Paying CASH for a new driveway and porch!

If you have read any of my blogs or know us personally, you probably realize that we made some serious changes last November 2013. We read the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and everything he said in that book clicked with both of us. The stories were inspiring and we knew we wanted to live a life of debt freedom. The only problem was that in June 2013 we purchased a 2011 GMC Terrain for me and in September 2013 a truck for Barry, which quickly increased our debt by $40,000! Whoops!

((We are in the early stages of a plan to cut this debt in half.. check back for a blog post about that next month!))

Anyways, in November 2014, we started our Debt Snowball with over $68,000 in debt that we wanted to tackle by July 2015. This would require sacrifice, commitment, and lots of team work, but we were ready for the challenge! Our plan changed slightly in February/March 2014 when we knew we needed to update our warn and weathered driveway and sidewalk. We were hoping to push this off until we were debt free, but Old Man Winter had a different game plan. As much as we both, I hated it, we had to put our debt snowball on hold for a little more than 2 months to save up the cash to pay for the project.

On Monday, May 12th, our old driveway was hauled away and anew driveway and porch were put in! It took 10+ men and a full  day of work to complete this project... along with several neighbors stopping by to check out what all the noise was about ;)

 

 On Saturday, May 17th, we went to the bank to pull the money we needed out of our savings. It was such a large amount that they took us into a small room in the back to count it privately. It was a great feeling to know that we had worked and saved enough money to pay for this project in cash. 

Since completing this project, we are back on our debt snowball! My student loan is quickly vanishing and should be gone by the end of the summer! :) 

The finished project

How are your spring projects coming along? We are happy to be done and looking forward to enjoying the summer on our new porch and beautiful backyard!

- Sarah