Debt Free Journey- 3 months in

A few months ago, I posted about the dream I have had about being completely Debt Free.  At this point, we are on Dave Ramsey's Baby Step 6: Pay the House Off Early.  Earlier this year we decided to take things seriously and have been living by a tight budget and putting everything extra into payments toward the principal of our home.  

Here's our Mortgage Pay Off chart, which is a fun reminder that hangs in the corner of my kitchen.  I get to color a line in every time we hit a milestone of $4k paid down on the principal of our mortgage.  


Our journey has been encouraging so far.  It's amazing how much money we were just letting slip through the cracks, simply because we weren't driven towards a specific goal.  We have always been good at saving money, but in recent years we got relaxed with our spending.  This became especially inflated when we purchased an old house that needed work done.  And with an old house in need of renovations, we found ourselves spending more money than was typical for us.  Five and a half acres of land, meant we needed a riding lawn mower.  Major renovations on the inside of our house just to make it livable.  Etc...  So after meeting a few savings goals, I proposed the reality that we could start paying a larger amount towards the principal each month.  After we refinanced our mortgage last fall (to an unbelievably low rate of 2.75%), we started adding an extra $100 to the mortgage principal each month.  The $100 was hardly noticed by us, and after a year would equal about 1 mortgage payment extra per year.  We then upped that extra monthly payment and by my original plan we should be paid off by March of 2023.  But paying off debt is a little addicting for me, and we have done unbelievably well the past 3 months with beating our budget (not spending as much as we allotted in each budget category).  We also applied our tax refund to our principal for the month of May.  So the past couple months has been encouraging to say the least in terms of watching the principal melt down more than my original goal.  So the original goal of March 2023 is a basis, but I hope to beat that down sooner than later.  

If you're following and bringing discipline to your financial health, I commend you and wish you the best as you strive towards your own personal goals!  It's totally worth it.  And as Dave Ramsey says... "Live like no one today, so that you can live like no one tomorrow".  I discovered a place on his website that has testimonials of real people doing the "Debt Free Scream" after they finally reached their goal of freedom.  It shares how much debt they paid off, the amount of time it took and the income they were earning to reach their goal.  Such inspiring stories to listen to.  It makes me long to be in their shoes and wish it were 6 years from now (I am hoping more like 3 years from now), so I could be sharing in the victory of debt freedom.  And soon enough, I know we will be there.  But it can't come soon enough!

Stats of Redwoodshire Mortgage Pay Off-
Purchased Redwoodshire October 2013
Jan. 2016 --->started paying extra $100 each month to principal
Sept. 2016---> refinanced mortgage to 2.75% @ 14% paid off  
Jan. 2017---> mortgage principal balance @ 16.7% paid off
May 2017---> remaining mortgage @ 22.7% paid off
goal by the end of December 2017----->  Be 33.3% paid off 

We are on our way!

A Tree Swing for this little Lady of 4 years

I love making a gift for my kids when it's time to celebrate another year of their life.  It's something special I can work on and express my heart through creativity.  And it's usually something that doesn't cost me much, as I usually can find the materials around my home.  And the hand crafted nature makes it something worth keeping for years and years.  I can't recall if I made anything year one.  Year 2 was a quilted set of Upper and Lowercase alphabet letters.  Year 3 was a princess Elsa dress & a book: The Tale of Two Berries, written by the Laird and illustrated by my mother.  This year it was time to make a big girl tree swing.  I proposed the idea to the Laird and he was on board.  He searched our garage and barn for a piece of scrap wood.  He settled on a left over piece of our 7" red oak flooring.  He glued 2 small pieces of wood on the underside for added support where the ropes would go.  Then he drilled the holes, to fit the 3/4" rope we ordered. The Laird actually had the wonderful idea that I should wood burn the Letter G onto it.  I searched the internet for a decorative G and found a beautiful one.  I think printed it out.  Colored the back side with pencil lead.  Then traced the design onto the wood.  Then it was time to wood burn.  Finally I finished the swing with a coat of polyurethane.  Last weekend, we ventured out back to find a good tree with good branches.  We moved our baby swing to the same tree, so that both kids could enjoy swinging together.

I absolutely LOVE how this swing turned out.  Though the 3/4" rope was a bit thick and difficult to work with (5/8" would have probably been good enough- but the 3/4" cost less), I love the look of it.  It reminds me of a smaller version of the wooden tree swing in the live action Cinderella movie.   It's so romantic, and I feel as though every little girl should have a wooden tree swing with extra thick rope to swing and daydream upon.

Another successful handcrafted gift to speak of.  Lady Genevieve loves it (I think more than the other small gifts we purchased for her birthday)- she's a lady after my own heart.  I love hand crafted/ made gifts more than any other thing anyone could buy for me.

High fives to this laird and lady of Redwoodshire!