BLOG - The Debt Free Journey (2024)

“You take what the enemy meant for evil And you turn it for good” – See a Victory (Elevation Worship)” Hey friends, been awhile I know, thanks for finding your way back here. As you can see with the big headline, we finally became debt free at the beginning of 2020 and this post is the story of how we got there; spoiler alert, it wasn’t supposed to be … Read More

Things don’t happen TO you, They happen FOR you – Anonymous

“We do not have to become heroes overnight, just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, discovering we have the strengthto stare it down” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“It always seems impossible, until it’s done.” -Nelson Mandela

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” – Carol Burnett

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent” – Marilyn Vos Savant

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that” – Norman Vincent Peale

“Our most important thoughts are those which contradict our emotions” – Paul Valery

“Happy are those whodream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true” – Leon J. Suenes

“U.S. home prices are now 6.3 percent higher than their peak in July 2006 and 46 percent above their trough in February 2012, according to the S&P Core Logic Case-Shiller national home-price index” – Bloomberg

Experts are predicting that cybercrime will cost businesses $6 trillion annually by 2021 – Focal Point Data Risk

“By failing to plan you’re planning to fail” – Benjamin Franklin

“Our lives are not shaped by our conditions but by our decisions” – Tony Robbins

“Proper, routine car maintenance is vital to avoid major repair bills and keep your vehicle running reliably for many years.” – Consumer Reports So my wife’s 2014 BMW X3 had the dreaded ‘idiot light’ on for the past month and we finally had time to bring it in for service. I had bought the car as a CPO ‘certified pre-owned’ and I know … Read More

“Emotions get a hold of us, and we as investors, tend to do very stupid things” Princeton University Economist Burton Malkiel, p. 17 “Unshakeable”-Tony Robbins We all want to be financially independent at one stage or another. Some of us who were once there, and didn’t do so well at staying there, can really find these tips helpful in order to get a fresh perspective … Read More

“One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm.” – Ella Maillart Heya All, Welcome to another post. Hope you’re all doing well whatever it is that you’re doing. Along the lines of our recent travel, I just quickly wanted to share these 3 takeaways I had after visiting parts of Europe. There are definitely … Read More

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” – John Steinbeck WOW, first off thanks for sticking with our blog, we’re already 2 weeks into 2018 and we’re only on our first post of the … Read More

We’re 9 months into our Debt Free Journey and here’s how we did WOW. It’s already December, the end of the year 2017. Where did the time go? We barely started 2017 and now we’re at the end of it. The adage ‘time waits for no one’ is absolutely true, all the time. Our November’s total debts came in at $115,936, a very modest gain from our … Read More

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” – Randall Terry First off, I hope you all have had an awesome Thanksgiving, and are all planning now to burn the calories 🙂 I’ve recently written about how I lost 30 pounds since I started this debt free journey, just by being mindful of how I lived. The motivation was to really save … Read More

This week we have an awesome post by James who is a finance blogger and writes about personal finance tips and everything about money management over at BasicFinanceCare.com Do you have debts hanging over your head and making you awake all night? “Debt-free” is one of the things that are added in the New Year resolutions for most of us. As it is a task that … Read More

“I guess they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention” because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.” – Viola Davis

When the world says, “Give up,” Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.” ~Author Unknown

“Perseverance, secret of all triumphs”- Victor Hugo You may be thinking, what the heck is the CISSP? First off, it’s an IT certification related to Cyber Security that is the preeminent or widely known cert for IT Security practitioners. It’s administered by The International Information System Security Certification Consortium, or (ISC)². The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is “the most globally recognized standard … Read More

It’s open enrollment this month across all employers in the county. And for us who have full-time employment, it’s a chance to pick and choose what healthcare programs we’ll sign up and agree to pay for in the coming year 2018. If you’ve already enrolled for 2018 coverage, have you checked the pricing? Am I the only one who thinks medical insurance is ridiculously expensive? … Read More

“We don’t know the probabilities of future events. Still, you have to take action, and so you do it on gut feeling. That’s the world we live in.” – Robert J. Shiller I spoke to a young couple yesterday about whether or not this was a good time to buy and whether timing the Real Estate market is even possible. As we went on with our conversation, I … Read More

“I believe that through knowledge and discipline, financial peace is possible for all of us” – Dave Ramsey

