We are debt-free today!
And you are looking at an expensive bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I brought back from Chile. It is empty. We drank it last Friday and it was outstanding wine.
Even greater was the occasion – John and I had decided to share this bottle when we are consumer debt-free.
Last Friday, February 1st 2013, at 9.32 am John sent me a text saying ‘done and dusted’.
We paid off £100,000 worth of debt in three years…well, three years and three weeks to be exact.
How did we do it? How did we pay off debt so much debt?
This is how!
(I also wrote a book about it – ‘Never Bet on Red: How to Pay Off Debt and Live Debt Free‘ – check it out for guidance and inspiration.)
#1. We consolidated our debt (yes, we went against the grain and expert advice)
Debt consolidation is not always a bad idea and could be useful.
Our debt was on seven different credit cards and two of them from MBNA (ie BoA) had jacked up their interest. Considering the interest and the logistic nightmare of managing so many cards we approached our bank for a consolidation loan.
We had been with our bank for decades and are excellent customers. During the first year of debt repayment, we single-handedly kept one junior employee in a job from the interest alone.
Hence, our bank was very good and we took out an £80K ($126K) consolidation loan secured against the house at 7.7% interest.
On January 4, 2010, we had a consolidation loan to run for ten years, approximately £16K on credit cards and an overdraft.
Ten years! Talking ultra-marathons; though at the time it felt to me more like a prison sentence.
#2. Learned about money and then some
Most people go through life not understanding what money is and how it works. Some don’t even mind.
I am not one of those – I believe ignorance is an infliction to be eradicated.
The first thing I did after the emotional crisis abided and rationality returned, was to start learning. I learned from websites and blogs, self-help books and academic literature on finance and economics.
We found that our lives were substantially over-insured with the wrong insurance, our house insurance cost twice what it should, car insurance could be trimmed and we checked all our utility bills. Most recently we more than halved our water bill by moving to a water meter.
We didn’t stop with the learning and we acted. We tried things, when they didn’t work we modified them and when this failed we thought of and developed completely different approaches.
The Money Principle was a result of, and a platform for documenting our learning and experimentation.
#3. Our income took off like…
Spending less than you earn is a well-established mantra in personal finance. At its most basic is a very simple matter of first-grade arithmetic.
Where it gets exciting is the implementation.
We did it as a combination of rationalising our spending and increasing our income.
For years, I mistakenly believed that what we bring in every month – my salary – is not enough for us to live on and we could not survive without John’s consultancy pay. Since it was the consultancy failure that got us in trouble I thought that we cannot make it.
When we looked at our spending we realised that we can live on our monthly income even including the close to £1,000 ($1,577) monthly debt payments.
We needed to change some things, true. We changed our insurance. I stopped having so many coffees and over-priced, nutritionally challenged meals at work. We started cooking and eliminated waste. Hey, presto! We not only could live on our regular income but also put £500 ($788) aside every month.
This meant that everything earned above our monthly income could go on debt repayments. When consultancy picked up again we used it all to pay off the loan. The Money Principle started making a bit of money – it all went on the loan. Gosh, even the £500 per month we were saving for a rainy day went on the loan – paying this loan off was the rainy day.
And in case you are wondering, we had such large accumulated historical losses in our company that the taxman didn’t get a bite! Well if we hadn’t had the losses, we wouldn’t have been in debt but that’s another story.
And it was so satisfying to see it go down!
#4. We had a strategy to become debt-free
You don’t have to be very observant to have noticed that the strategy was ‘throw everything at the loan’.
But there was order in our debt-busting frenzy and this came through realising two things.
First, no payment is too small to have an effect. Most people waste their lives waiting for the ‘big break’ – they wait for this big promotion, for the inspiration to write an award-winning book and for the large windfall of money. But in all matters the old adage of long-distance running training still applies:
What makes you fit is not the seven miles you run on the weekend but the one mile you run every day.
Translated this means that even a large debt starts crumbling when you make regular payments, even small ones.
The largest payment to the loan we made was the last one at £8,430 ($13,300); the smallest payment was £4.87 ($7.67).
Our second realisation was about the tipping point of the debt payment. When you start paying debt off – and for quite a long time after that – you pay much more interest than principal.
Just as an example, during the first year we made 12 payments of £956 ($1,507) to our loan or £11,472. How much lower was our loan do you think?
Are you ready for it? Our loan was £3,950 ($6,225) lower – the rest went on paying interest.
To pay off debt fast you should race to the tipping point when you start paying more principal than interest. Once there, the repayment stops being a Sisyphus task and the ‘stone rolls easily downhill’.
#5. We never felt deprived
One of the best things we ever did was to set up our ‘so worth it’ fund early on.
To remind you of the rules, this is a sum of money (in our case £300/$473) that went into a separate account and was specifically designated for having fun. It must be used fully every month.
This fund kept us sane – having some fun in our lives made us focus more completely and calmly on the rest of what we had to do.
