And the Results are In

Back near the end of November 2009, my wife and I set a goal -- an audacious goal, to be sure, but a goal nonetheless.  At the time, we had a mortgage, a second mortgage, student loans, and at least one car loan.  In total, we had just over $124,000 in debt.  We decided that we wanted to wipe it out, and fast.  Choosing it more for its alliteration than its feasibility, we chose forty months as our time frame.

At the time, there was really nothing going on in our lives to indicate we would get anywhere close.  We were both working.  We were living below our means.  We had no plans to rack up any new debt along the way.  Our incomes were nice, but between us, we certainly weren't approaching six figures, though we were in the upper half of five-figure incomes.

Along the way, life happened.  We bought a new car.  When that one got totaled (not our fault, I might add), we bought another one (which insurance covered the lion's share of).  We decided to start a family, and welcomed into the world our son Daniel, as well as several thousand dollars of payments to various doctors.  We bought a second car.  I quit my job at school so I could stay at home with our son.

Back in 2009 when we made this goal, I had dreams of being debt free in forty months ... but no real certainty that it would happen.  I had hoped we would get close, but, to be honest, I figured that, at best, we might whittle away half of that amount.

So here we are, forty months later, and what is the result?  Well, we're not debt free, but over the course of those forty months, we knocked nearly $95,000 off of our total debt.  We still owe just over $29,000 on our primary mortgage, but my estimates are that we will have that paid off by the end of the year.  Call it "Debt Free in 48."

Despite not making our goal, we achieved some remarkable results.  We paid off an average of just over $2,300 each month -- that's straight principal, not counting interest.  We've managed to increase our incomes substantially, and stand to make more in 2013 than ever before, despite me no longer working for the public school system (the joy of being a self-employed composer is I can do my work from home while the little one naps).

So, was the experiment a failure?  Hardly.  The true power in setting audacious goals lies not in whether or not you achieve them, but in the changes the pursuit of them causes in your life.  We are a little less frugal now that we've been at points in the past, but when we spend money on something, it comes from a place of consciousness about how that spending will impact our lives.  We have put ourselves in a far more stable financial position, such that if one of us should lose a job, it will be that much easier for us to stay financially sound.

As the months go by and we get closer to that $0 balance on our mortgage, we can feel a sense of hope and freedom that has been growing bit by bit over the months.  We've been in debt of one sort or another ever since we got married in 2000.  If my calculations hold, by the end of October -- or when we'll have been married just a few months over 13 years -- we will be debt free, a condition we plan to stay in for the remainder of our days.  At that point, the work we do, the money we make, moves from paying off what we owe to other people, and it starts working for us, paving the way to a smoother future and, hopefully before we get too old to enjoy it, financial independence.

So even though the "Debt Free in 40" part of things didn't pan out, the goals don't stop.  The time frames get rejigged, the goals change -- but the goals are still there.  And, for any of you who care to read about them, they'll be talked about here ... as sporadic as ever, but talked about nonetheless.