Jana Says

Living life from cover to cover

What I’ve gained from paying off debt

by Jana 12 Comments

There have been several times in my life when I’ve leaped into the unknown, only half sure of what I was doing but completely sure it was the right thing. The first time was in 1995 when I left my hometown for college at the University of Delaware. The second time was in 2004 when I got married. The third time was in 2006 when I found out I was pregnant. The fifth time is now amidst some pretty big decisions I’m mulling over and decisions I can’t quite mention yet.

The fourth time, though? That was in 2007 when my husband and I got serious about paying off our debt. I’ve discussed ad nauseam the reasons why we decided to pay down our sickening amount of debt and I’ve talked about what we’re thinking about doing next. However, what I don’t think I’ve discussed are the benefits we’re reaping from the fact that our debt (with the exception of his student loans and our mortgage; I don’t count his loans as my debt since a) he came into the relationship with that debt and b) my name isn’t on it) is gone. So perhaps it’s time to talk about that. So let’s do that.

Although it took 5 years, we did it. We paid off our jointly accumulated debt, including the extra $17K we incurred in 2010 when we had to buy my husband a new car. Overall, we paid off just under $70K in 5 years. Not too shabby. And when I made that final debt payment, I felt like Andre the Giant was lifted off my shoulders. I know that I walked a bit taller that day. However, along with the relief of no more debt, there are some other benefits including:

  • The lack of stress over money. Although we don’t fight about money, when we were paying down debt, there was a tremendous amount of stress. We would stress about how much to put towards a specific debt and then stress that we weren’t doing enough for the others (we followed the DR snowball method, although not quite perfectly). We stressed that the date for the final payment seemed so far off and that we never felt like it would come. We stressed that something bad would happen, and that bad event (whatever it was) would derail us from our very well constructed debt repayment plan. The list of stressors on our money was extensive and exhausting. But now that we don’t have those payments, those stressors are lifted. It’s nice to get paid, make the necessary utility payments, withdraw cash for the other expensive and then just breathe.
  • Having choices. Now that we don’t have money allocated to debt repayment, we’ve been able to readjust our budget to include more funds in areas that were sorely lacking. We can have a little more fun with our money (within reason, of course) as well as know that  if certain things happen, we’ll be okay (I’m sorry to be vague but I promise all will be revealed at some point). It’s a fabulous feeling to be able to control your money instead of having it control you. Which is what happens when all of your extra money is being spent on unnecessary debt.
  • Being able to help and support others. A very dear friend of mine is just beginning her debt payoff journey. She and her husband are in exactly the same position that my husband and I were in 5 years, and I know how hard this is on them. It’s a huge lifestyle adjustment to go from frivolously spending on credit and worrying about making payments every month to carefully watching every nickel that flows through the checkbook. But the fact that we’ve been there means that we can support them and encourage them and mentor them in ways that we didn’t have. DR talks a lot about giving back financially; I think giving back in this capacity is even more important.
  • Learning from the past. Five years of paying off debt isn’t something you quickly forget. It’s kind of like labor–it’s painful, it’s exhausting, it takes forever (if you’re me) and although time does lessen the severity, it’s not something you ever forget (anyone who says that she doesn’t remember the pain of labor is a damn liar). But you learn from it. You know what to do differently the next time. In the case of debt, you make sure to remember the causes of that pain and then you don’t do that. Although we’re stronger people because of it, my husband and I never care to relive the last 5 years, financially speaking.

It’s true that debt freedom is priceless. I can’t wait for the day my husband’s loans are gone and our house it paid off. But for now, I’ll settle with having no consumer debt. Like Cookie Monster singing the praises of the letter C, it’s good enough for me.

Readers, what have you gained from paying off your debt? 

 

 

We scored free rocks (reposted and updated)

by Jana 13 Comments

You might have noticed some layout changes. That’s totally on purpose. And there’s more coming. I know you’re excited.

