My family has unfortunately, ended up in deep debt.
Keeping up with the Joneses has finally come to bite us in the a**.
My husband has a pretty great paying job, making about $150,000 a year. I homeschool our three children, so work is out of the picture for me – even though I’ve tried and researched what feels like everything to bring in some sort of income. Do you know how many times I have almost fallen for those resale courses on instagram??
We also started a business last year, so we did make a little extra off of that last year! But wow, owning a business, running it, and filing taxes on it is a lot harder than I anticipated.. not to mention starting the business was expensive, but we can get into that another time.
So, back to our debt. Let me count the ways.. lol, no but let me break it down for you.
Cars: $1,725.87
Credit Cards: $1,111.07 (I think those angel numbers are trying to tell me it’ll be okay because I’m getting anxiety typing this out)
Personal Loans: $264
IRS: $260
Quad: $165
These totals, that’s our monthly payments.. yeah, not total owed, just the minimum amounts due each month on each debt.
So yes, that is $3,525.94 that goes towards our “bad” debt a month. We also have a $702/m business loan, but I consider that “good” debt so that’s why it’s not listed.
So if you take that fancy little number and you multiply it by the 12 months of the year, you have $42,311.28. That is how much of my husbands annual pay goes towards making the minimum payments on our debt.
A job he really doesn’t like, a job that brings him a lot of mental & physical stress, a job that pulls him out of town more more days out of the year than he has being home with me and our children, a job we would really like to get away from, but unfortunately desperately need to survive right now.
That is why I have worked relentlessly on reading books, making spreadsheets, calculating our debts, and deep diving into our finances.
I want my husband home, I want to travel, I want to invest, I want to own a home, start businesses, donate to churches and charity, find a hobby, pay for my kids to go to college or help them in supporting a life long dream.
And those things just are not happening with thousands of dollars going to debt every month.
I haven’t even calculated how much of that is just interest either. Honestly, I don’t think I will because that number makes me sick enough to make a change.
So, if you feel like you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, tired of having more month than paycheck, tired of this annoying hamster wheel we’re on, tired of not being in control of your finances, tired of your lack of time/financial freedom.. welcome, me too!
Here’s to our journey to milk & honey my friend. We got this!
– S
