Debt-Free: Making Our Last Payment – Family and FI (2024)

Content on FamilyandFI.com is for informational and educational purposes only. Consult a financial professional before making financial decisions. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. This post may contain affiliate links. As an amazon associate and creditcards.com affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read our full disclosure.

On April 1, 2020, we became debt-free.

This is a huge accomplishment for my husband Ryan and me. $200,000 in debt has been paid and that didn’t happen without a lot of prayer, dedication, life-style changes and discipline.

Quick backstory

I don’t want this article to be a downer, because this is a wonderful moment. So I’m going to make this short and sweet.

Ryan and I bought our home about 7 years ago and quickly found out that we could not afford the mortgage payment combined with our other debt payments.

We only had pennies left over after making our monthly payments. We had to rely on food banks a couple of times for food and spent every waking minute worrying about money.

It wasn’t fun.

Becoming Debt-free

Something had to change in our lives. Common sense (or so we thought) told us to start making extra payments, even if it was just a couple of extra dollars.

In hindsight, I know now that “making extra payments, even if it was just a couple of extra dollars,” wasn’t the answer. At least, it wasn’t the complete answer. We had this mindset for the first 2 of our 7 years and we got nowhere financially. Our struggles didn’t change.

There are so many other things you can do to become debt-free faster. By the grace of God, we discovered some of those things.

Afterward, we were able to pay off our entire 30-year mortgage and all of our other debts, in a total of 7 years. Keeping in mind, that the method we used in our first two years was less than helpful in the account of the total amount of time.

So really, I’d like to say that we paid off $200,000 in debt in 5 years. You can decide on that number.

Our debt-free celebration:

We planned on having a massive celebration when we made our last payment. We thought about throwing a big (yet, financially savvy) party in the bank. However, the coronavirus had other plans for us.

So we tried to just call in to make the payment. Turns out, that wasn’t going to work either. Then, we ended up having to go through the drive-through, which was NOT our vision for this special moment.

As if that wasn’t enough, our computer crashed twice during the editing of the video above, which added several more hours of editing time for a video that’s less than 15 minutes. Because of that, we were unable to share this great news via video to the online world yesterday. That was a bummer for us.

Do you know what will make God laugh? You telling Him about your plans.

I guess this April Fool’s Day, the joke was on us. That’s okay though because I know life doesn’t always work out the way you envision it. Life would be pretty boring if it did. The show will continue to go on, which, it certainly did.

How does it feel to be debt-free?

This is a question that I am asked a lot. To be honest, I have no way of describing it perfectly.

I don’t feel like it has hit us yet. Everyone gets that voice in their head that tells them that their goals are impossible, (or, maybe I’m the only one that has that problem,) And that voice hasn’t immediately silenced yet. That surprises me a little.

Additionally, becoming debt-free isn’t and was never our end goal – only a stepping stone to much bigger things. Ryan and I want financial abundance. We want to be millionaires.

However, we don’t want to be millionaires for the nice cars or yachts. We want that kind of money so we can make changes in the world.

Sure, you don’t need to be rich to make the world a better place. But the changes Ryan and I want to make WILL require a lot of money. That’s a topic we will hit on in the future.

So, how does it feel to become debt-free? If I had to give a final answer, I would say that it feels like we are on the right path.

Final thoughts

Becoming debt-free is completely worth it. Freedom from debt is worth more than any insignificant sacrifices you have to make to get there.

However, it shouldn’t be the end of your financial journey. You don’t have to aim for millionaire status like us, but you should always have goals to strive for.

We hope you like watching the video of the day we became debt-free, and we hope that it inspires you to join us on this journey. Fill out the form below to get connected. We are all stronger together.

P.S. We also invite you to join The Financial Independence Community on Facebook.