I mentioned in my 2013 recap post that we had recently ticked off the major financial goal of paying off my student loans. HOORAY! I received a few emails asking questions about how we did this, so I thought it would be a perfect topic for our first Marvelous Money post of the new year!

Let me make the requisite disclaimer here that this is simply me sharing my experience. I’m also assuming that you’re starting from a place of paying all of your bills on time. Debt can be complicated and scary, so if you’re in over your head, I would highly recommend seeking the advice of a financial professional.

I wanted to start by briefly addressing why paying off debt is a worthy goal. With it being the New Year, a lot of people are talking about this right now (which is awesome!), but if paying off debt is just something that sounds good, it’s easy to lose heart when you’re slogging through the often long and tedious process. There’s power in understanding the why. Remember that aside from reducing the amount you’ll spend in interest over your lifetime, the real goal of paying off debt is to move one step closer to financial freedom — and when you’re financially free, you have more independence, more security, and more options in almost every part of your life.

Let’s begin! I’m going to start with a little background on our situation, and then share a few techniques we’ve used over the last four years. From the beginning of 2010 (shortly after we graduated) we’ve had five financial goals. We tackled them roughly in this order, though all have been ongoing:

1. Fully funding our emergency fund
2. Fully funding our wedding contribution
3. Fully funding a house down payment
4. Paying off my student loans (3)
5. Paying off our car loans (2)

We’ve never had credit card debt. Our focus (and dollars) have shifted over time, but here’s a rough breakdown from year to year:

2010: Extra money went toward wedding and emergency funds (minimum payments on students loans, no car payments).
2011: Extra money went toward wedding and emergency funds (minimum payments on student loans and minimum payment on car loan number one, added halfway through the year). In the last two months we doubled the car payment.
2012: Completed wedding and emergency funds and transferred that monthly amount to a down payment fund. Added a new car payment but did not increase the total amount spent on cars by cutting back car payment number one to minimum (see 2011). Increased one of three student loan payments and paid off that loan by the end of the year.
2013: Completed down payment and transferred that monthly amount to student loans. Increased student loan amount again later in the year to pay both off.
2014: Transferred entire amount to car loans, which will both be paid off by May.

Aside from sticking to a budget, here are a few of the techniques we used:

Schedule payments in advance.
Sign up online for a monthly auto-debit for each of your accounts so that you’re never late with or forget a payment. Make it automatic – you won’t miss it as much as you think.

Feel the pinch.
Every time our budget expanded, we chose to allocate the extra dollars toward debt reduction. Raise at work? Going toward debt. Bonus? Going toward debt. EFM profits? Going toward debt. Sometimes in the last few years we looked at each other and were like, why do we feel poor?? But then we reminded ourselves that we were living at a lower standard of living by CHOICE. If you’re paying off debt and are not feeling the pinch in your lifestyle, you almost certainly have room to cut back and increase your payments.

Pay more than the minimum amount.
If you’re feeling the pinch you are likely already doing this, but it’s worth stating again: pay more than the regular monthly amount. Annoyingly, banks will often make this difficult to do (you might have to talk to a representative or mail in a form instead of doing it online), but persevere! After all, they don’t want you to stop paying them interest :) At times, we were paying more than twelve times the required monthly payment on certain debts using the debt snowball. Which leads us to…

Roll the snowball.
The debt snowball is simple, but it is by far the most important technique we used to pay off our debt early. The basic idea is to pay the minimum amount on all of your debts except one and then throw all of your other available resources at that one. Once that debt is paid, immediately move the payment for that debt toward another and so on until all of the debts are paid. You can follow the general outline of how we did this above. Dave Ramsey suggests starting with the debt with the smallest dollar amount and moving toward the largest dollar amount; other experts recommend starting with the debt with the highest interest rate and moving toward the lowest interest rate or considering the taxability. We used a combination of these strategies. As long as you’re working aggressively toward your goal, I don’t think you can go wrong.

Track your progress.
I kept a Google Doc spreadsheet that listed our debts, the current amount we paid per month on each, the outstanding total of each, and the month the last full payment was scheduled. Every time a payment processed, I’d go in and update the spreadsheet. It was extremely motivating to see everything shrink over time!

