as possible. I was even within a few thousand bucks when something else came up…

You see, I met this girl. We fell in love, pretty much at first sight. We got engaged. We got married! It was all great and amazing. It still is great and amazing. She had a student loan that made me want to cry. Seriously, when I first found out how much this bill was going to be, I wondered how we would ever pay it off.

We’re still not all the way there, but I can tell you that, since the day we got married, my wife and I have paid off about $22,000 in student loan debt and contributed another $11,000 to retirement. The plan, at this point, is to accomplish two major goals by the end of the year: We want to buy a house (we’ve also been saving for a down payment) and we want all of the student loan debt gone. Guess what? As far as I can tell, and based on every financial forecast I run, we should be able to make our goals by the beginning of December. That’s one full month early!

So, how have we managed to do this? It has taken (and will continue to take) a LOT of discipline. We cook at home. We pretty much just avoid things that cost money. We don’t go on trips unless someone else pays. Sure, this is difficult, but there is a purpose for our actions and the situation is temporary. Let me tell you, we will never regret having done this when we no longer are sending checks to pay off loans.