Debt has turned into one of those ugly words that make people shudder, run and hide, or laugh really loud while eating way too much chocolate.

Debt is like the slippery slide at the playground. It’s incredibly easy to slip down to the bottom and incredibly difficult to climb back up (unless, of course you are my monkey son, then it’s easy).

Everywhere we turn we are given opportunities to fall into debt: credit cards are mailed to your home, airline flight attendants ask you to sign up for their credit card while on the flight (we’ll give you 50,000 bonus miles if you sign up RIGHT NOW), car salesmen advertise 0% interest (yes, that is still debt even if there is no interest), student loans are quietly killing our fresh young graduates, home equity loans can help you buy that boat you’ve always wanted, and I could go on and on.

Early on in our marriage we were young and naive, but also had learned in some meager form that debt is dumb. My parents paid for one semester of my college. My husband’s parents paid for none of his college. We both worked full-time and went to school full-time to avoid school loans and still finished our college degrees within 4 years. I worked in an emergency room admitting patients, as a teller at a bank, and even had a two-week stint at Blockbuster (that ancient store that would rent movies to folks – yes, you had to walk into an actual store to get a movie back then, may it rest in peace).

At one point during college, we needed to purchase a car. We decided to buy one for $2500 but we didn’t have the money. We looked at car loans but they were expensive, and then we realized that a student loan had a lower interest rate so we signed up and used those funds to purchase the car. We didn’t really think twice about it because getting a student loan was so normal and easy.

Fast forward a few years and we were still paying on that student loan. The car had died and we purchased another one, this time all cash. But we still hung on to the loan. Why? Because it was small, didn’t cost much, and was easier to pay the payments than pay off the whole loan. Eventually, we came to our senses and knew that was a dumb strategy so we paid it off.

During our low-income earning years we used lots of strategies to carefully stay away from debt:

• We used a budget and adhered to it
• We diligently paid ourselves first by setting up an auto-transfer of $500/month to go into a separate account
• We bought used cars and only paid cash
• I became a coupon queen – one time I paid $30 for $200 worth of groceries – it was exciting!
• I studied financial books and increased my literacy on money topics
• We taught our children to only buy stuff on sale and learned how to say “No” to them during shopping trips (to this day my children will ask if something is on sale before asking me to buy it for them)
• We shopped at the dollar store for birthday gifts (they were just as happy and so was our wallet)
• We prioritized family time over expensive outings
• We found ways to take the family to places like the zoo for free and movie theaters for $1
• We saved for vacations and took the entire family on a cruise every 4 years

How did we get out of debt? By disciplining ourselves to never enter it in the first place. The slippery slide looked fun, but personally I prefer rock climbing. And I am stronger for that choice. Today, we have 0 debt. We owe nobody nothin’.