We Aren't Looking for Sympathy

I’ve been catching a lot of flack about living like no one else. I hear things like:

“You should be enjoying your money”
“You aren’t poor. Why are you doing this?”
“You make money so you can enjoy life.”
“I feel sorry for your family, not being able to spend any money.”

I know a lot of it is just in fun, but I also know some of the comments are serious. People really do feel sorry for us. So let’s think about the comments I would receive a few years down the road, if I continued living as we have in the past, spending money like it grows on trees.

“You don’t have any money to send your kids to college?”
“Too bad your kids don’t know how to handle their money.”
“You really thought Social Security was your ticket to retirement?”
“Will you EVER get to retire?”

I’m only asking my family to suck it up for a couple of years. If we go hard-core at this and don’t buy crap we don’t need and we commit to sacrifice, we will be debt free except for our house by September 2009. We will be totally debt free in only 4.3 years.

Without a plan, we would have been out of debt in around 10 years, at the minimum. But probably not, because we would have kept spending as usual, keeping the debt rolling. We never would have escaped the vicious cycle.

But now, in 4.3 years, we will quit sending our money to banks. We will be free to travel, buy all of the stuff we aren’t able to buy right now, send our kids to college without having to deal with any loans, be able to donate our money and our time to worthy causes, and start building some serious wealth. I bet you won’t feel sorry for us then, will you?