3 Events That Helped Us Become Completely Debt Free

2. Strive For Something

This has been an interesting one for us. We’ve always talked about the things we’ve wanted to do once we were completely debt free – including our house.

But sticking with the disciplines outlined above over the long haul is really hard. We were struggling to be as intense as we wanted with paying off our house.

So about 3 years ago I randomly got a new boss at work. She was a new manager, and let’s just say we didn’t gel.

She seemed very keen on doing things “by the book.” This isn’t a bad thing, and honestly makes a lot of sense for a first-time manager. But I was already sooooo sick of “the book”.

Rules and regulations are a part of life, but once you understand the rules, operating on the edges is where all the efficiency and productivity live.

That’s where I wanted to be.

I spent 3 months trying to figure our relationship out and it simply wasn’t working.

That happens sometime.

It’s not always a critical failure on one person’s part. Sometimes two people just don’t see eye to eye.

Of course, eventually she won, because, you know, BOSS.

I ended up losing all the project work I was passionate about to take on all the “by the book” work that sucked the life out of me.

I had 3 equally frustrated co-workers that quit within a month.

I thought maybe I needed to start looking for another job somewhere else too. But there wasn’t anything else I was really qualified for or passionate about.

Eventually, after a sad, frustrated and depressed version of myself kept coming home from work, my wife was fed up.

I really wanted to pursue something outside the corporate world. I was tired of dealing with idiots and surely all the idiots were inside corporate jobs, right? (It made perfect sense at the time.)

So my wife made me a deal. I could leave my corporate job as soon as the house was paid off. Probably not a smart choice, but it felt so right in the moment.

I immediately started praying and my wife started getting really intense about our budget, putting every spare dollar to our house payment each month.

We rediscovered our intensity for paying off the house because I was ready to start doing something more interesting with people who had brains.

Suddenly our house payment was the single barrier preventing me from doing that.

I never felt right pursuing other jobs which was incredibly confusing. I actually did a casual phone interview with one company, but nothing felt right about it.

So I stayed put.

For 3 years I bounced around the company to different departments, none of which inspired me at all.

I eventually took 3 weeks off when our third child was born. That same week I got an email with a job opportunity with another team at my company that I had heard really great things about.

So many great things, in fact, that I didn’t think I was even qualified to work with them.

Now watch this closely.

I wasn’t going to apply but my wife said I should, if for no other reason than to just practice my interviewing skills. That was definitely something I could see coming in handy.

So I applied.

The night before my interview I chose to sleep in our son’s room since he was out of town with the grandparents and new baby #3 was still waking up at all hours of the night in our bedroom. I wanted to get a full night’s sleep and be fresh for my 9am interview.

At 8:15am the next morning my wife rushes into the room and wakes me up. “Don’t you have an interview? Aren’t you supposed to be leaving?”

For some reason my alarm didn’t go off. I rushed to the shower, barely got dressed and actually made it to work 5 minutes before my interview started.

The interview went fine, but it also solidified my impression that I wasn’t what they were looking for. It was just a good practice interview.

Imagine my surprise when I got a call from HR asking me back for a second interview. Yea! “More practice,” I thought.

I actually woke up on time for the second interview and met with the woman who would be my boss’s boss. She was great and definitely didn’t fit the corporate executive mold I was used to. She hated “the book” as much as I did.

I liked her immediately.

We chatted for over an hour and departed pleasantly, but I still thought I was just practicing my interviewing skills.

A week later HR calls to tell me that the job was mine if I wanted it! There was very little negotiation because I didn’t care about money. I just wanted to work for this team that understood how to get really great work done.

That week I started sitting with my new team, and discovered they had been doing the things I was trying to do 3 years ago with my old team…except they actually had leaders and executives that believed in what they were doing.

They were incredibly comfortable pushing bureaucratic rules aside when necessary to do really great work.

I had found a job and team I could really love!

One. Week. Later. We paid off our house.

It turns out my 3 years of frustration in my job wasn’t a sign that I needed to find a new job. It was simply a mechanism that got us to focus our efforts where they needed to be.

And it worked. We paid off our house in just 7 years and 4 months.

Was that a really fun time? Not at all.

Were we focused on a long-term goal for our future? Not really. We just wanted our mortgage payment to disappear.

But it worked. It was the thing that provided us motivation and the ability to focus and make sacrifices.

It doesn’t really matter what your goal is, but you have to have something you’re striving for. The more you want it, the better.

3. Look at the Bigger Picture

So here we sit completely debt free, and me in a job I really enjoy.

The whole time we thought we were paying off our mortgage so I could quit my job and go do something else. Now we realize we have no idea what the future really holds for us.

But we are certain that there is a bigger plan for us that we are completely unaware of – and that’s both exciting and scary at the same time.

We’ve also been talking to the kids regularly about getting the house paid off and how that was a big goal for us.

One Saturday we took them out to a local pizza place with games, rides and go carts to celebrate this big accomplishment as a family.

Being a Saturday night, it was quite crowded.

As we were sitting at a table in one of the big rooms with giant TV’s everywhere playing cartoons, our 5-year-old son looks around and says to almost no one at all, “Wow! A lot of people paid off their house.”

It took us a while to comprehend his innocence in thinking that everyone was there because they had paid off their house – that paying off your house is just a natural thing that apparently a bunch of people do.

Not all homes are created equal.

Of course, one day we hope he’ll understand that life is so much more than just trying to live in a nice house with nice things.

We do have a nice house, and eventually we will have some nice things. But we are determined that none of those things will ever have us.

“When God can do what He will with a man, the man may do what he will with the world.”
– George MacDonald (1824-1905)

What have been your biggest motivators along your financial journey? Was it a person? An event? Maybe a goal you’re striving for? Let me know in the comments what keeps you heading in the right direction.