We did it!  The Pools are debt-free.  Seven months, a hundred brown bag lunches,  and zero impulse buys later, Don and I eliminated twenty-seven thousand dollars of non-mortgage debt and officially live well below our means.

If you read my August 2008 post, you’ll remember my worry-wort mentality around money.  After numerous and ineffective attempts to change this, I figured the only way to lose the ball-and-chain was to always have more than we needed.  While eliminating debt is only the first step on this journey, it has been a fascinating and challenging path so far.  It feels both strange and exhilarating to be excited about our finances when the rest of the country is at the low end of the financial mood scale.

How did we do it?  By finding the difference between what we needed and what we thought we needed and putting the difference towards what we already bought that we thought we needed but probably didn’t.  Creating and following a budget sucks, but that is nothing compared to looking your expenses straight in the eye and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that more goes out than comes in.  This is the real financial crisis in our country.

I went through serious withdrawals.  Like an addict dying for a smoke, I fantasized about shoes, a vacation, new bathroom rugs and a car wash that didn’t require me.  Dining out was burgers on the patio.  Even the dogs were on half-biscuit rations.  Don was a financial trooper but I fell off the wagon a couple of times, usually regarding my two weaknesses: food and garden paraphernalia.  The new rototiller set us back a few weeks but we persevered.  I learned a lot about myself in the process.

So now instead of money controlling me, I control it.  Instead of charge cards (“what’s in your wallet”), we have cash.  Instead of car loans, we have car titles. 

Big thanks to Dave Ramsey’s talk radio show that gave me both strategies and a daily shot of support as I passed up yet another Starbucks.  Keith Chapman, our financial advisor, was a big help on ways to make our money work both harder and smarter in the down market before the market tanked.  That’s twice you’ve saved our financial butts, Keith.  I owe you a piece of Lawry’s famous coconut cream pie.  And I’ll buy!