You may have read about how we have undertaken a accelerated debt payoff strategy with 2 other families. I have exciting news! Last week, we got a message from Gordon & Sarah (our 2nd family in this debt payoff) and they let us know that they are debt-free!!!
_________
NOTE: This post was originally published in 2012. I’ve since cleaned up some of the text and included links to our other posts about the debt payoff. You can read more in this series through the accelerated debt payoff introduction, working on the final debt, and the debt payoff is finished!
_________
YAY!!
And guys!!! This debt payoff was also way ahead of schedule! Way!
How Long Did We Expect?
Originally, when we prayed and decided to do this together, we estimated it would take us about 15 months for all 3 families to be debt-free. I touched on this in our previous post. We all knew we’d be far more disciplined to completely obliterate our debts if we did this together.
I’m honestly blown away at the rate that we’ve been able to pay this debt down! Truly, this IS a combined ACCELERATED debt payoff strategy! Over the past 5 months, we have been able to pay an extra $7,200 towards debt.
As it is right now, we are set to be done with the debt in 10 months! 10 months friends!! 10 months!
Some of you may be thinking I’m blowing this out of proportion, but this is saving our families years of bondage to debt, especially those with student loans. Not only has snowballing the debt payoff saved years of payments and bondage, but also thousands and thousands of dollars!!
Why is This Accelerated Debt Payoff Strategy Going So Fast?
We are all kinda scratching our heads about the pace of this debt payoff. Here are the factors we attribute to the pace
- The Mighty God we serve.
- Extra remodel work Jamie has gotten.
- Additional money Mark and Gordon have gotten to throw at the debt (from extra work or selling things)
Really, we believe that the Lord is to credit for all of this as He has blessed us and our efforts! That is an understatement in fact.
We also got word from the 3rd family that their original numbers were a little off. Instead, it’s about $43,000. No biggie….we’re so happy to be on the last family’s debt.
We are so motivated to finish this up. And it feels great!
Blessings!
Just checking in with you re the debt pay-out thing – are you saying that you are ALL contributing to paying off the debt even though your own debt was the smallest and someone else’s debt was way bigger? I can totally understand pooling debt and paying off if similar values but love to know more re mindset. (Aren’t you essentially paying off an extra 30K of someone’s debt when it could have gone somewhere else – charity etc.).
Yes, you are right. We looked at our friends who extremely generous and giving hearts and the burden they were under due to student loan debts that they would be dealing with for many many more years to come. Today, we’re all free from debt and able to give more to charities and ministries than if we had not done the combined debt payoff.
I think in helping people, it doesn’t have to be an even contribution. That was the beauty of it. It wasn’t about being fair or even…it was about having mercy and being generous.