Modern Mama

As someone who shamelessly watches too many dating reality TV shows, romance movies, and Jane Austen, it doesn’t really surprise me that many couples that I personally know don’t seem to be connected around their finances. Many in fact never talk about it. It sometimes feels a little bit taboo and definitely not sexy, but its actually a topic my husband and I really enjoy and have leaned into over the last ten years. Over time it has stopped being a chore and has become a way to connect and feel closer. The transparency around what we are spending our money on and aligning on major purchases has continued to build our trust (and bank accounts) as well as built a comradery and sense of peace that we are truly on the same page when it comes to our future plans.

Now I have to give my husband a lot of credit for this. Way back when we were in college he became obsessed with Dave Ramsey and started learning about investments, saving for retirement, and debt strategies. These were all topics that weren’t really talked about a lot while either of us were growing up so we had a lot to learn and it didn’t come overnight. I have to point out that we are more than a decade down the road on this journey and are still learning new things every day but being open to learning more and realizing that it isn’t a scary topic was such an important first step.

Based on the Dave Ramsey videos my husband watched in college we became interested in knowing exactly how much debt we had and wanted to see if we could come up with a plan to become debt free (minus any mortgage payments). So I took a little white board that I used to do my math homework on and we sat down and wrote it all out. Everything. Our assets, debts, and savings goals became the primary categories that we started tracking. The first time we did this it felt like a bit much. Being just out of college, student loans definitely bogged down our debts column as well as car payments and the most depressing number was our negative net worth but I guess you have to start somewhere.

Once we were both out of college and making more money than we ever had we had then had the problem that for work we had moved to a much more expensive state and had to adjust to everything being pricer than we were used to so if we were ever going to meet our savings goals and get out of debt in a reasonable timeline we came to the difficult conclusion that we had to make some changes.

Once again I have to give my husband so much credit. He really stepped up to the plate and made a very hard decision to sell his truck which had a pretty high car payment (was almost as much as the rent for our tiny apartment). This was tough because he had just bought the truck as a graduation gift to himself and had been something he was so excited for. We literally spent the entire day at the dealership finding the perfect truck and then celebrated by going out to a nice dinner. So for him to selflessly step back and find a much more affordable car so we could put the extra money towards paying down our debt really gave us a good start on getting out of the hole we were in and really energized me to also want to contribute and find areas that we could cut back on to make our goals faster.

We did this at first by meeting weekly and managed our finances through budgeting every single purchase we made. As the person who filled in most of the items on our budget tracker this was very time consuming and some credit card purchases were sometimes hard to categorize. I’m very happy to report that as we have become busier and had less time we found a much quicker alternative that still served the same purpose and have fully changed over to filling out a conscious spending plan (high level overview of financial situation) approximately once a month which we learned about from Ramit Sehti and his Money for Couples podcast (https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/conscious-spending-basics/). Watching his podcast has also become a normal part of our routine since we like to see how other couples are spending and managing their money. This new monthly money meeting has been a real life saver as a parent because trying to keep up with a budget has completely become unattainable for us as we try to keep up with our adventurous toddler and attempt to keep our hobbies in what little down time we have. As a quick side note I am not making any money off of this recommendation. This is just a free tool that we use and have found immense benefit from.

The benefit of using the conscious spending plan has helped us focus in on what our fixed costs are and start conversations about what is really important to us since there is only a finite amount of money we have coming in each month. By cutting back on things we don’t really care about and making sure that we are coming out ahead every month after putting towards saving and investments we have actually been able to spend more money and not feel bad about it on things that have become very important to us like traveling and making memories.

The nice part is that the more we stuck to our debt pay off plans and made sure to stay out of new debt as much as possible the quicker our debt number fell and the more our net worth number went up which has been extremely satisfying and made it easier to stick with it. We also made sure to celebrate our small wins along the way which I would highly recommend to make the journey feels a little less tedious. These celebrations don’t have to cost a lot (one of ours was getting our favorite take out and having a movie night at home) but these have become some of my favorite date nights since unlike a work success we are able to celebrate something we did together.

Thankfully after all the podcasts, money meetings, and calculations I can say that we have done it! Besides our house, we are completely debt free which feels amazing to say. Especially since this took time (about six years) and a lot of choices and corrections to stay on the right path. Now we are working on paying down our mortgage and are now celebrating the little wins around our net worth growing. One of the things that has surprised me the most is how much more we can do now that we are debt free (particularly after years of feeling like we said no to a lot). Our money isn’t tied down into fixed monthly payments so when the opportunity arose we were able to buy our dream house with a large yard for our little one and is still close to town. We have also been able to travel abroad regularly and say yes to more get togethers with family which are memories that we will always be able to cherish. While there are still so many temptations to spend more than we have or take out a loan I think the memory of how hard we had to work to get out of debt sticks with us and has really helped us start to save more and buy things when we can afford to do so without taking out a loan. Going through this process was really a lifestyle change and now being on the other side where we are getting to responsibly reap the benefits has brought such a peace of mind when it comes to money which is irreplaceable. And now we are able to shift our focus on teaching what we have learned to our little one so she hopefully has a leg up on something that has taken us over a decade to learn the hard way.

If you are hoping to get become debt free or have already gone through getting out of debt I would love to hear about your journey and what your financial goals are as a couple. In the meantime, happy savings and may the market always be in your favor.