As of today, we are debt free.
Done.
Zip.
Zero.
The only things we owe on are the two trucks and the house mortgage. We have no other payments due.
It's really hard to wrap my mind around it, to be honest. We've been focused on paying off the credit cards for so long, over two years; basically for as long as we've been married.
We didn't have what Dave Ramsey would call "gazelle-like intensity" because if we did, we would have sold the HD, which is just unthinkable. Also, we kept adding on to the credit cards from time to time, like with the purchase of the TV and the two major trips we've taken since moving to Kentucky. That really slowed us down.
I've been syphoning off huge amounts of Keith's paycheck each month, sometimes shaving us so close that Keith would get discouraged and start thinking that he didn't make a good enough salary. That's not true, he makes a splendid salary, we were living way, way under it.
But we got here. Here we are. At the tipping point, where we can stop digging ourselves out and start building our future.
Keith got his sound system as a reward, I'm going to get an ipod for mine, because I want it when I run. Because I do run now, straight up. I walk to warm up, and then I'm off. Not so much like a race horse, or even like a hare. Maybe like a camel- you know, like a slow and steady lope. And I keep on doing that, on and on and on.
I used to time my walk intervals for the uphill parts of my route. I did that quite shamelessly. It seems to be when starting to jog, the hardest and most essential part is building confidence, and it's a huge confidence builder when just starting out, to jog steadily down hill and break to walk uphill.
But I've been steadily adding on uphills to my jog route and today I added them all in and extended my route and I did it. Even the god awful, steep uphill climb from a ravine that Kentucky is so rife with, the one that comes at the very end of my route. I made it all the way up that, jogging. I was swearing too, I was dropping the f-bomb with almost every foot fall. I hope no one over heard me.
I am not the same person that I was two years ago. It almost scares me. So many things are going well. A part of me is half crouching, waiting for the Heavens to hit me savagely over the head with a big stick. I think Keith feels the same way too, which is why he so fervently and genuinely thanks God every night for everything we've been given.
We both know what it's like to live with very little, just hanging on. I remember one time I couldn't afford to buy trash liners. I'll never forget that feeling. It was food or trash liners. So,until my next paycheck, I had to throw my trash directly into the bin.
It's such a small thing, right? But it's huge when you realize you can't afford it.
Maybe I've been getting by for so long, the prospect of being happy and secure feels oddly frightening. I'll have to think about that more.
