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I have been putting off writing this post for quite a few weeks. I’m still feeling weird about tackling our debt. When we decided to get real with ourselves 12 months ago and pay down the debt we had created by letting our line of credit get out of control, I sort of had a secret longing that we could pay almost all of it off in a year.
That’s how out of touch I really was.
It’s embarrassing to admit but yet again, shit got real.
Want to catch up before you read on?
A year ago we finally got real with ourselves and admitted WE HAVE DEBT.
After rereading our journey this morning, I am full of many feelings.
I feel disappointed that we didn’t pay off more of our line of credit.
I feel a bit embarrassed that we still have so much debt left.
I feel happy that we caught this when we did and we didn’t go any deeper into debt.
I feel like the tactic we used didn’t work. If you want to get out of debt, you have to tackle it. Our lazy approach to paying out debt worked and didn’t work.
Let me explain….
In the last 3 months of our journey, we have paid down $600 in debt.
For a yearly grand total of $4,600.
Yeah.
It took us 12 months to pay down $4,600.
That’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it?
I sort of feel sick about it.
At the same time, what did I expect?
We didn’t make very many life changes.
We still booked a $2300 flight to Toronto.
We bought $200 in spring/summer clothes for the kids.
I had to pay a large tax bill for my business.
We spent $400 to adopt a dog.
The dog had an emergency vet visit $550
We had 6 nights in a hotel for my daughter’s dance competition, I booked a flight to Vancouver, Easter, built a fence, bought the kid’s bikes.
Wow. First world problems, eh.
If we were really serious about paying down our debt, none of those things would have happened and we probably could have put another $15,000 on our line of credit this year.
No really.
We could have.
I mean, now that I look at things, it is pretty amazing that we had a super expensive 3 months and yet were still able to pay down our line of credit by $600 (plus the interest we paid each month).
So, is this going as fast as I wanted? Fuck no.
Is the arrow going in the right direction? Yes.
Could we be doing better at paying down debt? Yup.
Am I still scared shitless of a crazy life emergency coming our way and not having any money to cover it? Yes and no. We have an emergency account, a TFSA, some RRSP’s and God knows if we have an emergency our banks are happy to just increase our credit line again.
But, I don’t want to live that way.
So what’s next?
We are still saving for a family vacation in the fall.
We are going to keep putting money into an account in preparation for things that we know are going to be coming up like Christmas, Dance Competitions and for my business tax.
I learned a lot this year.
We eat out less. We enjoy the times we do eat out or order pizza with friends. I don’t buy a drive thru coffee because I have 15 minutes before school pick up.
Basically, we have been more mindful about where our money is going.
I’m not going to lie. This is has been the most stressful year of my life.
I have cried over money. I have lost sleep over money. I have been torn over money. I have hated money.
The thing I have forgotten to do is be thankful for everything we have in life because of money and the better yet the things we have in life that have nothing to do with money.
