How Our Family is Working to Become Debt Free

Last updated on September 28th, 2021 at 01:57 pm

The cost of twins feels exponential. When they are babies it’s the double stroller, two cribs, double the diapers. Then it continues, double the infant price for daycare, double the clothes as they grow bigger, and can I PLEASE have a van with sliding doors to help with carrying TWO infant car seats? Here is how we went from living paycheck to paycheck to becoming debt free.

My husband and I are both high school teachers. We make what should be a comfortable, middle-class income. Yet the cost of twins felt absolutely crushing to us. I remember thinking, “If we both work, and we can’t afford two babies, who can?” One thing that can help make finances, and therefore the rest of your life, feel less stressful is getting out of debt. Before you scoff and think “Getting out of debt is great for people who actually have some money, but it’s just not practical for me,” listen to my family’s experience.

Our experience

The first two years of my girls’ lives, our money was tight, but we still had a little bit of flexibility. We rarely ate out, but we weren’t making any major financial sacrifices. Then two things happened. The first was a blessing to us. A family member was getting rid of their Honda Odyssey, and my parents were willing to loan us money so that we could purchase the minivan. We arranged to pay my parents $200 a month until we paid back the $9,000 loan.
The second thing was that our house needed a new roof. If it’s not leaking, a roof is something that could possibly be put off for a year or two, but we had moss growing through to our ceiling, and we received several angry notices from our homeowner’s association to let us know that the moss needed to be taken care of. Two different roof cleaning companies came out to look, and both of them said the moss was bad enough that the roof needed to be replaced. They wouldn’t be able to simply clear it.

Mounting debt and how we started paying it off

Fortunately we had enough in savings to make a down payment on a new roof. We also had good enough credit to allow us to pay off the remaining balance in yet another $200 monthly installment. Feeling like we didn’t have a choice, we signed the paperwork to replace the roof, which effectively ate all of the flexibility from our budget.
With these two new payments plus a minimum monthly payment of $800 for our student loans, we were feeling serious financial stress. Fortunately it was around this time that I heard about Dave Ramsey. I started listening to his radio show, which is available as a free podcast. Then I purchased and read his book The Total Money Makeover. My older sister had taken Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace class years before, so I had heard of his name, and I knew that he spoke about living debt free, but I didn’t think it was possible for most people. When I started hearing the various stories from people on his radio show, however, I began to realize that I wasn’t “exempt” from his money principles just because we had twins or because we had a lot of student debt. We could get control of our money too.

Look at your debt

After reading his book, my first step was to get together with my husband and try to lay out our finances. I wasn’t even sure how much total debt we had! I just knew that I felt overwhelmed by it all. We started by listing out our debts, along with the minimum payments for each one. Then we looked over the most recent month’s spending so that we could get an idea of what a budget for our family would look like. After adding up our regular costs and all of our payments, we had very little “extra” money, around $200, but it was enough to start.

Pay off credit cards

First we paid off the outstanding balance on a credit card. I hadn’t even really considered the credit card until I was adding up our total debts, but the first step of getting out of debt is to not go into debt any further, so we paid the balance in full and checked this account off of the list. Then we started paying any extra money that we had onto money that we owed my parents for our van. We were gradually able to increase the amount of extra money we put toward the debt. We limited how often we went out to eat, usually only one or two times per month. We decreased the number of times per week we hit the coffee stand. We started looking for other things in our life we could eliminate or cut down on, such as going to movies in the theater. And vacations? We put those on hold.

Pay off car loan

After a little over a year, we were able to pay the total loan for the van off in full. It felt great to no longer be in debt to my family, and then we started putting the money from the van payment to our next-smallest loan, the roof. It took us another 12 months to finish paying our roof off. Again, making that final payment (plus $60 for a loan cancellation fee!) felt fantastic, and it gave me hope that one day our family will be debt free.

We continue to work on becoming completely debt free

We still have a ways to go. We owe money for our student loans. We’ve also had to pause our progress a couple of times to save money for car repairs. During those months we still make the minimum payments on our debts. Then we put the extra money that normally would have gone to the debt into our savings account until we have enough to pay for the repairs. We’re making headway. I feel so much less stress about money because I know we are paying attention to our spending and are moving toward our goal of being debt free (with the exception of our mortgage.) We’re hoping to be debt free in about two more years, and then we’ll be able to move on to other financial goals like saving for our girls’ college, adding to retirement savings, and planning a real family vacation.

When I think about our future, I feel so hopeful to know that we aren’t always going to be living at the edge of our income. Twins are expensive, but everyone can take control of their finances and reduce their stress level around money.

Ica Rewitz is a high school English teacher in Washington State. She is married to a high school physics teacher, and they have twin girls who are currently six years old. When she isn’t mothering and teaching, Ica enjoys hiking in the mountains, reading books, and writing for her blog Twins Happen.