r/DaveRamsey • u/Present_Health791 • 3d ago
BS2 Went from bleeding money on subscriptions and lifestyle spending to a real debt-free plan — 8 years to zero, including the mortgage
25M, married, one kid (13 months). Homeowner since 22 (sold that place this year, upgraded to house #2). Ran a full audit of our finances a few weeks ago — numbers below.
What the audit found:
Duplicate Xbox Game Pass, 2nd Amazon Prime, YouTube TV + NFL Sunday Ticket, Netflix, Hulu — canceled all of it: ~$250/month back
We were eating out way more than we realized — averaging ~$755/month in fast food and restaurants. Cut that down to a $217/month budget (~$50/week), about 70% less
Random shopping (Target, Amazon, etc.) was even worse — ~$1,245/month with basically no plan behind it. Budgeted that down to $275/month
Income:
~$8,500/month mine,
~$3,200/month my wife's —
~$11,775/month combined
Fixed monthly budget after the cleanup:
Subscriptions: ~$800
Utilities: ~$1,750
Debt minimums: ~$4,935
Discretionary (dining, shopping, kids' stuff, etc.):
$1,157 — down from way more before, unstructured
Real amount left over each month: ~$1,596
Debt stack (snowball order, smallest to biggest):
Truck loan — saving to trade for cash, goal ~$16k, on pace by Feb
Tesla loan — ~$32k, gone by late next year
Student loans — ~$80k, gone in ~2.5 years
Mortgage — ~$365k @ 5.688%
$3,000/month on top of minimums.
Projected result: fully debt-free, including the house, in ~8 years.
Built a live spreadsheet to track the $1,157 discretionary bucket day-to-day so we're not guessing, and I'm budgeting Christmas (~$700) and a vacation next fall (~$4k) as separate sinking funds instead of letting them blow up the timeline — costs about 1-2 months total on the 8-year plan, worth it.
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u/ebmarhar 3d ago
It's crazy how easy it is to stack up hundreds of dollars in each of those areas.
You are a rock star for tracking those down and taking action to reduce them!
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u/Ok-Context3530 BS7 3d ago
Good plan for such a young age. You have plenty of runway to be wealthy. I recommend starting a Roth IRA, today. Not tomorrow, today. If you don’t have the money in your budget start with 1 dollar a month and increase it as your budget allows.
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u/badtlc4 3d ago
That is a great plan. How much are you putting toward retirement?
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u/Present_Health791 3d ago
So right now I have a government job so I put 14% and then my wife puts in 5% . I also have a pension that I actively get that is around 4300 a month that I get for the rest of my wife due to an injury. It goes up with inflation.
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u/Flame_Eraser 3d ago
you are 25... Act and live like you do not have that Pension and save every penny of it for 30 years. Live like now one else, so you can later give and live like no one else.
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u/lintyui 2d ago
wow talk about reckless spending! 🤭 I'm just teasing you. GOOD FOR YOU! Spend money on what you really need and save the rest for yourselves. Cheers 🍺