“Only 1 in 6 High School Students Nationwide Required to Take Personal Finance Course To Graduate” – Study by NextGen Personal Finance I had the chance to listen to Pat Flynn’s SPI podcast session #234 where 17-year-old Eva Baker of TeensGotCents.com was the guest and I was totally blown away by this young lady. On the podcast, Eva shared how she started out her blog … Read More

Had the opportunity to guest post at The Dad Wallet today about how I got started in Real Estate as a side hustle. Here’s a quick peek of the article; ADVANTAGES OF WORKING IN REAL ESTATE There are endless opportunities in Real Estate in any market stage; up or down, since shelter is one of the basic necessities of life next to food and clothing. … Read More

“Overall, there were nearly 1.3 million fraud-related complaints reported last year, up about 2% from 2015. Most people said they were scammed after a phone call. Victims paid out a total of $744 million to fraudsters last year, with the average one losing more than $1,100, according to the FTC” USA Today Report As recently reported by USA Today, financial scams have been increasing in frequency and … Read More

“To ensure peace of mind ignore the rules and regulations” – George Ade After the much publicized Equifax breach this past week where 143 million data records have been reportedly stolen by cyber crooks, I’ve put together these practical tips on how to protect ourselves from the upcoming threats of financial and personal harm coming our way. Unfortunately, we are ALL affected … Read More

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. – Prov 22:7 We’re 6 months into our Debt Free Journey and here are our snapshots August’s total debts came out to $120,686, it actually went up from July’s total of $120,099.64, due to losing momentum and succumbing to pressures of spending once again. Needless to say, we had charged up one … Read More

“Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive” – Angela Duckworth, Author-Grit I recently stumbled upon a TED talk that led to different YouTube talks by Angela Duckworth, Psychologist, and author of … Read More

… AS YOU WORK YOUR DEBT FREE JOURNEY… “Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen… yourself, right now, right down … Read More

“Rule #1: Never lose money. Rule #2: Never forget Rule # 1” Warren Buffett We’re 5 months into our Debt Free Journey and here are our snapshots July’s total debts came out to $120,099.64, down $1,601 from June’s $ 121,701. Slowly but surely we’re making a dent. Last month we kinda messed up our budget a little since we traveled, but like … Read More

“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think, and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” Thomas A. Edison I don’t know about you but ever since I realized I had an issue with money, I started finding ways to get myself out of my jam and started getting my hands on books, audio books, blogs, podcasts and anything to … Read More

“Ninety-six percent of self-made millionaires read 30 minutes each day for education, career or self-improvement” Tom Corley Inspired by the award winning book “Change Your Habits Change Your Life” by Tom Corley Related Posts: 5 ATTITUDES THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE 5 LESSONS I LEARNED WHILE BROKE Can I just be honest?I’m so tired of being one of the poor folks 🙁 It’s really getting … Read More

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint AugustineLast month I had the privilege to travel from Los Angeles to Manila to pick up my wife and daughter and had to go through 3 different airports as part of the trip. This is my first foray into travel blogging 🙂 as I share my experience going through these 3 airports en … Read More

“You’ve got to tell your money what to do or it will leave” – Dave Ramsey We’re 4 months into our Debt Free Journey and here are our updates June’s total debts came out to $121,701 which was up from May’s total of $120,452; a difference of + $1,249 (wasn’texpecting this jump in the reverse direction though). This is due in part to the school loan … Read More

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert This past month we put our debt free journey on hold to travel to the Philippines and then South Korea. One of the reasons we agreed to do this despite starting our debt free journey 4 months in now, is because it’s our 25th year wedding anniversary this year … Read More

‘Do you like the music i’m playing?” Seb asks Mia Bear with me, this is a long one…. I flew from LAX to Manila via Incheon Korea onboard an Asiana Flight last week, I originally was reading one of the Bourne books The Bourne Dominion which I bought a couple years back that I never got to reading. After two and a half hours into … Read More

I was helping my Mom sort out her cable bill the other day and I wanted to share my experience with SPECTRUM Cable service in the Los Angeles area. First of all, I suggest you do your homework ahead of time on whether to keep your TV service or not. For one thing, household viewership has been on the decline for much of the decade and … Read More

“Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge. What to do isn’t the problem; doing it is. Most of us know what to do, but we just don’t do it. If I can control the guy in the mirror, I can be skinny and rich.” ―Dave Ramsey This year marks our 25th year wedding anniversary. We got married when … Read More

