Saturday 24th July 2021

Bob still wasn’t keen to reveal our total debt, so I basically kept bothering him to find out. Not ideal I know.

Here’s what he, begrudgingly, told me:

Credit Card 1	$384
Credit Card 2	$1330
Car Loan	$16,634
Total:	$18,348

I was totally calm, didn’t fly off the handle and told him that it’s not horrendous and we could use our Florida savings ($23,372) to clear that all off. He totally wasn’t happy about that and clearly articulated (in a nice way) that that isn’t going to happen. Bob feels that the debt is 100% his responsibility. Just an FYI, Bob suffers from depression but is on medication. Unfortunately, he has very low self-esteem – even though he is awesome! No matter how much people tell him that, he just doesn’t believe it. I am not sure if this has anything to do with his negative view on money, but I just thought I’d throw it out there. 

The Ramsey Debt Snowball calculator says that we should be debt free by next March, I think, if we are both on the same page then we can pay off all the debt by Christmas! We would just need to be focused on spending less than we earn and if we can get some side hustles going, then that would be amazing!

Sounds easy right, however the tricky word in that paragraph is “if”. As you will appreciate by now, Bob is not on board with all this. I am beginning to realize that he’s happy to plod along in debt. At the moment, the debt is costing him over $1000 a month in repayments – can you image how rich he is going to feel when he has no repayments – what a pay rise he will get! 

I am wondering if I should ask him to try out the Baby Steps for three months, we could make a serious dent in that debt and get some momentum going. I really need Bob to listen to the audio book The Total Money Makeover so he can get a clear picture of what this is all about – it may even convince him to join our bank accounts and use the savings to clear the debt… you would think it’s a no brainer right??

I think it would be wise to wait a couple of days before I bring this up again. 

Stayed tuned for more news and in the meantime, please leave your top tips and encouragement in the comments below! 

Thanks and God bless, 

June xxx