Welcome to Kerri on the Rocks, I’m Kerri, your blog hostess extraordinaire!
A fun fact about me,
I live on a fairly busy street and during rush hour there is usually a traffic back-up that goes for a few blocks. So, of course, my favorite way to spend an evening is sitting in my driveway, drinking a cold glass of prosecco, watching people lose their minds while stuck in traffic. When it comes to budget happy hours, you can’t beat my system.
Speaking of budgets… and happy hours, this site is where I share our journey to pay off what feels like a mountain of debt it’s also where I’ll be posting my Jell-O shot recipes (and they’re awesome so you definitely want those).
Our debt free story
If you listen to Dave Ramsey’s podcast you’ve probably heard him say “You can wander into debt, but you can’t wander out”. He is so absolutely correct it’s not even funny!
Over the last 13 years I feel like I have done a fair share of wandering and in September 2018 decided, enough is enough! I was sick of credit card payments, debt consolidation payments, car payments, house payments… all the payments all the time. It was crushing every piece of my soul to see money come in and instantly evaporate out of our account.
We had always had a budget of some sort, but in all honesty, it was more a way to make sure that we paid all our bills on time, it was a survival mode budget. What we needed was to take a look at our finances and start directing funds to build a future. We needed to end the “we’re just trying to survive” mentality and get life under control.
So we worked to build up our $1,000 Emergency Fund and started paying off debt.
Just to give you a reference here’s what kind of debt we were starting with:
- Credit Cards – $3,104.05
- Student Loans – $80,000+
- Car Loan – $2,471.00
- Lending Club Consolidation Loan – $16,686.25
- Cell Phones – $937.36
As crushing as this debt felt to us to put it in perspective we were probably fairly average and possibly even on the low side of debt to income. That’s honestly almost scary to think.
Since September we have been working to pay this down and I can say without a doubt that we are seeing PROGRESS!! It’s not easy, it is certainly not evaporating, however, it’s not increasing either!
Some months progress is paying down a large chunk of debt and other months it means paying cash for something we might have financed. It means absorbing an unforeseen emergency expense with cash funds and not a credit card. It’s slow and it’s painful and each month seems to take a new and interesting turn but we’re here for it!
I’m so grateful for the community of people who are in the same boat with me and those who are following along and cheering us on our way. This is hard to do and even harder to do alone.
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