I’ll add another vote for Dave Ramsey. We own our own home, and have already cash-flowed a major upgrade to boost the resale value of it.
Tripler
No loans, no debt, no payments!
We paid off our mortgage in 2013 and that was our last debt. My FICO score is still 853. Here are the things “dragging it down”:
- Too few accounts currently paid as agreed
- Lack of recent installment loan information
It could drop and we wouldn’t care since we doubt we will ever need another loan. That’s a good feeling. We are early 50s.
Yep that’s me. And it can hit your FICO I guess. But I don’t really care. (sort of pisses me off though).
It is an amazing feeling being debt-free.
We paid off the last of our debt except student loans last year – eliminating all CC debt and paying off our only remaining car loan. We then promptly bought a house, so now we have a mortgage. However, our mortgage payment is essentially what our rent was (mortgage, taxes, and insurance on the new house is $41 more per month than rent, renter’s insurance, and the space rent for a off-site storage unit was on the old house). The LTV is ~61% and the value of the property has gone up $40K since we closed in August. I suffer no illusions that the numbers will always be so favorable to us but, regardless, we’re very happy we bought the house. We even got a puppy! We’ve never been able to have pets before.
(Shit. I just remembered the picture rule.)
Dave Ramsey himself is a total bag of garbage but, credit where credit is due, his financial advice is pretty spot-on (with the caveat that all of what he expounds is pretty much common sense stuff). We utilized our savings paying off our debt and buying a house, so those are the elements that we need to work on next. I pay into a public employee retirement fund and when my wife returns to the workforce after finishing school – hopefully next summer – we’ll be back on track WRT saving for both emergencies and retirement.
Me too. But I’m unlikely to ever take out another loan. We buy cars with cash, and if we ever move we have plenty of equity in our house to buy a new one with cash.
Same here. We bought our last new car, in 2012, with cash and we will do the same with future ones. And, we already have the houses we need to get us to the grave, and if plans change, we could buy one outright after selling.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I will point out that his getting out of debt advice is spot on. His financial advice is mediocre, and one would do well to ditch him after they have completed his baby step three.
Free advice, take it or leave it, but investing in whiskey is a good way to lose all your progress. Don’t ask how I know. Instead consider something like ping-pong, model airplanes, or knitting.
It’s nice to not have a mortgage. But I think I would rather be young with one.