Have you ever worked so hard to achieve a huge goal and then once you crossed the finish line you just completely quit doing all the things you were doing to get you to that place? Maybe it was a weight loss goal, sales goal for work, training for a competition, or reaching a big financial goal. It’s not like you consciously decided that you weren’t doing what it took to get there anymore…it was just a little compromise here on the healthier (often harder) habit and a little compromise there. Then suddenly, you wake up one day and you’re right back in the same place that you started!
This fall off the wagon pattern is nothing new—people have been struggling with it for years.As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 7:19, “I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.” He wrote that approximately 1,966 years ago! Clearly, it’s an issue we all struggle with in one way or another. We were certainly not exempt from this vicious cycle when it came to keeping our freedom from debt. But how did we slip back into the pit…and just how deep did it go this time?
If you missed Our Financial Adventure: Part 1, you should totally go read that before you read anymore of this post. But for those of you that read that, let’s pick up where that story left off…
Our family had just finished paying off over $30,000 in consumer debt and we were definitely ready to celebrate!Because that’s what you do when you reach a big goal…you find a way to celebrate!Our celebration came in the form of a trip to Disney World completely paid for in CASH! Planning this trip was so much fun for me, I had been dreaming about it for years—toward the end of our debt pay off it was what kept me motivated. I am looking forward to sharing some of our travel adventures with you in future posts, complete with planning tips and reviews.For now you can watch this adorable video of our kids finding out we were going to Disney…we didn’t tell them until we were at the Florida State Line! Aren’t they adorable!?!?
After we went on our Disney vacation we didn’t really have a focus or a goal that we were truly working on.
We should have…
We were supposed to…The next step in the plan we were on was to save an emergency fund of 3-6 months of living expenses.
We had worked so hard to pay off our debt we surely “deserved” a break from such a focused budget, right?Certainly we “deserved” to let the celebration continue a little longer. My thought process was basically the same as it is when I work out—I worked hard and now I can eat a cookie…or several.I know it’s not the best thing for me, but I “deserve” it.Ugh! Anytime I say to myself I “deserve” it…it’s usually not what I actually need in my life.In fact, it’s usually the exact opposite of what I need.
We quickly fell back into the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck, spending pretty much everything that came in.I would occasionally throw a little money in our saving account but we were nowhere near hitting our goal of having a fully funded emergency fund.Usually the money I would put in would be spent on something that I had forgotten to budget for.We weren’t buying anything extravagant, we were just living lives like everyone else around us…eating out, shopping, traveling, etc.
Then we got house fever, and we got it bad!We were dreaming about a bigger house with some land outside of town where we could garden, have some chickens, hunt, fish and shoot. A place that we could let our kids run around and play freely outside. A place where Nick could decompress after a hard day on duty.We visited a few houses that were on the market and had serious conversations of how we weren’t really in a financial place to move.But we found THE perfect house on one “just dreaming” visit and we decided to put in an offer.
Was our house on the market?
No.
The realtor told us that we could put in an offer contingent upon our home selling.We were pretty sure that we would make a reasonable enough profit from the sale of our house to use as a down payment for the one that we wanted to buy. So we got our house on the market.We had several open houses and one very seriously interested buyer.However, someone came along with a better offer on the house that we wanted and the seller accepted their offer.
You might thing that we would have taken that as a sign and we should have decided to go back to our original plan—buckle down our finances again and save up a good, solid down payment. But we didn’t.Apparently, we needed to learn hard lessons again.
Then we found what was actually the perfect house for our family and put an offer on it. Our house sold fairly quickly this second time around and we were able to purchase our dream property! We weren’t any more financially prepared for this change but we were going for it anyway.
Some people have to repeat hard lessons before they truly grasp the knowledge they were supposed to gain the first time around. By “some people” I mean Nick & Teanna Lambert.
Did I mention that this house was a bit of a fixer upper like the first one? From plumbing to carpet to electrical work.We had to tackle it all.Thankfully we had some amazingly talented friends and family that helped us with this project. But, this is where we begin our second round of debt accumulation. We got some store credit cards to pay for things we needed to fix at the new house because we didn’t have enough in savings to make this happen. The two credit cards we qualified for “only” totaled $2,500 and we maxed them out quickly! We paid the balances down and used them again, and again. They were literally our gateway drug that opened up the door to us going back into debt.
One day Nick was headed to work in my car during a horrible rain storm—he drove right thru some flood waters and right there the paid for Honda Accord died. The car was a total loss. Since we had our dream house and our best car was gone, certainly we “deserved” to upgrade our car now to our dream car. So we got a used Lexus ES350 and the hefty car loan that went with it. There we go with another compromise opening the door even wider to something we said we weren’t going to do again.
Then Nick got a case of little truck syndrome at work…he actually sent me a video of a line of trucks in the parking lot! I don’t think I saved that video but the words went something like this: “Shiny new big truck, shiny new big truck, shiny new big truck, another shiny new big truck and then there’s my tiny little old beat up Ford Ranger.” Pretty sure at that point his video panned out to a sad face with a single tear streaming down his cheek.My husband worked way too hard to be having the worst looking truck in the parking lot! He definitely “deserved” a new truck! So, off we went to the dealership and on the way home we were driving his new to us shiny big truck. Not even caring that the loan we had just taken out was almost as much as the total debt we had paid off just a few years prior.
But wait—with our love of camping and Nick’s shiny new big truck we “deserved” to upgrade from tent camping to a travel trailer! Lucky us! A coworker was selling one and we were able to get a loan for that too.
Then, our Lexus started having some troubles so we decided instead of getting those issues fixed that I “deserved” a brand new Honda! That little door that was cracked open by some credit cards for a remodel was blown wide open like a barn door in a tornado!
Nick didn’t like driving the travel trailer because it was too long but we loved camping and were sure we were going to do it even more the following year! So we “deserved” to buy a brand new (shorter) travel trailer for our family to enjoy. Financing was no problem at all for us!
Our barn door wasn’t just blown open at this point—it was completely off its hinges!
Over the course of 7 years we had dug a pit of debt that totaled nearly $100,000!
This time, we created a huge mess together. We walked hand in hand into this pit willingly.
We told nobody!
In fact, it’s quite likely that friends and family reading this are finding out for the very first time the size of the pit we were in on this second round.
I can’t speak for Nick on this, but I know that I felt shame and guilt for us being in such a deep pit—again.
A pit we would have to climb out of—again.
I desperately wanted to wrap up our story with this post…but there’s just so much left to tell!
Are we still in debt? If so, how much? If not, how?
The final part of Our Financial Adventure that gets us to where we are now is coming up soon.You don’t want to miss it--subscribe to our emails to have it delivered right to your inbox!
If you are struggling with debt or living paycheck to paycheck and can’t see a way to break that cycle, please schedule a FREE consultation with me today. It would be a privilege to walk this journey with you!