During the last three years, we went skiing and spent time in the sun (we used our apartment in Sofia as a base so we could get a good price). And I could have my expensive haircuts and chase marathons. We felt happy and positive!
#6. We had a bit of good luck
In this kind of mammoth task, a bit of luck is always welcome. In our case, it came as a substantial payment from MBNA (the Ombudsman judged in our favour) and a bit of backdated payment of child benefit (altogether about £13,000/$20,500).
We are debt-free: final thoughts
…I don’t have to tell you that John and I feel ecstatic to be debt-free.
I am not sure whether I have ever felt as proud of myself as I feel today. Because from now on we can start building wealth seriously, consistently and without the pressure of paying off debt.
And you know what? You can become debt free as well.
Wooooooooooooooooooooop!!!!!!
You know how proud I am of you two – best friends and the best news ever. Never doubted for a moment you would get there and I totally stoked it has now happened.
Hugs to you both
M’wah!!!!!
Well done Maria! Just by becoming debt free it must put you in the ‘high wealth bracket’ straight away, compared to the millions who are treading water or sinking each day. You’ve proven it can be done, good for you!
That is brilliant – happy debt free days to you both.
Fantastic news! I think that bottle of wine was well and truly deserved!
What fabulous, fabulous achievement ! Well done you two 🙂
WOOHOOO! 🙂
Really great job done, hats off to you. I am still paying my house debt and I know how hard it is to maintain your family and pay the debt at the same time. Moreover, we had a baby last year and it was the hardest time of my life. Then my wife had to take job after that some pressure has been released.
Many congratulations, that is a truly impressive sum to pay off! All the best for the future.
Hey Maria – congratulations, it must be an awesome feeling 🙂
Wonderful news – a phenomenal inspiration to those of us still walking the walk. Enjoy your new debt free life!
Congratulations to you both, it is truly wonderful to hear you have achieved your goal, and in jig time too. This gives me hope and faith that I can make my own dreams come true.
Have you been nominated for MADS?
@Helen: Great to see you around again! No Helen, I have not been nominated for MADS.
Well done ot both of you! It’s not easy, I know, but you have shared a great lesson in this post :
no payment is too small to have an effect.
You know me, SCD (spreadsheet compulsive disorder) and my discovery of that truth moved onto :
no earning is too small to have an effect
I’m so pleased for you!
Pat: Yep, absolutely correct – no earning is small enough either. In fact, people are much more successful increasing their income by building many smaller streams that one large one. Probably because with smaller streams of income we can cope with more risk and move faster from thing to thing – important this is.
Nice work and inspiring!
My goal was to pay off my rental mortgage within 5 years, but that will have to wait since I no longer work.
This is such an amazing achievement , thank you for sharing and inspiring others to change their lives too, you’ve certainly helped and encouraged me when things were grim
Congrats!! That’s really impressive to pay off that much debt so quickly! You should treat yourself to a 2nd bottle of the wine now 😉
Congratulations! That is a lot of money to do in just 3 years. Since I am retiring in 5 years, I am paying off my mortgage and car loan in roughly 4 years.
Super!!!!! Folks reading your blog will take note that you live what you list and it works!
Congd ratulations Maria, what great news !
woohooo!!! that is awesome, congratulations! MBNA raise my rates a couple of years back, same thing, they wouldn’t justify why, now I take them once in a while for 0% balance transfers, nothing else. 7.7% looks pretty high to secure against a house but I imagine in case of default the mortgage would come first so it makes sense. And definitely better than MBNA’s double digits!
@Pauline – complain to the Financial Ombudsman, as long as the card is a UK-based card it shouldn’t matter that you are French and living in the back of beyond! It took ages but eventually MBNA coughed up over £8k. Do this – MBNA = Bank of America which borrowed $45billion from Uncle Sam and repaid it in little over a year! This is how they did it – by fleecing their customers!
The balance transfer scam is of course profitable to them. By increasing their loan book, for which they don’t have to have all the money, they are increasing their assets which enables them to lend even more. It’s a merry-go-round. They charge 3% or so as a fee plus of course there is interest on that fee! If you just pay the transferred balance down while it is 0% and then stooze it elsewhere, the actual cost for a year is more like 3% plus 20% of 3% say for a typical 20% card = 3.6% (a detailed calculation is more complex).
On the secured loan question, (a) it was pretty nearly the lowest available at that time (winter 2010) when credit was very tight, (b) we could get it because of our long history with the bank and (c) as we repaid in such a short time, the interest does not make too much difference. Interest rates in the UK have come down a little since then – basic loans are now about 6.9%.
Anyway it’s all over now!
Congratulations Maria. The relief must have been as immense as that initial debt figure. How far you have come. I remember how difficult you found it all in the beginning But putting your wit, humour and intelligence towards resolving the problem has helped you to inspire many. Great things come to those who dont wait but roll up their sleeves and get in with it. Now on to your next challenges.