Two final thoughts:

1. Work with urgency, BUT.
I am all for paying down debt aggressively. However, as in almost every other area of my life, I believe that a dose of moderation is healthy. Throughout this process John and I have made decisions that not all experts would agree with, but that we are comfortable with because they were thoughtfully made. For example, we chose to save for our wedding instead of putting that extra money toward a debt payment. We also have taken several trips together over the last few years, money which could have gone toward paying a debt.

I hesitate to even include this because I don’t want it taken out of context or for anyone to think that you can be jetting to exotic locations every month (or even every year!) and still be making aggressive progress on your debt, but y’all are sophisticated people. Balancing on one hand the idea of “living like no one else so you can live like no one else” and on the other, the reality that life is uncertain and your days are not guaranteed, is difficult, but very necessary.

2. Think about what’s next — tell your money where to go.
As we approach the end of our debt snowball, we’ve been thinking about how we want to allocate that money once it’s available. We are still deciding, but we’re currently planning to use some of it to begin building up a car fund so that our next car purchase (hopefully a few years from now) will be in cash.

Once you find yourself in this position, by all means, go ahead and use some of that money for something fun! (And feel free to dream about it beforehand as motivation!) But remember you also have a great opportunity at this juncture, and the potential to build a firm foundation for your financial future — one where you speak about debt only in the past tense. You’ve already conditioned yourself (probably for several years) to live without a considerable amount of your take-home pay, and so instead of increasing your consumption, why not put some of it toward other financial goals? (Might I suggest retirement or an emergency fund?) The best part? This time, instead of paying interest, you’ll be gaining interest. And that, my friends, is pretty marvelous.

I would love to hear: Is paying off debt something you’re working toward? Where are you in the process? Are you using the debt snowball?

P.S. Want some more encouragement? My friend Nancy and her husband Will have an amazing story of paying off their house in 32 months. Read it in five parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Happy New Year, friends! I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that I’m in the middle of recovering from a cold, which doesn’t help with the “fresh start” feeling, but we’re laying low and making the best of it. I really enjoyed looking back at 2013 a few days ago, and now it’s time to look ahead!

Y’all know I love me some goals, but let’s back up for a moment. The reason that I set goals — big goals, small goals — is to help me move closer to the person I want to be and the life I want to lead. In the past few years, I’ve used a combination of goal types in this pursuit:

Daily goals. You can see my daily goals for 2013 here and 2012 here. The basic idea is that I make a list of daily practices that I want to become habits by the end of the year. In January, February, and March, I promise myself I’ll do at least three of the practices every day. In April, May, and June, five. In July, August, and September, seven. In October, November, and December, nine. The thing I love most about this system is that it doesn’t expect me to do everything every day, or all at once. I’m able to gradually incorporate the changes into my life over a year, and if I slip up a few times, that’s okay. I use this to track my daily progress. I prefer this type of system/habit building to setting one-off goals because it shifts the focus from checking things off and moving on to moving forward in a sustainable way.

Monthly goals. See here or here for examples. John thinks these are more similar to “to do” lists rather than lists of goals, but it doesn’t really matter to me what they’re called as long as they work :) My monthly goals are where I break down larger goals into manageable chunks, or force myself to take action on something I’ve been procrastinating, or hold myself accountable for everyday adventures. They’re also a great source of community, as many of my friends post them, too!

Long-term goals. For the last six or so years I’ve worked on 101 in 1001 lists (first and second). This format has worked well for me, and I still like it very much. I like having some sort of list to keep track of experiences I want to have and things I want to learn or accomplish, but a year is too short of a timeline for me and a life or bucket list is too long. My last 101 list ended in September; this time around, I’ve decided to make a “Before 30” list (of an as-yet undetermined number!) that will debut in February on my 27th birthday.

For 2014, my daily habits are:
1. Make our bed in the morning.
2. Go out of my way to encourage someone.
3. Eat a power food.
4. Drink one extra tumbler of water.
5. Take a midday break — a walk around the block, lunch outside instead of at my desk, etc.
6. Do some sort of cardio exercise.
7. Leave a clean sink at the end of the day.
8. Do 10 push-ups before bed.
9. Write a verse from reading + prayer in journal.
10. Lights out by 11pm.

