Phases of Financial Freedom

MassMutual asked me to write a post on “financial freedom.”

My first thought was that I couldn’t write a post on that topic because Laura and I still think about the bills and how to pay them all the time.

The more I pondered it, I realized over the years there have been a couple of moments when I felt financially free-er.

The first was when our kids were young.

Shortly after our son was born, we realized that something had to be done about our credit card debt. After a conversation with a friend who had recently consolidated all of his debt we decided to investigate our options.

We ended up using a company to take all of our credit debt, destroy our credit cards and now make a single monthly payment that would go towards paying that debt.

It was scary and even though we now had a date when our debt would be gone, it never felt like we’d reach it.

Getting out of credit card debt isn’t easy, but it was one of the best financial decisions we ever made.

The other vivid memory of when I suddenly felt a bit of financial freedom was upon making my last student loan payment.

I went to a college that was far outside of my price range and was not given nearly as much Financial Aid as I needed. (This is one of the main reasons I built up so much credit card debt.)

To mail that last payment in felt amazing. It wouldn’t put a bunch of extra money into my wallet every month, but like paying off our credit cards, it felt like a massive weight has been lifted off of our life.

These days there are many options for paying off student debt that I didn’t have. I’m glad there are more options for our kids.

I’ve always said that I don’t need to be rich, but I’d love to get to a point of not having to worry about money. Not sure I’ll ever get there, but I’ll keep on trying.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Massachusetts Mutual Financial Group (MassMutual). All opinions are my own.