Last weekend, I took my family out to breakfast in one of the local hangouts in our neighborhood. When we were done, I paid about $55 for our breakfast for three. Kinda pricey if you ask me 🙁 Even though we have a $250 monthly restaurant (eat out) budget, it would have been better to not blow a 5th of it in one sitting. Needless to … Read More

“You can’t be in debt and win. It doesn’t work.” Dave Ramsey We’re 3 months into our Debt Free Journey and here are our snapshots Our previous month’s total debts were at $120,452, this month it’s down to $118,731, a decrease of $1,721. That doesn’t seem like a lot especially with our debt payment budget of $2,041, but it’s getting there. We can … Read More

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president If you’re one of the many home buyers who were initially on the fence and just recently felt the need to plunge into … Read More

THE REALITY Wannacry, Google Phishing, Docusign Breach, Denial of Service Attacks; the headlines go on and on. These are just some of the news that captured our feeds the past couple of weeks. In light of all these events involving hacking, cyber intrusions, and cyber-crime, one has to ask the question, what does it have to do with me? Or can it even happen to me? … Read More

According to the Global Knowledge 2017 IT Skills and Salary Survey, there is a widespread Skills gap in IT across all industries worldwide, resulting in a shortage of qualified talent across a variety of specializations. This shortage of talent inevitably leads to higher salaries due to supply and demand; the highest paid areas of which are in Cybersecurity and Cloud Computing; both naturally due … Read More

Being a licensed Real Estate professional in the State of California for over 11 years now, and primarily working with first-time home buyers, I learned along the way that these tips actually save time and money when it comes time to close on the home of your dreams. MIND THE FICO Before deciding to take the big leap and investing in the house of your … Read More

I LOST MY PHONE AND IT HURT Worst of all, I didn’t have insurance. I lost all my contacts, passwords, apps, personal information notes; basically, a big part of my digital existence which also included all my blog notes and social media feeds. I literally wanted to knock my head into the wall. I had an AT&T Samsung Galaxy S6 phone and my contract would have … Read More

A stealthy and nasty phishing scam made its way around the internet as of May 3rd, the source and author of the code has yet to be discovered, but latest update as of 5:17PM ET on the same day reports that Google had already contained the malware by shutting down the drive used to spread the code, according to the Verge. Google disclosed that affected users only accounted for … Read More

“Making a big life change is pretty scary. But know what’s even scarier? Regret” Anonymous As my wife and I embarked on our debt free journey, we began to take stock of our situation and where we were not only financially but also emotionally. We realized that a major lifestyle change not only needed an attitude adjustment but also a fresh outlook on what really mattered … Read More

Here’s the 2nd month snapshot of our Debt Free Journey. We initially had a total of $122,306 of combined debts since March 23; we are now down to $120,452 a net reduction of $1,854 (personal loan numbers aren’t shown in mint snapshot since it’s from the bank of Mom). Mar 2017 Apr 2017 Here’s a snapshot … Read More

“No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.” ― Maya Angelou There’s something awesome about being in our 20s that makeus feel invincible. Like nothing can go wrong. I guess it’s the youthful energy coupled with a sense of maturity that make us go after life. After all, it’s the time when everything is birthed, … Read More

This is such a great article published in Linkedin by Dr. Travis Bradberry,the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book,Emotional Intelligence 2.0,and the cofounder ofTalentSmart. The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance.TalentSmarthas conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of … Read More

“Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.” John Maxwell, Failing Forward Sometimes failing is the only way to move forward. My most recent bout with failure happened as I was sitting for my Cybersecurity exams last year. I was so confident since I had earlier passed a similar security exam … Read More

A couple of weeks ago, as I was reflecting on my current situation, I couldn’t help but have a flurry of emotions go through me; first was of anger, then regret, anxiety, and finally guilt. As I gathered myself and realized I was still breathing, still have a beautiful and supportive family, I can’t help but instead be grateful for this pickle I’m in 🙂 In a … Read More

THERE’S NOTHING MORE EXHILARATING THAN FINDING FREE MONEY… HERE ARE THE BEST WEBSITES TO FIND FREE MONEY ONLINE The sites we compiled below can get you started on a cash hunt that can possibly surprise you and make your day a little brighter 🙂 At first, we were skeptical about these so-called free online resources for finding money, we always thought to ourselves who would give … Read More

