Before we start sharing the details of our story, it seems appropriate that we should first introduce ourselves, and give you a little background into who we are and why we started The Frugal Source.
We are a family of six; we’re a mom and dad with 4 teenagers, several rescue pets, and some backyard chickens thrown into the mix just for fun. We live in the Midwest of the United States and are a one income family. There are many reasons for this, and we will explore each in its turn as we share our journey.
We came to this whole debt free living idea much much later than most of those you see within this community. To be frank, it was very intimidating to read post after post of people who were retiring in their 30s and 40s and us, with most of those days in the rear view mirror, and here we are just starting to figure this whole thing out.
We discovered Dave Ramsey several years ago and followed his baby steps, with our own spin. We have been debt free, except for our mortgage, for about 2 years now. We were happy to not have any consumer debt, but still felt the mortgage hanging over our heads. About a year ago, we really cranked up the effort around paying off our mortgage, and we’ve knocked another $30,000 off the principal. Even so, with the remaining balance at $162,000, it still looks and feels very overwhelming. In fact, looking at that number makes us downright mad. IF, we had done anything financially correct in our younger days, we would be debt free and be sitting pretty with regard to savings. But we didn’t; we made almost every… single… mistake you can possibly make with money.
We are here to share our mistakes, what we have learned from them, and the frugal habits we have implemented to help dig ourselves out. In short, we hope that we can be a cautionary tale to others, encourage them in their own journeys, and prove that it is NEVER too late to start working toward financial independence.