About 5 years ago we purchased our home but instead of just getting one home loan we had to receive an additional one because the home we bought was quite expensive- a triplex with a garage and over 3500 square feet. So for the past several years we have been paying our mortgage of about $2050 each month and an additional $1600 for the other loan. Our second loan was for $110,000 taken as a personal loan from the previous owner of the home. There was also interest on this loan. Our goal was to have the debt paid off by the end of 2024 and we did it! We also have other money saving habits you can see here. Here are some things we did to make it happen:
Stopped Fun Money
My husband and I usually give ourselves an allotment of money each month to spend as we want on whatever we want. We typically spend this money on hobbies or I like to spend my money on making our home nicer. But in order to pay off our debt, we stopped giving ourselves this money for 10 months.
PFD’s
As Alaskan’s we are blessed to receive an allotment of cash for living in Alaska, our kids also receive this allotment. We used this money some years to help pay off some of our debt.
Airbnb
When we first moved in to our house, we rented out our two bedroom unit long term. But we decided to change it into an Airbnb after 2 and a half years.
Since our first Airbnb was going so well, for the summer, we moved out of our home and rented it out on Airbnb in order to pay off our debt. It was a struggle but it really helped us to eat away at the debt.
Related: Everything We Bought For Our Airbnb Queen Room
Worked Many Jobs
This year my husband was trying to become self employed but it wasn’t working out as well as we had hoped so we ended up taking up more jobs in order to make ends meet and have the money we needed to pay off our debt. I picked up a job as a breakfast attendant and I also started door dashing. My husband worked for a friend at his pizza shop.
Selling Things
I started selling many things on Facebook marketplace. Having less stuff helps me feel less stressed and selling it makes us just a bit of extra cash.
We Could Have Done More
We went on 2 trips in 2024 that we could have skipped and paid off the debt even earlier. But for our sanity and for taking some much needed breaks we still went on these trips. We also could have stopped eating out. But we chose to not drop our eating out budget. We could have used our emergency fund. We chose not to because we didn’t want to have any situations where we didn’t have the money to pay for an emergency.
We still have to pay off our home, but we have more capacity to do that now that we have this looming debt paid off.