And for January, my monthly goals are:
— Make toffee (bought all the ingredients, but never got around to it!)
— Install our new kitchen pendant lights (Christmas gift! First time doing electrical work!!)
— Write another Marvelous Money post
— Deep clean our refrigerator
— Donate our miscellaneous technology to Kramden

How do you set goals? What do you have on tap for this month or this year? (If you’ve written a post about it, feel free to leave the link below, because I’d love to take a look!)

Friends! John and I are back from an extended week of Christmas celebration — a few days in Minneapolis with my family (and the new niece!), a few days at home, and a few days in Connecticut with John’s family, the highlight of which was celebrating 41 years of marriage for my in-laws. Even though the new year officially starts on Wednesday, I’m looking forward to a few quiet days before things really pick up on January 6th — time to reflect, organize, clean, prepare, plan, and dream. My first order of business is to take a look back at 2013, because it was a truly marvelous year.

We kicked off the year with some unseasonably warm weather which allowed us to get out and explore (and eat some delicious food along the way!). I also made my first loaf of homemade bread, and published the first four posts in my Marvelous Money series, something I’d wanted to do for a long time. To be continued in 2014! I also posted our first house search update.

In February on the blog, all of my posts except one were devoted to telling the story of our wedding (you can find them all here). Thank you again for giving me the space to do that! We celebrated Valentine’s Day with dinner at home and a first viewing of our full-length wedding film. In between, we enjoyed lots of golf course strolls (sometimes even in the snow!) and scheduled inspections on our contracted house (number two, for those counting).

March brought house guests from the North and the first magnolia blooms! We celebrated Easter with chocolate peanut butter cheesecake and dyed eggs; I gave you a second house search update.

We did a few other things in April (started our garden in pots, went for a few hikes), but by far the most notable was our honeymoon to Nevis. We spent a week on that blissful Caribbean island, first at Montpelier…

…and then at Nisbet Plantation. A perfect getaway! Also worthy of mention: I wrote one of my favorite posts of 2013, Pet Nicknames :)

Oh my May. I traveled for work three times and we finally closed on our house (final update here).

In between packing boxes and painting walls we squeezed in strawberry picking, a drive to Saxapahaw, and a camping trip with friends. I then wrote a post about our tips for these sorts of everyday adventures.

In June, we finally said goodbye to our first apartment and hello to the farmstand directly across from our new neighborhood. I also took a magical trip to the Biltmore for a work conference and we saw Zac Brown Band in concert.

We also spent a weekend in my favorite place on Earth (the island in Maine where we have a cottage) for my grandmother’s memorial service.

In July we celebrated John’s birthday as well as that most famous of Southern holidays, Cow Appreciation Day. We also went blueberry picking twice!

The highlight of our month was a week-long trip to Michigan over the Fourth of July. I shared many more photos from our wonderful week of hiking, biking, kayaking, s’more-ing, and water skiing here!

In August we got to partake in many of our favorite outdoor activities, including a Durham Bulls game and lots of hikes. We also hosted a particularly adventurous dinner party, which was a highlight of our year!

We also took a ten-day trip to New England, stopping in Boston to stay with dear friends from college and attend the wedding of another college friend and then on to Maine for a stay at our island. So fun that we got to host Meredith and Michael at our special place! I shared a few more photos here.

Just a few weeks later we were back North for another friend’s wedding. It fell on the same weekend as our first anniversary, which we celebrated a few days later with a quick trip to the beach. We also welcomed my sister-in-law and future brother-in-law down South for a weekend in Asheville over Labor Day!

Gosh, we don’t slow down, do we? Our second giant balloon of the year marked the spot outside my sister’s baby shower in Minnesota (yay!). We also made ham biscuits at our church’s Fair booth and explored a corn maze with visiting friends from Massachusetts!

Our garden continued to impress us even as we left it behind for a weekend trip to the Crystal Coast with John’s parents and aunts. We finished the month by carving pumpkins with friends and welcoming 109 trick-or-treaters to our door (wow!!).

My parents came to visit for the launch party and to baby me after I got my wisdom teeth removed. We celebrated a year of monthly tennis dates with dear (and very pregnant) friends. Beautiful fall hikes were taken and an amazing experience was had at Hillsong with other dear friends. To cap it off, we brought home our very own and long-awaited Bucky just in time for the Christmas season!

December was especially sweet, between meeting Tegan and Perry and all the Christmas traditions we’ve come to love down here and up North.