Cheri
Maria, congratulations to you both! I saw El congratulating you on facebook, so had to have a hunt around, and I’m so happy to hear this news. Lots of good reminders in this post, as well as the result of your own hard work.
xxx
Absolutely brilliant. Well done.
Sue xx
Well done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If
Well done Maria and John. Many congratulations!!!
Very inspirational! Massive congratulations!
WOOOOOHOOOO!! CONGRATS!! 😀
This is the best news I have heard in a long time. Congrats.
Hearty congratulations at such a stupendous achievement!
Ironically, given all you have learnt as a result of being in debt and financially educating yourself you are probably going to end up wealthier than you ever could have imagined due to the skills you have developed and will now continue to use.
I look forward to seeing the new chapter in your lives…let us know how the wealth-building goes! xxx
@SunFlower: You are absolutely right – this debt was probably a good thing all around (it didn’t feel like it when I heard about it). And, yes, we probably will end up much wealthier than we would have without having been through this experience. Will keep you posted!
Didn’t doubt you’d beat this for a second…
but… doing it in 3 years instead of 10 is a massive achievement
Well done both of you – now go one, one little treat is allowed – have the other bottle of wine!!!!!!!!!!
TMIF x
Huge Congrats to you!! That is amazing! I love that you said no payment is too small, such an important point. Anytime I make a debt payment it feels good psychologically.
Congrats Maria! Great job! That is an incredible amount of money that you have paid of in 3 yrs, now all of that can do directly into savings and you will be $157k richer in three yrs.
Wow! You just made my afternoon. I love seeing friends reach their goals (or in this case beat their hurdles so they can chase their goals….). Cheers!
Congratulations on your accomplishment! You have me so motivated to take care of our $100k debt now.
@Khaleef: Go for it! It feels great when finished but what I value most is the sense of empowerment.
WOW!!! This is truly inspirational. I have been keeping up with Elaine and her merry mob and followed her link to your page, Maria. Congratulations to you both, may you and the rest of us continue to be educated, motivated and inspired. I’ll get there one day. You mark my words.
Kind regards and I wish you continued success
Terri (aka dirtyepic)
@Terri: I am sure you will, Terri. And if there is anything we can help with, just give us a shout.
Wow! Well done. Your perserverance shows that it really just takes “sticking to it” to make HUGE things happen. Outside of the awesome wine, any other celebrating in order?
Congratulations! It’s amazing what can be done when you start analyzing your spending. Well done!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!How does it feel?? Is it still a surreal feeling? I can’t wait to write a similar post…a few years from now!
Yep, it is surreal. Was telling John that it will probably feel real when there is no large payment next month.
Absolutely massive congratulations to the two of you, it must be a great feeling!
Congratulations! You give the rest of us hope.
I love to read stories like these, congratulations. Now you can breathe much better I bet. Having Debt is just suffocating.
You guys must feel so good! Congratulations on accomplishing this! I know I felt so proud of my efforts when I became debt free and I still am.
I had to come back and re-read your story! Now that we have decided to go “public” with the details of our debt, I am hoping that we can accelerate our current efforts!
@Khaleef: Go for it! But you have to stay focused and go after it with all you have and than some! Wish you all the best with it and keep me posted.
I’m a bit late but just found your site. Congrats on this and great breakdown for those looking to crawl out of the debt hole! We paid off our debt towards the end of 2013 and it felt amazing as well!
I’m so proud of you, that you paid off such a big credit. That’s great.
Well I was reading this with interest until I read that you had £300 a month for ‘fun’ – what a joke !!
If you had £300 for fun, you were hardly struggling were you !!
I don’t have ANY ‘fun’ money at all – in fact not enough to pay my way. Now THAT’s struggling !!
@Wean: You know, Wean, having an ‘I’m so worth it’ budget is very important to be able to pay off your debt. It doesn’t have to be as large as ours – it can be £20; or even £10. When you put it aside, it makes you feel different, it make you feel in control.
As to the struggling, I am all for avoiding as much of it as possible. Deprivation and struggling make people resentful and their lives empty. Also, you may have noticed that while paying down the debt we did start earning/making much more than when we started.
You don’t have to struggle either. If you wish, send me a private message and we can work together to figure out how to do that.
Wowzers! Thanks for sharing such an inspiring story with us Maria! It is amazing what we can do when we put our minds to it. Likewise, you all are a living example of the importance of developing a healthy relationship with your bank manager. As a personal bank manager can play a huge role in getting that “stamp of approval” when it comes time to applying for a consolidation loan, line of credit, etc. In our modern-day society, it is much more convenient to simply make deposits and conduct all our transactions online nowadays and thereby miss out on that added personal touch and history of experiences.
Lastly, just like Maria, it is imperative to increase your financial IQ and devise a strategy in the form of a budget or financial plan. Unless you put your money (spending habits) down on paper or a computer screen, it will just keep disappearing and causing one to wonder where did it go. Hmm (thinking)…