STUDENT LOAN HISTORY In a recent article by Jillian Berman of Marketwatch.com entitled “How we got to $1 trillion in debt: An illustrated history of student loans in America” showed an interesting history of the origin of the student loan. In the article’s graphic, it illustrated how in 1204 at Oxford University, officials at some of the most prominent European colleges saw the need … Read More

IT’S BEEN A MONTH SINCE WE STARTED OUR DEBT FREE JOURNEY We initially had a total of $124,695 of combined debts on February 24; we are now down to $122,306, a net reduction of $2,389 (personal loan numbers aren’t shown in mint snapshot since it’s from the bank of Mom). Here’s a snapshot of our Debt Snowball Month 1 This is … Read More

Since I got mad with my debt situation I started to imagine what it would be like to be without debt. What would it be like for my family, or any family, to enjoy financial independence, instead of throwing away hard earned money in paying the big banks and credit card companies? Part of that introspection led me to come up with five tips on how myself … Read More

THE CURRENT CYBERSECURITY RISK I was reading up on my favorite blogs and one of them being krebsonsecurity.com, a Cybersecurity blog ran by a journalist turned security researcher Brian Krebs, and he was reporting in his recent post “Google points to another POS vendor breach” , about how cyber crooks were able to hack into and successfully embed a malware called Poseidon “which is designed to … Read More

A wise man once said, “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have” Socrates I preface that to begin our ‘stupid tax’ story on how we descended into our debt spiral that ultimately affected our family. EARLY YEARS First off, both of us were products of broken homes where there were no father … Read More

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? What’s our end goal besides being debt free? What do we have to offer out of all the thousands of personal finance blogs out there? Our simple answer to that is just our unique experiences. A LIFE CHANGING STORY FOR US I remember a particular day 25 years ago, Moira and I were just married and lived in … Read More

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled ‘Americans Are Richer Than Ever, But They Don’t Feel That Way‘ by Steven Russolillohighlights the glaring disparity yet again between Wall Street and Main Street. IS IT GOOD OR BAD? Don’t get me wrong, positive economic news such as these are fun to hear and might even make us feel good, but the reality is … Read More

THERE IS TROUBLE AHEAD According to recent data released by the Federal Reserve Board , delinquency rates for credit card debts in the fourth quarter 2016 rose to 2.34% and is slightly higher than what they were in the same period for 2015 which is 2.16%. In a similar report posted by moneytips.com taken from recent American Bankers Association (ABA) data state that; “credit card … Read More

DEFINITION According to Merriam Webster’sdefinition, DEBT is an ‘Obligation’ or something ‘Owed’. It’s an oversimplified definition that in today’s world has lost its true meaning due to big business’ efforts in the last 60 years to make it mainstream, acceptable and ‘normal’. People don’t realize that debt is really an ‘obligation’ that in most cases turn into a great burden. You can’t turn … Read More

When people with money meet people with experience, they end up with your money and you end up with experience – Anonymous Ever since embarking on this journey, inaturally had to research a whole lot of money matters, which i should’ve done at the front end of my working career, but enough said 🙂 Now that i’m in this hole, i can safely say that i discovered and … Read More

WHAT DEBT BUSTING TOOL? What’s the BEST and ONLY tool we can useto get out of debt and have financial security? It’s none other than our INCOME. If it’s tied up with paying downdebt, then it will endanger our future and whatever hopes and dreams we may have of enjoying life down the road. I’ve written about some of the steps we took as … Read More

START SELLING Okay, so one of the strategieshighly recommended by a bunch of financial bloggers out there is to ‘SELL YOUR STUFF‘. It’s just STUFF anyway, right? Well, that may be true but if you’re married, your spouse might not think the same way as you. The best thing to do is to sit down along with the budget and the plan and find out … Read More

DAY 1 WAS TO FINALLY PLAN HOW WE WERE GOING TO START We quickly leveraged all the FREE online tools to manage money. Decided to use mintto keep track of our money. Committed to creating and sticking to ourbudget, for budgeting we used everydollar(the free version) online app,due to ease of use. Our total debt to start was $124,695 (including personal loans with the bank … Read More

TIPPING POINT Okay, so first off, I hate to admit, but I’m drowning in debt, $124K plus worth, $111K plus of it in credit card, student, and car loans; and a $13K personal loan from my Mom 🙁 It was a sobering moment after I downloaded the CreditKarma app as it showed me just exactly how deep we were. The first reaction was RAGE, then despair set … Read More