Good Bye Braces, Good Bye Debt

My youngest daughter is getting her braces off today. She is very excited. Hubby and I are too, but for different reasons. Her getting braces was our first real test to pay cash instead of going into debt. We almost failed.  She had braces put on in January of 2016. We had gone to the dentist in September of 2015 and they said it was time for braces. She is my 3rd child and now she would be my 3rd to have gotten braces. I had done this before.  So I called our Orthodontist to set up a consult. Mid  October we were going to go in.

The night before her appointment I had a realization. We were following Dave Ramsey's plan. We were getting out of debt and not taking on more. How were we going to pay for the braces? We had a $1,000 emergency fund but this wasn't a true emergency. How were we going to do this? My heart started racing and I started to get nauseous.  I hadn't thought about how we were going to pay for them. Our insurance covers nothing on braces. What were we going to do? I couldn't cancel the consult. I would be charged for it either way. Thankfully to have the molds done costs only $200. I could cover that with cash. I immediately talked to my husband. He said to go for the consult and see what the cost would be. I had 2 kids have braces prior. I estimated $4500. We did not have that amount of money. We were on Baby Step 2: Pay off all debts, smallest to largest. We were killing it. We were on a tight budget putting everything towards debt. I started to freak out a little.

The next day YD and I went in. They looked at her teeth and made the molds. I wrote a check out for $200 and made an appointment for 2 weeks to come back in and go over what she needed and how much it would cost. I then went home and went over our budget. I called Hubby at work and said I was cutting the budget to the bare bones. He thought we were already doing that. Ha! You can always find something else to cut. When he came home that night we had a budget meeting to go over it.  We were pausing Baby Step 2. We would not be paying any extra on our debt right now. We were putting about $1000 extra towards debt a month. Christmas would have to be cut big time. The kids weren't little anymore. They would understand. I would feel bad about it but not taking on debt was more important. Our grocery budget was slashed. I have a well stocked pantry. We were budgeting $500 a month at that point. I would try for $100. Our clothes category was gone. So was takeout. Each category only had $25 but we needed that $50 for braces. This was our big moment. Could we figure out how to do this without taking on debt? Yes we can! It was going to take work and sacrifice but we would do it.

I called my job and talked to 3 of my managers. I told them what was going. They knew I was trying to get out of debt. I asked for any and all shifts that I was allowed. I can only work so many hours a week at my job. I was asking for the max for the next few months. If someone needed coverage to please call me. I am a hard worker and they were happy to do so. I started getting more hours. I got called 2 days later for a closing shift. Did I want it? I would be working until 2am. I said yes. It was a Friday night. I could sleep late Saturday. Hubby and the kids would be fine.

I had dabbled with eBay and Craigslist before but only one or two items a month. I went through the house and started listing 5,  10, 15 items. I then got an offer for no fees for 50 items. I could do that. They were small things. $5 here, $10 there. But they added up.

2 weeks later we went back to the orthodontist to meet with the office manager. She laid out the plan for braces. It would cost $4,300 for everything. I could put $500 down payment and make a monthly payment for the next 24 months. I know the office manager. We have been going there for years, so I had no problem asking for a discount for this being my 3rd kid. I had recommend them to numerous friends. They knew this to be true since you fill out paperwork saying how you heard about them. So she gave me a discount of $300  bringing the total to $4000. Great. I then asked about a cash discount. If I pay the bill in full when you put her braces on how much could you knock off. You wouldn't have to bill me every month, waste time calling me for late payments, no bounced checks. All the money would be paid up front. She knocked off another $300. So we went from $4,300 to $3,700. OK I can work with that number. I had too. That was the lowest they would go. They are a great practice. They are very nice and friendly. They do lots of giveaways to the kids. The office is very clean and they are great to my kids. I wasn't looking anywhere else. I did that when my OD needed braces. I made an appointment for YD to get spacers 2 weeks later.

I went home and waited for Hubby to get home from work. I told him the cost and he was happy that I had asked for it to be lowered and they had done so. Now, we had to come up with $3,700. We crunched our numbers and figured that we could have all of the money by early January. So that is what we did. After the spacers, they put in the brace on the molars. Then they do the braces. That was when the full payment was do. With the holidays it was easy to push it off a little. When January came, we had all of the money plus some extra. We paid the bill in full when YD had them put on and we dumped the extra to the bill we where working on before the whole braces episode had started. We only skipped a beat. We did it. We were able to work hard for 3 months and come up with the money we needed without gong into debt.

 My favorite part about it was when we went to YD first appointment after she had the braces put on. When you get your next appointment is when you make a payment. The lady behind the counter gave us the date and then said "OH, you are paid in full. Have a nice day" We sure did. Every time I went for the first 6 months they would say that, OH, you are paid in full. Those are some of my favorite words. So Good Bye Braces. We will not miss you. We will always remember what you mean to us. That we do not need to go into debt ever again for any reason.

Happily we are now debt free except our mortgage. We have paid our son's first year of college off without taking out loans. We have bought 2 new to us cars with cash. We have a 5 month emergency fund and are saving as much as we can so that the younger 2 can get through college debt free. We will never go into debt again.