Our Personal Financial Journey – From $80,000 Of Student Loan Debt To Business Owners

One of the reasons I started Money Manifesto was to share our personal financial journey.

At the time, I hoped to inspire others and show them what is financially possible with a bit of planning and hard work. Of course, a little bit of luck didn’t hurt either.

Rather than scroll through pages of posts looking for the specific posts that detailed our personal financial journey, I thought I’d go ahead and round up all of our most personal posts in one place.

This way, those than want to read more about us and what we’ve been through financially can do so easily.

Paying Off $80,000+ Of Student Loan Debt (2011 – 2014)

First off, I want to share our personal journey of getting out of $80,000 of student loan debt. Here are the main posts that talk about this journey.

My wife graduated from college in 2011 with over $80,000 of student loan debt. In December 2012, we started sharing monthly debt pay off reports detailing our progress.

You can find a list of all of these reports on our student loan debt pay off journey page.

In total, it took us just under 3 years to pay off the student loan debt. Over that time, we had quite a few times where we were unsure whether we should keep paying down the student loan debt aggressively or make other financial moves.

We also faced some set backs that delayed the pay off. Here are a few of the posts that detailed our thought process at the time and the speed bumps we encountered.

• Why We Decided Against A Beachfront Condo – We ultimately decided not to buy it.
• Short-term Disability Rears Its Ugly Head Again – My wife’s foot surgery failed and required a second surgery to fix the issue in early 2013. Out of work, disability helped cover our expenses again.

We Got Married (2013)

My wife and I got married a few months before we finished paying off her student loan debt.

What Happened After Student Loan Debt Freedom (2014+)

After we paid off the student loan debt, we still wanted to share where our financial journey was taking us. Here is some insight into what we were thinking after the student loan debt was destroyed.

• Why I’m Happy My Wife Had $80,000 Of Student Loan Debt – Reflecting on the good things paying off student loan debt taught us almost two years later.

I Took A Leap And Left My Job (2015)

In November of 2015, I made one of the biggest leaps of my life. I left my day job to blog full time.

Our Home Buying/Selling Experiences (2016)

The student loan debt isn’t the only major debt pay off we’ve accomplished. In between selling our home and our rental property, we had to move into an apartment while we were waiting for our home to be built.

Here are a few posts on our short period of apartment living along with things we learned while building our new construction home.

• Are Homeowners Associations Good Or Bad? It Depends – After living in a neighborhood with an HOA and one without, as well as an apartment, we share our thoughts on HOAs.
• Surprise Costs Of Building A Brand New Construction Home – Throughout our homebuilding process, we discovered that quite a few costs aren’t included in the base price builders initially give you.

Our Car Buying Experiences (2010 & 2017)

While not quite as big of a financial event as buying and selling a house, we’ve bought two cars since graduating from high school. Surprisingly, the numbers came out to where buying new made sense at both times.

• Is Buying A New Honda Odyssey Cheaper Than Buying Used? – I share how we came to this conclusion.

Expanding Our Family (2011 & 2016)

Over the years, we have added to our family since my wife and I started seeing each other. At first, we got a puppy after moving into the townhouse we bought. Unfortunately, she hasn’t been a cheap dog. Here are a few posts about that:

• Dogs With Allergies Are Expensive

More recently, my wife and I decided to have a child. Our son was born right before we closed on the new home we were having built, which made for an interesting few weeks.

My Wife Switches To Very Part Time Work (2018)

In 2018, we made the decision to have my wife stay home more to watch our son grow up. It was a tough choice and required some financial sacrifices I hadn’t thought about before, but overall we’ll be fine.

What’s Next?

Only time will tell what comes next. To keep up to date with the latest posts here on Money Manifesto, you can subscribe to our newsletter, bookmark our website or simply check back every now and then.

I’ll keep updating this post as we add more about our journey.