Working Towards Financial Flexibility

Over the past 14 months, we have worked really hard to approach financial flexibility. NOTE: flexibility NOT freedom, there is a difference. We have aimed to minimize debt, minimize STUFF, and save our money for our needs and travel wants.

After talking to a couple different friends about finances and their experience with Dave Ramsey’s technique, we decided to look into the “Baby Steps” Dave Ramsey program.  We had our “Baby Emergency Fund” set, so it was time to tackle our debt (aside from mortgage). We laid out all the debt and started with the lowest amount and started paying that off aggressively. We even made these handy thermometers to help keep us motivated!

So, we had our plan to aggressively pay things off…but where did this extra money come from? Well, we already had it, just needed to reallocate!

• We looked at unused subscriptions or extra costs that we could eliminate. After that, we allocated money to be used to pay off debt monthly and put this on auto pay.
• I had a couple side jobs at the time, so any money from the side jobs went DIRECTLY to pay off debt.  This made picking up extra hours even more appealing.
• We looked around the house and found tons of things that we didn’t need and were just taking up space. We explored the best ways to sell these items and all that money went directly to pay off our debt:
  • We had some old electronics lying around that were not used often (computers, laptops, ipads, phones, etc.). We sold these to Gazelle.
  • We sold unused clothing and handbags on Poshmark. Even a little bit adds up and Poshmark was super easy to use. Post it, someone buys, they send you shipping labels, print and send!
  • We sold other unused clothes, household items, etc. on Nextdoor and Facebook’s local garage sale sites.
  • We had over 100 old DVD’s and CD’s – and we don’t even own a DVD player. We sold these to Decluttr and the Amazon Trade-In Program. The Amazon Trade-In Program only offers gift cards, but then you can use those to pay for other essentials.

In this 14-month journey, we’ve already made a TON of progress. We are more intentional about our purchases and have been able to save money for travel. In the meantime, we have decluttered our house quite a bit, which is a huge bonus.

Looking forward to continuing our way in the journey of financial flexibility.