Purchasing a home without debt...

This is what it looks like to purchase a house and land for cash. Yes, cash.

We got up early this morning and are traveling for about two hours to do our final walk through & purchase our new home. We have cashiers checks ready for the settlement. Some cash wired into the escrow account and cold cash. We will own this house immediately. What I want to tell you is that it is possible. Really.

About four years ago we started on the journey of getting out of debt. Started preparing about three years ago. Our main reason for preparing is we are concerned about economic collapse, so shortly after we started preparing, we pulled money out of our 401 accounts. We socked it away...

First I must say I am grateful that both DH and I have jobs. DH also has several side jobs. He does car work for others and he teaches a monthly Utah Concealed Carry Class with friends. I am grateful that DH has mad skills and I am very proud of him! We add any extra to our “sock”.

We have slowly been adding it up and here we are today we are able to buy our property.

We are not a financial planners, we just applied common sense. While I haven't specifically used it, what we do is similar to Dave Ramsey's approach, including the envelope system as you can see from this house envelope.

Got out of debt
STOPPED using credit cards

Paid off credit cards (car were already paid off)

Live with our means, cut back on our living expenses.

Start using cash.

Basically if we don't have the cash, we don't buy it.

NOTE: We each have one credit card for online purchases. But, we are extremely strict about usage and as soon as we pay for something with the card, we immediately pay the card off. And I mean immediately. For example, when I make an Amazon purchase, as soon as I get the confirmation and total I open up my online banking account and pay that amount on the credit card. O.k. I guess in reality, it takes two business days for the transaction to complete.
For more information...
10/10/14 I am currently adding more blogs posts to explain a little more in detail about how we got to this point in our journey. These posts are listed here under "Financial".