ROE INTENSE

Happy Thanksgiving. Wanted to talk about being a turkey today. But first, here's a recap of the Baby Steps used in Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. Baby Step 1 : $1,000 cash in a beginner emergency fund Baby Step 2 : Use the debt snowball to pay off all your debt but the house Baby Step 3 : A fully funded emergency fund of 3 to 6 months of expenses Baby Step 4 : Invest 15% of your household income into retirement Baby Step 5 : Start saving for college Baby Step 6 : Pay off your home early Baby Step 7 : Build wealth and give generously So we're on step 3. How's it going? It's not. What we're doing now is akin to what happened a lot between baby steps 1 and 2: Save up your $1,000 emergency fund Have an emergency Repeat Except we haven't had emergencies. We maintain the $1,000 EF month to month and manage other storms. We've had to repair some vehicles, sure. We also have more income now than we did. We were forking over hund

We had the pleasure of being interviewed on Saturday by Uri Berliner . He oversees coverage of business and the economy for NPR. Amazewife and I both felt nervous. We had: Never been interviewed before, and have been NPR nerds for a long time. One of Amazewife's colleagues from her time at the Daily Nebraskan works for NPR. She had followed our struggle and pitched our experience to Uri as a story idea. He arrived at our home around 10 AM. We exchanged pleasantries. He explained what to expect. We asked where he'd like to sit. The interview begins We pulled up a chair so he could sit in front of us. He wore Studio Monitor headphones and held a digital recorder attached to a long, hand-held microphone. We sat down on our brown couch, situated in front of and facing away from our large living-room window. We dove in. He asked about why we did it. What motivated us. What was the moment when we decided to get out of debt. Tell me about your schedule. You worked how m

Amazewife and I destroyed the last of our debt just in time for our tenth wedding anniversary. Yay, marriage! I didn't have a ring for my wife when I proposed. I really didn't have much at all when I proposed. It was a cold night outside the Logan temple when I did and I had about $200 to my name. Unlike the one and only Derek Oliver that dressed up as Superman. And got Superman's help to propose . (Congrats, Derek.) But my post isn't about Derek. It is about Amazewife and I. She's A and I'm B , so why don't you just C your way out of this conversation, Derek? Go scare away the porcupines from your yard before your dog bites one. Inside joke. Anywho, our anniversary isn't just one day out of the year. It is part of what I call Mega Week . It is clustered like another topping on a delicious, terrifying, three-layer cake made of it, Mother's day and her birthday. Due to that close proximity, gift buying and delivery can become quite the ordeal

Guess what we did a couple of weeks ago? We got out of debt . Completely. We don't have a mortgage. We don't owe any money on any vehicles. We have no student loan debt, nor medical debt. So now what? Developments so far. I haven't delivered pizzas in months. I miss it. Now that I don't deliver pizzas, I qualify for better rates on long-term disability insurance . My bro-in-law is thinking about doing it, and I told him I could help him land a job. In other news, one of our cars got totaled. Rather than buy another car for a couple thou-, I spent $142 not-thou at the Omaha Community Bike Project and bought a bike. Now I bike to work. G'head and follow me on Strava . It feels awesome. Not biking. Well yes biking. But I bike with a little more freedom knowing I'm not carrying around any debt. I also work with that same freedom. I sleep at night enjoying it as well. What's next? The next step in the plan is to set up a 3-6 month emergency fund . This

Ladies and gentlemen, we are debt free. Ladies and gentlemen, we are debt free. We paid off $36,000 in medical, credit card, and student loan debt in 2 years, 7 months . We also paid off our $70,000 mortgage with the break-even sale of our house. We started out making $79,000 as a family of five in 2014 and ended making $90,000 as a family of six in 2016. As of right now, we have zero debt -- no car payments, mortgage, medical debt or student loans. What got you started on your debt-free journey? M : Tony finished up college later than I did because he served as a missionary in South America from 2004-2006. We got married soon after and babies started arriving a year later. He was both attending school and working. I worked freelance jobs here and there so I could stay home with the kids. We used student loans to help supplement our income. We had two children when Tony graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 2012. We realized in a hurry that we were going to strug