I spent this past Saturday at The SITS Girls Bloggy Boot Camp. It was, hands down, some of the best money I’ve spent on this site (and my wanna be writing career). I was able to hear presentations from some incredible bloggers outside the personal finance niche (which is great to get a different perspective) and got some wonderful tips for streamlining not only my site but my whole approach to blogging. So look for those changes. Because of being totally and completely consumed by that, I totally forgot to write a post for today. So I offer a post previously written for my other site, The Jealousy Files (currently in hibernation until I get the rest of my shit together):

This shit was free y'all!

I recently had this conversation with my husband:

Him: Hello?

Me: You called? (after 8 years of marriage, pleasantries no longer exist. Plus, I don’t have time.)

Him: (silence)

Me: Again, you called?

Him: Yes.

Me: What do you want?

Him: I wanted to let you know I scored free rocks.

Me: What the fuck are you talking about?

Him: I scored free rocks.

Me: I understand what you said. I’m just wondering how the conversation transpired that led you to getting us free rocks.

Him: Well, rock house (note: that’s what we call the house that has their front lawn covered entirely in rocks) was getting rid of some. I was walking the dogs by their house and I saw him loading the rocks into the back of his truck. I asked him what he was doing with them and he said taking them to the landfill. I said that I’d take some off of his hands.

Me: Okay…

Him: So he put some in a wheelbarrow and wheeled the rocks to our backyard. Now we have all kinds of rocks.

Me: Okay…

Him: I saved us like $10 or $15!!!

At that point, I didn’t know what else to say. He was so proud of himself for scoring shit we could have found on the ground (also for free) that I didn’t want to burst his bubble. But at the same time, I was astonished that my husband actually convinced someone not only to give us free rocks but to wheel them to our house.

I’m a little jealous of his mad negotiating skillz.

P.S. For those who read this post originally on The Jealousy Files and inquired about what we were using the rocks for, I can tell you that my husband artfully spread the rocks around our sad little garden and what was left, he lined against our house because…well, I’m not quite sure because I didn’t care to listen to his rambling explanation. But they are no longer in a random pile. Which is good. Mainly because the cat was getting tired of them.

 

What’s the going rate for teeth?

by Jana 21 Comments

I have crossed many thresholds in my parenting journey thus far: sleeping through the night, teething, potty training, weaning off bottles, ear piercing, finishing daycare and preschool (2 more payments, or 4 more weeks, to go and then we’re done!)…lots of accomplishments in her 5 1/2 years. But this weekend we crossed one more. And it is by far the one I’ve been dreading the most.

My daughter has her first loose tooth.

Loose teeth are disgusting. They completely and totally gross me out. I can’t even think about one without shuddering (much like I cannot think about lice or the chicken pox without having severe bouts of itching). In fact, it is the one thing I’ve told my husband I cannot handle. Blood, vomit, diarrhea, broken bones, bee stings, splinters…I can handle all of that. But a loose tooth sends me running for the hills (or underneath my desk. Whichever is closer). So when I realized my daughter’s tooth was loose, I got freaked out.

This will soon be making a visit to our house. How delightful.

And then I thought of the tooth fairy. Which freaked me out even more.

When I was a kid (back in the 80s), I’m fairly certain I got about $1 for my first lost tooth and about a quarter for every tooth after that. My parents were cute about it at first. They did the whole tooth fairy thing and went out of their way to make me think that she was sneaky enough to come into my room and leave money under my pillow. I believed it, too, until I was about 7 and they would just fork over the money after the tooth was out. I was thrilled with that quarter and raced to my room to put it in my  “piggy” bank (ah, to be 7 again. Or need quarters for laundry day). But if I’m to understand it correctly, the tooth fairy has increased her prices dramatically. And I’m not sure why.

