What Does Life Look Like After 1.5 Years Debt Free?

Well, we've been gone for awhile on the blog.  Where have we been?  Living life.  We thought it might be a good time to start back up and update on what our life is like now post debt free.  The first thing to share is that we accomplished our dream vacation of going to Maui over last summer.  It was two of the most incredible weeks of our marriage and was definitely the most fitting way for us to celebrate being debt free.  This was our light at the end of the tunnel.  Best of all, we paid for the trip up front with cash and did not go back into debt!

Much warmer climate in Maui, so I didn't have to pack my grey Under Armour sweater!  This pic was taken at the Old Lahaina Luau.  It's not the cheapest luau in town, but it's definitely worth the value if you're looking to do one of these while in Hawaii.  https://www.oldlahainaluau.com/  

I'll be honest, even though we had already paid off all of our debt by Christmas last year, it didn't truly feel like we were done until after we got back from the Hawaii trip.  When we got back home, Emily looked at me and said, "Well, what's next?"  I don't think either of us had the answer at that time.

Here's what came next:

The first and most exciting is that we are expecting a baby boy this October.   We also bought a house!   It has been a big 2016 so far for the Adler’s.

How does our life look now that we paid off our debt?  

Well, we are still living on a budget.   We still use the most unimpressive spreadsheet that you may have seen in one of our older posts.  Emily, still looks at the budget notebook (handwritten, yeah we’re old school) every morning.  You may think that it would be easy for us with all that we've accomplished.   However, we have found that, by adding a house, we have to stick to the principles that got us here.  Honestly, that’s not been quite so easy for us.   

We are actually not debt free anymore.   We now have house debt.  While this is not bad debt, it has changed our budget.  We are also preparing for the arrival of our son.  As the parents out there could probably tell us, there is no way to prepare for the awesome experience of having children.  However, we do know that there will now be new bills to pay with a growing family.   

We have found that, in order to continue the life we want, there needs to be structure. We cannot simply say "yes" to everything. We do still eat out, shop, travel, . . but we also still budget for those things. Being debt-free is a way of life and not a short-term class.  If we did not hit this reality check we could very easily fall back into pitfalls of overspending.

We hope that you are experiencing the freedom of a debt free life.  If you’re not we can still say that it is totally worth every sacrifice it takes to get there.  We are now back on that journey again and can’t wait to share it with our son.

In Christ,

Bryant and Emily