Hello, we’d like to introduce you to an unofficial member of the Royal Family . . .
*Ahem* this is one of our Royal Carriages. This is our truck.
Well, it hasn’t always been our truck. First, it belonged to the Queen Mum and the King Pops. But then in the midst of our journey to become debt free, we had a vehicle choke and then pass on to another life {read to here to learn the best way to rid yourself of a deceased vehicle that’s too expensive to repair}. And the Queen Mum and King Pops let us have the truck.
Now, let’s just say the truck, it has some character. Obviously it has plenty of miles on it and some minor paint issues. And its most notable charming feature is that in order to get out of the driver’s side, you have to roll the window down (rrrrrrrrrrrrr), open it from the outside (kerchunk), and then roll the window back up again (rrrrrrrrrrrrr). The windshield wipers work . . . most of the time.
Plenty of charm, plenty of character, but at least the the truck gets us where we need to go {the King of Free drives it primarily}. But you know what the truck doesn’t have plenty of? PAYMENTS.
Back in the summer of 2009, we crossed an item off our debt list. Never again, will we have a car payment. Eventually we will need to buy a new car {although we’ll be satisfied with the vehicles we have until they no longer are satisfied with us} but we’ll purchase it with cash. Even our baby emergency fund of $1000 could buy us something to get the job done if we really were in desperate need.
Vehicles deprecate in value so quickly that we’ve made a commitment to be satisfied with something that is safe, comfortable for our family, and will get us from point A to point B. Because of that, we own our vehicles. They don’t own us.
By the way, 90% of the world doesn’t own a car. It’s amazing to me that we’ve been blessed with two.
$114,665.76 paid off since April 2, 2008. ~6 months to go. Come on people, get excited. I’ve got some debt free party planning to begin!