I don’t think teeth are more valuable now than they were 30 years ago. So I’ve been trying to speculate on why, from what I understand, the going rate for a tooth is around $5 a tooth yes, $5 a tooth. I’m as shocked as you are. Unless you have kids. Then maybe you’re not so shocked). Maybe the tooth fairy’s expenses have gone up and she’s just passing that along to the rest of us. Maybe she feels that she needs a raise because, unlike Santa who works one night a year, she has to work every day, dammit, travelling all over the world and having to remember the exchange rates and not leave a Canadian coin under an American child’s pillow; that’s a shit ton of work. Maybe she’s sick of people thinking she’s not real and she’s just extorting us as payback. I don’t know. What I do know is that the price of teeth is out of control.

My husband and I haven’t discussed how we’re going to handle payment for the lost teeth (which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. We’re giving her money for losing a tooth. I would like to get money for losing something. How about the next time I lose my keys, I make my husband give me $3? Do you think he’d go for that?). We do know that losing the whole set is going to put us back $100. In the grand scheme of things, $100 isn’t a great deal of money since she won’t lose all of her teeth at once but still–$5 a tooth seems a bit steep. I’m thinking we do an inflated version of what my parents did. $5 for the first tooth and $1 or $2 for every other tooth.

Another option is to agree to pay her $5 per tooth and then have a “tooth fund”. Since we know they’re going to fall out and she has 20 of them, we know we’re going to have to pay $100. Also, we know that we have some time before the first one falls out, which gives us time to save the money. I feel kind of ridiculous having a savings account for teeth but I don’t want her to think the tooth fairy is stiffing her. That would be unfair.

I feel ridiculous that I’m agonizing over her losing her teeth but it’s a pretty big deal. The tooth fairy is almost a rite of passage; every kid deserves to have a visit, including my daughter. I just don’t want to be extorted by a make-believe fairy responsible for making parents pay, literally, for the most disgusting part of raising a child.

Parents of kids who’ve lost teeth, how much did you pay? Any suggestions on how we should handle this?

Why we’ll never be a 1 car family

by Jana 19 Comments

I loathe cars. Everything about them annoys me. Repairs, getting gas, sitting in traffic, shopping for them, regular maintenance…all of it. I dream of living in a city with good public transportation and having a membership to ZipCar or something like that. But alas, that is not my life. No, my life is that of a 2 car family. And no matter how much I wish to change it, it is just not practical for my family to only have 1 car.

Even when we were in the throes of paying down our debt, we had to maintain 2 cars. It was expensive and annoying but we had to do it, mainly for these reasons:

  • Public transportation where I live is horrible. We have no rail system save for a few trains running to Philadelphia and a few stops before that. If you work in the northern part of the state and work in the middle or southern part of the state (like my husband) there is no way to take a train. And the buses? Are a joke. They’re never on time and traveling by bus takes forever. When I was in grad school, I had a professor who did a study of how long it took to go grocery shopping using just the buses. She found that it took 3 hours to travel to and from the store. Considering I live a 5 minute car ride from the nearest supermarket, it doesn’t make sense to take the bus. 
  • My husband and I work in complete opposite directions. Our house is in the middle of our offices. Although carpooling would be fantastic, and we did do it when we both worked in the same city, it just doesn’t work now. There is no conceivable way for me to get him to work and then myself to work on time (not to mention getting the kid to school) and without spending a freaking fortune in gas. Should I quit my job, it becomes a bit more feasible to give up one car but I highly doubt that it is practical. 
  • I live within walking distance of absolutely nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I live near a HUGE park but I have to play Frogger across 2 major roads to get there. I’ve never been good at arcade games, especially not in the real life version. Although I have what to do at my house and my very small neighborhood has a playground, it’s easy for my daughter and I to get a little stir crazy. Having a car means that we can go to the library or the park or wherever we need to go without having to drive all over the state to get the car from my husband (or drive him to and from work). It saves our sanity and gives us choices. 
  • I have major paranoia issues. This is also the reason I still have a landline. I am terrified that something bad is going to happen and I’m going to be trapped (and without a phone). If we are a 1 car family, that means my husband has our car (since I’m home right now) and I become helpless in the event of an emergency. That is not something I can handle. 
If my family were in a very dire financial situation, I would let one of our cars go. Maybe. At this point, we own both of our cars and the only savings we’d get is in gas and insurance which would make some difference but not enough to give up a car entirely. Unless we wind up in a situation like we did with my husband’s previous car (which was my car from high school); repairing that car cost more than the car was worth and we were spending that money about every 4 months. Then it would make sense to go down to 1 car.
Hopefully that day won’t come and we’ll never have to make that decision. So, for now, we’ll stick with our 2 cars. No matter how ridiculously annoying they are.

