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Our Debt Free Journey

The short story:

We were "normal" and had lots of debt.

Then my husband lost his job and we got even more debt.

Then he got a good job again and we decided to get out of all that debt.

But it was hard to stay motivated. So I made some charts, and they really helped!

I shared the charts to help others stay motivated too.

From December 2017 to December 2020 I gave away over 600,000 free debt payoff charts to over 150,000 people in 143 countries!

And you can help by sharing Debt Free Charts with your friends, Facebook groups and FPU classes.

 

The longer story:

We were the typical American couple, no budget, consuming all of our income each month, and using credit cards to buy and pay for the things we didn't save up for.

We weren't frivolous, didn't finance new cars, didn't buy fancy electronics, didn't spend a lot on clothes or go on European vacations.

What we did do was charge small things, going out to nice dinners because 'we deserved it', gifts at Christmas and birthdays, and the inevitable yearly expenses that somehow managed to sneak up on us every year, like property taxes and car repairs.

We also added two children to our family, which upped our expenses even more. 

I started a small jewelry business so I could work from home, and ended up charging lots of supplies. Whenever I made some sales, the income would dissappear into the hole we had dug, instead of paying off the debts.

We limped along like this, never completely falling, never making any progress for over 10 years.

Things began falling apart in 2006, when my husband lost the job we thought would be forever stable.

Thankfully he was able to get quick work from my brother for a few months, while he looked for a full time job. He found one, but the pay was dependent on how many 'billable hours' he could cram in. According to his new boss, they were so swamped with work that it would be easy to meet his previous income. Well, that just wasn't true, they didn't have enough work to keep him busy with 'billable hours', and his pay ended up being about half his previous salary. 

When my husband's income plummetted, we fell back on the HELOC we had opened years before for home improvements, and were still charging. We never were late on paying bills because we would just write ourselves a check from the HELOC to cover the shortage, and our debt climbed monthly.

That year I found the Dave Ramsey book The Total Money Makeover and managed to get a copy from our local library. I devoured it, and finally had a clear picture of how stupid we had been with our money.

On the forum http://www.llnoe.com/ (a group following the Dave Ramsey program) I found lots of people liking a new budgeting program called YNAB, You Need A Budget, and found it fit my needs exactly, we finally made a budget, committed to never carrying credit card balances again, and began saving for our Starter Emergency Fund.

About this time, my husband found a much better job, bringing his salary back up to just above what he was making before, we were in $28,000 of credit card debt and had an additional $8,000 on our HELOCUgh. 

In the following three years, with much scrimping and cutting back, couponing and selling stuff, we paid down the credit cards by just over half. We have not had a very big snowball, and it has taken a long time to get this far, but I am proud to say we know where our money goes, we save up for those large expenses that come around regularly, and we do finally have Financial Peace.

(Since I originally wrote this in 2010, we are now debt free except for our house, have sinking funds for Property Taxes, car repairs, car replacement, vacations, and a hefty emergency fund. We still carry no credit card balances, and there is no better feeling than knowing that your finances are secure.)

I began making these charts for myself because it was hard to stay motivated, and a thermometer just wasn't my cup of tea.

I shared a few charts on LLNOE and found myself making charts for others there, according to their needs. I decided that I needed to share the charts with more than just the crowd at LLNOE, and put them up on a Blogger blog.

On the old Blogger website, all the charts were free, there were about 20 charts then. With this new website I've added dozens of new charts, but there are still 20 FREE charts for those starting out in Baby Steps 0, 1 and 2

I know many are starting out like we did, with a tiny shovel, and I didn't want anyone who needed the charts to feel they could not afford to spend even a few dollars of their snowball on them. 

The charts for Baby Steps 3 and on are only $1, and the little income this provides supports this new, much better website, and adds a little to our snowball.

Please use the charts as often as you need, and feel free to print extras of the FREE charts and share them with your friends or in your Financial Peace University class (but please don't share the PDF files). There are also a sharing buttons at the bottom of each post if you would like to share the charts via social media.

I'm thrilled you are here and wish you godspeed with your debt free journey.

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Great

I love the chart is hanging on my fridge ready to be filled in.

S
Spending Tracker
Stephani Ouimette

Spending Tracker

Debt Freedom Starter Pack

So motivated

Felling so motivated after my dowload and started using this!

Debt Free Charts

I found out about your debt free charts from the Dave Ramsey show. I came across a Dave Ramsey clip of a couple that just paid off over $100,000 in debt. They spoke about their journey towards financial freedom and the husband mentioned that his wife used a worksheet called “debtris”. She’d color in the blocks when they paid extra towards their debt. The show actually showed the worksheet with all the blocks colored in. I paused the video and took a screen grab. From there, I was able to find your site and was then able to download debtris and a few other worksheets for my other debts (credit card, student loan, and for one each consumer debt). Let’s say I got hooked on your worksheets. I tried creating worksheets on my own without much success, but these were the worksheets I absolutely needed. I like the visuals and being able to color in the blocks as I pay extra towards my debt. They help keep me on track and motivated. I do plan on framing the debris worksheet once I pay off all my debt ($75,000). I want it to be a reminder of what I overcame and won’t ever get myself into again.