The short is that my wife and I were making over $120k. I drove a stupid expensive truck and she needed to quit her job.
Cut to late last year where I ditched my truck for an electric vehicle saving a combined $500+/ month gas and payments. She quite her job and got $5k in back pay, the EV tax credit yielded me a $6.5 tax return and my work bonus was $3k.
We also heavily reorganized our finances, changed insurance providers, and got our spending under major control. We were never at risk when she was working, but we ate out too much and spent too much money on junk.
We took this "windfall" $14k and sat on it as it came in across Jan/Feb/Mar. I watched our savings grow past our emergency fund limit and everytime I had the urge to go out and upgrade my vehicle again I would pay off a student loan. I just made another payment and feel proud that I am working to dig out of the hole instead of digging deeper in.
Anyone struggling out there, when you get money don't do what you want to, do what you need to. I am confident that buying that vehicle wouldn't have truly negatively affected me, but the loan is something I won't be living with and that will be unequivocally the better life option.
Thanks for reading as I still fight the emotional feeling if wanting my expensive luxury truck I can no longer afford a down payment on.
Submitted March 21, 2019 at 11:09PM by eNomineZerum https://ift.tt/2Yevrdh