The biggest financial mistake I’ve ever made

by Jana 11 Comments

I readily admit that I’ve made a substantial amount of financial mistakes. In fact, if I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have much to write about. But there’s one mistake I’ve made that I’ve never shared with you.    I’m not sure why I never shared it before (that’s a lie. I completely know why. It’s because I’m ashamed).

What’s interesting about this mistake is that it’s not something I did; rather, it’s something I didn’t do. And by not doing this, I caused myself years of debt repayment and minimal choices instead of saving my money and having options.

So what did I do? I didn’t listen to stellar and practical financial advice when it was put in front of me. For free.

My first job out of grad school was with the federal government, working in the Philadelphia region. In our office was a trained statistician who was extremely friendly and very nice. He and I would spend lots of time talking, particularly about money. He was a few years older than I, owned a house, and really seemed to have his finances in order. He would talk to me about the importance of paying off debt, saving for retirement, and would often share strategies than he and his wife used to manage their money. He even went so far as to create amortization spreadsheets for me for my credit card debt! (I told you, he was very nice.)

Here are some other tips he shared with me:

  • Have a budget. He advocated that knowing where your money is going is the first step to having a handle on your finances. He told me that he and his wife had a pretty strict budget but there was always wiggle room for fun and extras. 
  • Once a month cooking. He would tell me how he and his wife would take one Sunday a month and prepare most of their meals. They would cook chicken and hamburger and casseroles…all kinds of different foods. They would freeze them in portions for dinner and lunches. Not only did he share how this saved them money but time as well.
  • Having a 15 year mortgage. He and his wife owned their home on a 15 year mortgage and made extra payments every month in order to pay the house off even quicker. He showed me an amortization spreadsheet (he really liked these) to illustrate how much interest they were saving in the long run.
  • Pay off your cars. My co-worker was a big advocate of buying used cars, taking care of them as much as possible and then driving them into the ground. I agreed with him because at this point, I didn’t have a car payment. However, I wanted to buy one and he discouraged me from doing so until my credit card debt was paid off. He did share that if I did buy one, I should purchase a used one and do whatever I could to pay it off quickly. He then told me how much money I would save per month without a car payment.
  • Don’t use the credit cards at all. He suggested that I pay with cash because it controls your spending and there’s no interest. He made the point that when you pay for something in cash, the payment is done. It doesn’t crop up on your later in the month. He did say that if I have to use a credit card, pay it off in full. 
At the time he was giving me this information, I would listen politely, but in my head I scoffed at the information. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why he was telling me all of this. I had a hard time believing he was only 27 because he sounded like an old man. And, in what’s probably not very shocking, I dismissed the majority of what he told me. Why? I just wasn’t ready to hear it. I thought that I knew exactly what I was doing and the way this guy was living was boring.
But I was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. I should have listened to what he told me and followed his advice as closely as possible. Had I done that, I would have spent the last 5 years saving money and being comfortable with some choices I want to make rather than paying off ridiculous amounts of debt and working in jobs that I hate just for a paycheck. I would have had the freedom to have the life I want.
Years later I found out that he and his wife were certified leaders of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Finding that out made so much click in my head, particularly with what he was sharing with me at the time we worked together. I totally got it.
So let this be a lesson. If the guy at work is preaching to you about ways to manage your money, listen. He probably knows what he’s talking about. And it will literally save you in the long run.

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