2013 was a great year.

I loved working through Lara’s goal setting steps last year, and am doing the same this year! Part 1 involves taking an honest look back, so in that spirit, here are five things that did NOT work for me this year:

1. Between my busiest year at work and by far my busiest year in my shop, too often I felt like I transitioned directly from my commute to my craft table to my bed, with a brief stop at the dinner table in between. I am exceedingly grateful for the extra income (in fact, it helped us tick off some major financial goals), but I don’t want it to come at the expense of what matters most.
2. Out of all my daily habits for 2013, exercising was one of the ones with which I had the hardest time. I sit far too much and it’s just not healthy.
3. I did a better job with reading and absorbing the Bible this year but have been feeling listless in my prayer life.
4. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress at responding to personal emails promptly. I love and value my long distance friends but did not show them this through my response time.
5. Perhaps because I had less free time this year than in the past, too often I caught myself saying “hurry up!” or rushing on to the next activity or moment for no particular reason.

And now, ten things that worked for us, or that we made happen, in 2013:

1. We bought a house! We persevered through a challenging process and worked together with patience. In the months since, we’ve supported each other in new responsibilities and expectations.
2. We ticked off some other major financial goals this year. We paid off all of my student loans, six years ahead of schedule, and are on track to pay off both of our car loans in the first half of 2014, leaving us with just our house payment.
3. On that note, I am really proud that I finally started my Marvelous Money series. Financial literacy is one of our biggest passions and it has been a delight to share with others.
4. I have a long way to go, but I became bolder in sharing my faith this year. We were able to realize a big goal we set for ourselves on our journey to greater sacrificial giving.
5. We continued making strides in healthy eating. Small changes like adding a spinach salad to every meal and switching whole wheat flour and brown rice for white made us feel good about what we’re putting in our bodies.
6. 2013 was marked by adventures big and small. We are pretty good at creating our own fun and loved sharing that joy with others.
7. I was so happy to continue in a job I love. It is an enormous blessing to know the work you’re doing every day matters.
8. My shop! I was able to be a part of so many sparkly celebrations this year, it kind of blew my mind.
9. For living so far apart, we saw a LOT of our families this year. We are exceedingly grateful that they come to visit us, and grateful that we have the resources to visit them.
10. Our marriage continues to be our greatest treasure. We know how lucky we are to have each other, and we don’t take each other for granted.

Friends, it has truly been a delight to be a small part of y’all’s lives this year, and to have you as a part of mine. I’ll be back tomorrow with more on my plans for 2014!

Friends! Thank you so much for your kind input on my first Christmas card post. You guys are just the best. I loved hearing about your plans for your own cards, and about how much you love Minted, too! Here’s how the voting ended up this year:

I could easily have seen us choosing any of the three top vote-getters. However, we ended up going with a late-breaking photo, and then choosing a totally new design to complement it!

It’s the Winter Pines card by Alethea & Ruth. We really liked this design because it communicated well what we wanted to wish our loved ones — peace, love, and joy. The photo is by Bryce Covey, taken at our friends’ wedding. (By the way, that’s one of my best tricks for getting a good photo if you don’t have the budget for an individual session — wedding photographers are usually happy to take quick couple or family portraits during cocktail hour when not much else is going on, and everyone’s already dressed up!)

Here’s a peek at our second annual family newsletter. Many of you asked whether it would be back, and here it is! By the way, I COMPLETELY forgot to follow up after this post, but we are indeed an aunt and uncle!! Tegan was born on December 12, and she’s so cute — we just got back from spending the weekend with her and the rest of my family!

One other thing I wanted to mention — it’s important to us that our Christmas cards are not all about us. We send them out at Christmas to share our joy at the birth of our Savior with the people we love the most, and we want to remind people of that in a personal way. That’s why we include a few thoughts on what Christmas means to us. It’s also good for us to stop and put it into words!

Each card got dressed up with an address and some washi tape. I had the perfect mint, jade, and kelly green rolls already in my stash!

Not one of our cards goes out without a personal note (probably a holdover from my childhood — I can remember sitting around the kitchen table with my siblings and parents, signing what seemed like hundreds of letters from a very young age!). Here’s one for y’all:

Yes, I had some help sending these out :) Hope you love them!