{"id":11630,"date":"2016-07-16T09:49:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T13:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=11630"},"modified":"2016-07-16T09:54:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T13:54:33","slug":"debt-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=11630","title":{"rendered":"Debt Free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mortburnblog-300x272.jpg?resize=300%2C272\" alt=\"Mortburnblog\" width=\"300\" height=\"272\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-11631\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mortburnblog.jpg?resize=300%2C272&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mortburnblog.jpg?resize=150%2C136&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mortburnblog.jpg?resize=331%2C300&amp;ssl=1 331w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Mortburnblog.jpg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Today my spouse and I are celebrating a major milestone.  As of today, we are&#8230;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n&#8230;completely debt-free.  We paid off the only debt we had yesterday, the mortgage on our house.  It feels great to have done that.<\/p>\n<p>How did we do it?  Financial discipline.<\/p>\n<p>We are generally frugal, but we do not deprive ourselves.  The general financial principles guiding ours lives includes:<\/p>\n<p>* We do not spend money we do not have.  If we want something expensive &#8212; like my Harley or a new SUV &#8212; we save up for it and buy it when we have sufficient savings to pay for it.<\/p>\n<p>* We have a budget and stick to it.  We carefully determine what expenses we will have for home maintenance, food, utilities, and fun. (Yeah, fun.)  We budget our expenses in line with our income.<\/p>\n<p>* We have a robust &#8220;emergency fund&#8221; so that in the event we had a major downturn, such as me losing my job or we&#8217;re faced with a huge unplanned expense such as having to replace our air conditioner compressor, we have funds stashed away that we can tap for such emergencies.  The experts recommend having a minimum emergency fund to carry you for at least six months.  Our emergency fund could carry us for 18 months since our monthly expenses do not include debt service.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Fico-300x184.jpg?resize=300%2C184\" alt=\"Fico\" width=\"300\" height=\"184\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-11632\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Fico.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Fico.jpg?resize=150%2C92&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>* We do not carry balances on credit cards.  While we use credit cards (often necessary for on-line transactions as well as for large purchases), we pay the credit card bill in full each month when due.  That&#8217;s why each of our Fico scores are a perfect 850. Can&#8217;t get better than that! (Also, we have never been late with any payments or had any defaults.)<\/p>\n<p>* We have relatively few credit cards &#8212; two each.  That&#8217;s enough.<\/p>\n<p>* Our preferred lifestyle of eating meals that I prepare every day at home and not eating at restaurants saves a lot of dough (pardon the pun.)  Also, we each save at least $1,000 per year by not having a smartphone that comes with an expensive data plan.  We do not need or want one of those things that I call a &#8220;wallet-sucker.&#8221; Just think of the boots I can get instead? (giggle)<\/p>\n<p>So today we are celebrating being completely debt-free!<\/p>\n<p>Life is short:  have financial discipline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today my spouse and I are celebrating a major milestone. As of today, we are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}