Our Journey to Financial Freedom: part 2

See that big grin on his face? That big grin is because we officially we own a riding lawnmower.

Now, to some this may not be a big deal but for the Sloans it’s not only a big accomplishment for us in our journey to financial freedom but it’s just gonna make life a whole lot easier when it comes to keeping our yard manicured. I should mention that we live in a neighborhood where 99% of our neighbors are retired and either cut their grass every day or pay someone to maintain their yards. We do neither.

When Cory and I got married almost four years ago neither of us owned a lawnmower. Our yard isn’t too terribly big, so to save money Cory bought a push mower. And for the first two years, he push mowed our yard . Normally it took about three hours to finish-mowed and trimmed. Since I have really bad allergies {especially to grass} I can’t help him. I know it sounds like a cop out but I promise it’s not. I tried to help him once and I ended up sick for three days.

Last spring it was time to cut our grass and Cory pulled out his push mower and it wouldn’t start. So we paid $50 to get it fixed and borrowed a mower in the mean time. The push mower worked one time and it wouldn’t start again. We paid less than $300 for the mower in the first place and decided we wouldn’t put any more into it.

Here in lies our decision …do we use money from our emergency fund to buy a new mower or wait until we have enough saved up to buy one? We could have used money from our emergency fund but a riding lawnmower isn’t exactly an emergency. So we decided to borrow one from family or friends for the rest of the summer, save towards a riding lawnmower and use our tax return {if we had one} to supplement what we lacked. Every time we needed to cut our grass, we would go pick one up from who ever didn’t need theirs for the day and return it when we were finished. It was pretty aggravating but we knew it would only be for a few months.

After we got our taxes done {praise Jesus we didn’t owe}, we started to look on Craigslist for a new lawnmower. By the way, lawnmowers are freakin expensive! Did you know new ones run anywhere from $1500-$7000?!?! You can guarantee we weren’t looking to buy a new one. We had a budget set and looked for a gently used one but what we found was a practically brand new one! The guy only used it twice last year and realized he needed a zero turn. It still had the stickers and tags on it and has a warranty for two more years.

We. were. stoked.

We picked it up on Friday and cut our grass right away. The dogs were already starting to get lost in our yard and it really makes us look bad when the guy right beside us has a golf course for a front yard.

And the best part? It took Cory less than 45 minutes to finish the yard.

It’s very important to note that we continue to not use credit since completing baby step 2 of the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University (FPU). Sure, it would have been easy to buy a riding mower on credit at any point over the past four years but we stuck with the plan and the plan isn’t about instant gratification or even easiness. I’m so thankful that Cory was willing to push our yard, often times in 100+ degree weather, until we had enough set aside to pay cash for it. The whole process made finally buying a lawnmower that much sweeter and I’m proud that we waited.

If you have any questions about our journey to financial freedom, I will be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. I am not a professional financial advisor and in no way affiliated with Dave Ramsey, other than being a huge fan of FPU.