Dear Moneyist, I am panicked and feeling boxed in and would like an outside opinion. My husband and I got married in 2013 with a combined $193,000 in debt. The debt consisted of credit cards, medical bills, wedding debt and car notes, with student loans being the biggest debt between us. In January of 2014, we decided we would follow the debt-snowball method to get out of debt. At 31 and 34 years old, respectively, and no real urge for children at that time, we decided to focus on working and paying off the debt. It was such a huge amount that we didn’t discuss our thoughts and wishes for our life and money after the debt. We focused on the week-to-week, month-to-month process of getting through the debt.
‘In six months we’ve been able to save $35,000, and the current plan is to keep living below our means, working and saving. Working and saving.’
Our combined income has ranged from $65,000 a year in the earlier years to somewhere in the $130,000 to $140,000 range, depending on bonuses received and overtime worked in a year. Flash forward to this past February. After years of budgeting, cash-only spending, tension, intermittent spurts of excitement at what we were accomplishing, lots of overtime, resentment, driving really old cars, no Christmases, and a second job for a short while, we made our last debt payment. It felt amazing and I was proud of what we had managed to accomplish. In the immediate two months following, we saved up a nine-month emergency fund and started saving the money left over from our monthly income after our cost-of-living expenses were paid. In six months we’ve been able to save $35,000, and the current plan is to keep living below our means, working and saving. Working and saving. So why am I so stressed and panicking? Because now that we have no debt, I have enough clarity to realize that we don’t have much of a life either. We don’t have children, we don’t travel, we don’t see or experience many new things, and we don’t have much of a social circle at all. Now at 37, I hear my “biological clock” pounding in my head and feel like time is running out.
‘Where in all this saving are fun memories made? Where in all this working do children fit into the equation?’
Before you jump on me and say “37 is still young,” consider this. My husband is 40, says he doesn’t want to have children and is perfectly content working forever and saving at a really slow rate. Also, he says he never wants to have debt again. So he’d rather save and pay for upgraded cars with cash (not too much of a huge deal), save and purchase a home with cash (we are still renters), save and pay for potential real-estate investment properties... My husband and I paid off $193,000 in debt — but we are still saving and have no life
- Category: Economics
Dear Moneyist, I am panicked and feeling boxed in and would like an outside opinion. My husband and I got married in 2013 with a combined $193,000 in debt. The debt consisted of credit cards, medical bills, wedding debt and car notes, with student loans being the biggest debt between us. In January of 2014, we decided we would follow the debt-snowball method to get out of debt. At 31 and 34 years old, respectively, and no real urge for children at that time, we decided to focus on working and paying off the debt. It was such a huge amount that we didn’t discuss our thoughts and wishes for our life and money after the debt. We focused on the week-to-week, month-to-month process of getting through the debt.
‘In six months we’ve been able to save $35,000, and the current plan is to keep living below our means, working and saving. Working and saving.’
Our combined income has ranged from $65,000 a year in the earlier years to somewhere in the $130,000 to $140,000 range, depending on bonuses received and overtime worked in a year. Flash forward to this past February. After years of budgeting, cash-only spending, tension, intermittent spurts of excitement at what we were accomplishing, lots of overtime, resentment, driving really old cars, no Christmases, and a second job for a short while, we made our last debt payment. It felt amazing and I was proud of what we had managed to accomplish. In the immediate two months following, we saved up a nine-month emergency fund and started saving the money left over from our monthly income after our cost-of-living expenses were paid. In six months we’ve been able to save $35,000, and the current plan is to keep living below our means, working and saving. Working and saving. So why am I so stressed and panicking? Because now that we have no debt, I have enough clarity to realize that we don’t have much of a life either. We don’t have children, we don’t travel, we don’t see or experience many new things, and we don’t have much of a social circle at all. Now at 37, I hear my “biological clock” pounding in my head and feel like time is running out.
‘Where in all this saving are fun memories made? Where in all this working do children fit into the equation?’
Before you jump on me and say “37 is still young,” consider this. My husband is 40, says he doesn’t want to have children and is perfectly content working forever and saving at a really slow rate. Also, he says he never wants to have debt again. So he’d rather save and pay for upgraded cars with cash (not too much of a huge deal), save and purchase a home with cash (we are still renters), save and pay for potential real-estate investment properties...