Working the Plan

by heatherstarnes on March 8, 2010

The Background:  My husband and I are recent law school graduates, we both have student loans, and we’re newlyweds.  We both accumulated a fair amount of credit card debt during law school.  To top it off, my husband is a JAG Officer and we live abroad, which has severely restricted my income.  That being said, when my husband got his assignment, we knew we had to get serious about paying down debt.  The question was how to get our finances under control.

We had about six months to get a good start on our finances before we moved abroad.  As we already had a small savings account that grew with each paycheck, we decided to create a budget and focus on the credit card debt.  Enter a complication—since my husband and I would be living separately while he was in training, we needed two household budgets!  One is hard enough, but two!!

So, we got creative and figured out where to make cuts.  This didn’t mean that we only ate ramen, but we’re not perfect.  When we seriously looked at our expenses, we were able to identify several areas that we could cut back without drastic changes.  For example, one area where I spent a lot of money was books.  I discovered that I could sell the thousands of books (I’m not exaggerating!) that were cluttering shelves and go to the library.  Another big part of our plan was that we consolidated all our non-student loan debt into a 2% interest, fixed payment loan through our bank.  This means that we pay less each month, and most of our payment pays principal, so the balance is rapidly shrinking!  We still have our student loans to contend with, but there is a LOT less financial pressure.  We have dwindling balances for our other debt and our savings account is growing rapidly.

Our “abroad” budget is still being determined, but at this rate we’ll be debt free in less than 5 years.  That is a great feeling!

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Independence

by guillermodekat on March 8, 2010

I have not always been a Texan, but I like to say that I was quickly adopted.  One thing that has always appealed to me about Texans is the infectious independent spirit that is Texas.  Texans don’t like people telling them what they can and can’t do.  They don’t like the feeling of losing independence by giving someone else power over their lives.  This can easily be seen in political rhetoric, and it gets us stirred up when we get a whiff of outsiders telling us what to do.  While politics and government power are important and valid concerns, perhaps that fighting independent spirit could also be focused on our individual finances.

Proverbs 22:7 refers to a borrower as the slave of the lender.  That is something to think about as you look at your finances.  In my mind, financial slavery and the Texas spirit don’t mix and as we look at the landscape of our state perhaps we could focus some of our fighting spirit on destroying personal debt and regaining financial freedom.  A debt free Texan is a free and independent Texan, and an example of someone who has fully embraced the spirit of Texas!

photo credit, Brian L. Romig

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Let’s All Jump

March 5, 2010

With Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover live event in San Antonio  just a day away, everyone in our firm has been focusing on their own financial freedom.  We’ve all been encouraged to express this journey in the form of a blog so that we can share a bit of ourselves with you.  I’ve had a [...]

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Wheels of Change

March 4, 2010

It was 1996, three years before I heard of Dave Ramsey.  We had 2 cars, one was paid for, and I decided I needed a truck.  Lori had just delivered our second child, fifteen months after the first.  We had my law school loans and foolish credit card debt, and we were sitting on 3 [...]

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Seeing the Light

March 3, 2010

I was eighteen and packing my stuff.  College was only a five hour drive away.  I was so excited! Never before did I have so much freedom.  No one was going to be there telling me what to do or when to be home or make sure I went to class.  Unfortunately no one was [...]

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Light at the end of the Tunnel

March 2, 2010

I first heard of Dave Ramsey through my husband, Charlie. Then I would occasionally hear Dave on the radio when traveling in the car with Charlie.  Even though the philosophy sounded good, the subject bored me.  You guessed it…I am the free spirit.  Before long I really did not want to talk about the finances, [...]

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Breaking the Chains

March 1, 2010

Some years ago when we lived in Alabama, we heard about a guy named Dave Ramsey.  He was doing a radio show and telling people to get out of debt.   He was telling folks to live without a credit card and going so far as to say people should live on LESS than what they [...]

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Help! I’m in a timeshare and I can’t get out!!

February 22, 2010

You won’t have to read very far in this post to know how we feel about timeshares here at The Spahn Law Firm.  We have seen countless numbers of people come in frustrated that they can’t get out of their timeshare.  The truth is this:  a timeshare is not an investment.  Put more bluntly, a [...]

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Land Rich and Cash Poor

February 17, 2010

Shrugging, Jacob drawls, “Well, guess old man Hawkins’ kids are sorry he died without a will.” Levi nods. “Yeah, guess so,” he answers.
Levi thinks about the Hawkins kids, now in their fifties. His own are the same age. He thinks about the good times his kids and grandkids have had climbing trees, swimming in the [...]

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Copyright Nuts and Bolts

February 8, 2010

“Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind… in the air… in the light.  It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen.”  This quote is from the motion picture August Rush.  The movie is about a [...]

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