My husband rocks!

If you listen to Dave Ramsey, you know he HATES car payments.  Once we heard his debt lesson, we totally understood why.  Although both of our cars meet the value ratio he sets (values on combined motors should be no more than 50% of your annual income), we did not think we met the other requirement, which is to have the vehicles paid off within 24 months.

We have (actually had) two cars:  I drive a 2003 Suburban named Tina; Aaron had a 2008 Dodge Charger named Duke.  Ever since I've known him, he's wanted a Dodge Charger.  And not just any Dodge Charger, a black one with a spoiler!  Sixteen months ago, he bought one - a black one, with a spoiler!  Actually, to be specific, he financed one.  {enter scary music here}

In FPU we were taught that the average car payment in America is something like $457.  I thought to myself who in the world would have such a big car payment?  That's crazy!  Then, I realized that we pay $130 every two weeks on Tina and $97 every two weeks on Duke.  Yeah, do some quick math on that and guess what?  I'm around the national average.  Sure, it's on two cars, but who cares?  That's a lot of money going down the drain on vehicles that are plummeting in value.  Not smart.

Because of grasping that lesson, we realized that we needed to sell Duke.  Today we did just that.  I felt so bad for Aaron although he seemed to take it really well.  I told him how awesome I thought it was for him to put his family first and sell his dream car.  Then, I sent my mom a text to tell her he had sold it and we had paid if off.  She responed with, "AWESOME!! I'M SO PROUD OF HIM!!" I showed him the text and he just grinned ear-to-ear.  I hope he knows just how awesome he is.  I think I'll bake him his favorite pound cake as a thank you.

Now the search is on to find him something different to drive.  I promised him that if we found an old lady car, he could drive Tina to work from now on.  :)  For now, we are sharing one car until we can find something dependable for him.  Yet another adventure in our journey to financial freedom...

Here's Duke. We will miss him!