{"id":68,"date":"2016-08-30T02:07:32","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T02:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2016-08-30T02:07:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T02:07:32","slug":"more-than-ten-years-of-work-and-a-jar-of-pennies-to-make-us-debt-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/30\/more-than-ten-years-of-work-and-a-jar-of-pennies-to-make-us-debt-free\/","title":{"rendered":"More Than Ten Years of Work and a Jar of Pennies to Make us Debt Free!"},"content":{"rendered":"

After more than ten years of work, budgeting, living below our means, and making sacrifices like driving a car with no air conditioning in the Ohio summer it has finally happened. WE’RE DEBT FREE!!! This is including the mortgage!<\/p>\n

We paid off roughly $143,000 in mortgage debt plus $21,000 (give or take a few hundred) in credit card debt and student loans since we took control of our finances after taking a Financial Peace University class from Dave Ramsey.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago we decide to track the last leg of this financial journey out of debt using a jar of pennies where each penny represented $100 balance in our mortgage.<\/p>\n

After Friday night trip to the bank to pull out $3,000 CASH and then a trip to the bank branch that has our mortgage this is what our jars look like:<\/p>\n

\"We're<\/a>
We’re debt free – tracking progress paying down debt with mason jars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve got a longer post in the works but here is a short version of what we did:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps<\/li>\n
  2. Started using the You Need A Budget (YNAB) software and system. Basically Dave’s zero-based budget but living on last month’s income rather than this month’s.<\/li>\n
  3. Living way below our means.<\/li>\n
  4. Having goals and enjoying the ride.<\/li>\n
  5. Big beefy emergency fund for several bumps in the road including four job losses, hitting a deer, medical issues, and the medical expenses of having two kids.<\/li>\n
  6. We decided to get Gazelle Intense once we realized we could be 100% debt-free in 3 years if we put the pedal to the metal.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    After more than ten years of work, budgeting, living below our means, and making sacrifices like driving a car with no air conditioning in the Ohio summer it has finally happened. WE’RE DEBT FREE!!! This is including the mortgage! We paid off roughly $143,000 in mortgage debt plus $21,000 (give or take a few hundred) … Continue reading More Than Ten Years of Work and a Jar of Pennies to Make us Debt Free!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debt-reduction","category-finances","category-mortgage-payoff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennydrobnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}