Monday, January 14, 2013

The Question of Why


One woman paid off Christmas layaway accounts for complete strangers.  What would you do if you had money instead of debt?


Getting out of debt is hard.  If it were easy, everyone would do it.  When my husband and I first started following the Dave Ramsey plan, I often heard him say that knowing why you’re getting out of debt is important.  I didn’t fully understand what he meant until recently.  For the first year that we followed the debt snowball plan, my husband and I were paying off debt to gain some peace and simplicity in our lives.  We didn’t really articulate this out loud to each other; it was more of a quiet understanding.  

But then we got down to just my federal student loan, the payment of which is under $400 per month.  At that point, I could sense my motivation waning a bit.  Why did we have to pay off this loan so quickly, considering the interest is under 3% and the payment is such a tiny portion of our income?  We were already experiencing peace and simplicity, since we didn’t have a lot of debt payments anymore.  Couldn’t we just put my loan on the back-burner, while at the same time swearing off any future debt?