TLDR: By living well below my means, staying away from debt, and working side jobs (while having the good fortune of no major, negative life events), I was able to save consistently into a mutual fund over 5 years that returned over 12%, allowing my wife and I to buy a nice, starter home for 100% cash.

The First Hurdle: College

In 2007, I was a sophomore in college, paying my way with various web design projects. I wanted to graduate debt free, a goal I set for myself in high school after being inspired by my friend, Jeremiah Terhark, who was paying his way through a private college with his web design projects. Before meeting Jeremiah, I thought student loans were a way of life, but he challenged me to think differently. I was attending a public college, which was much cheaper, so I thought, "If he can do it, I can do it, too.”

However, two years into college, I began doubting myself after several of my roommates dropped out and landed jobs paying double what I was making. While I was strapped for time and cash, they were living life. I felt like I was doing things backward - working hard, and not having much to show for it. Somewhere, underneath my uncertainty, I knew I was doing the right thing, but I doubted myself. Maybe I was being too idealistic.

Then, one of my friends called and told me about Dave Ramsey. “He’s a Christian financial author,” he said. "I think you’ll really like him.” I went on iTunes and downloaded Dave's book, The Total Money Makeover. Dave’s encouraging, no non-sense, common sense approach to finances intercepted my life at a time when I needed someone to be my cheerleader. I began listening to his podcast every day for motivation and encouragement.

The Birth of An Idea

It didn’t take long before I began listening to Dave everywhere I went. One day I was listening to Dave's book at my parent’s house. My Dad overheard Dave's “100% down plan” for purchasing a home. In the book, Dave tells the story of a newly married couple, in their early 20’s, making $80k (combined income). On the encouragement of their grandfather, who hated debt, they rented an apartment above someone’s garage for super cheap. Saving $50k per year over the next 3 years, they bought a $150k house for cash. Dave concludes the story by saying, “They lived like no one else, and now, they are living like no one else.” My Dad overheard the story and told me, “Andrew, you could do that! When you get your first full-time job, just keep living like a college student.” His confidence in me made me feel like I could do it.

Getting Started

By 2008, I was so passionate about Dave’s message, I took a summer internship at his company, The Lampo Group (now Ramsey Solutions) as a web developer. I packed up my few belongings and headed to Nashville, Tennessee. I loved it and wanted to stay full-time, but I had two years left of college. It was hard going back to college that fall, but I knew I was making the right choice.

In 2010, with only a couple of college classes remaining, I left college early (finishing my degree online) and began working for Dave full-time. I got serious about setting goals (following Zig Ziglar’s wheel of life) and set a goal to purchase a house, with cash, by the time I was 30. I became friends with a guy on the team, Jon Gallion, and rented a room in his house for ridiculously cheap ($400/mo). I continued to pay $400/mo in rent for the next 6 years, even after Jon got married, by moving into another home with a couple of friends, which kept rent cheap (of course, having amazing landlords that never raised rent helped, too). This gave me a huge advantage.

From 2010 - 2012, in addition to my full-time job working for Dave, I continued working with many of my clients after hours. Most notable was the Dell Rapids Public School, a client I picked up as a sophomore in college. I was their one and only “webmaster”, building their website from top to bottom. They paid me ridiculously well as a college student (about $20/hr, or about $1,000/mo) and were one of the primary reasons I was able to graduate debt-free. Now, with a full-time job and dual paychecks, I hit the ground running. By early 2012, two years into my “professional career”, I had nearly $50k in my house savings account.

Learning from Others

Working for Dave was the perfect environment for me - both personally and professionally. Not only was I encouraged in what I was doing, but I met equally bright, intelligent people with similar ambitions. One of those people was an admin assistant, also in her early 20s, who started saving and investing when she was 18 years old. In 2012, she and her husband paid cash for their first home. They weren’t rich - they never made more than $100k/year combined. She told me how she saved into mutual funds and high-interest checking accounts (she picked the funds herself, following investing Dave’s advice). I knew I needed to get more serious about my strategy.

Around this same time, I sat down with Russ Carrol, Dave Ramsey’s lead financial counselor - the very first person Dave hired to help counsel people 1-on-1 with their finances as part of his growing team (as of 2023, now over 1,000 people). Russ and I poured over my numbers. Since I had no debt and a fair amount in savings (I graduated debt free with almost $20k in savings), I was ready to begin investing for retirement (“Baby Step 4” of Dave’s 7 Baby Steps). Russ encouraged me to invest for retirement while also saving to pay cash for a house, if possible. If not, at least a large down payment of 50% or more. He said, “Especially because you're single -- it's not worth getting tied down to a house. Live cheaply and rent.”

Asking For Help

To help me invest, I reached out to one of Dave Ramsey’s ELP’s (now known as Smartvestors), Zach Hurd. He was trained in investing the way Dave teaches and I trusted him (and his firm) to handle my money. Dave teaches never to invest unless it’s longer than 5 years, otherwise, you’re likely to lose money (based on stock market history). I knew I was still about 5 years away from my goal.

I’ll never forget meeting Zach at Starbucks. I had two checks written out, totaling $50k, ready to invest. I asked him, out of curiosity, “How many 25-year-old clients do you have with $50k to invest?” He looked at me, held up his hand in the shape of a "0" and said, "You're a special case”.

The Grind

After Zach and I met, I asked him to give me some projections so I could figure out (realistically) what I could expect to gain in the market as I continued to save. I wanted to make sure I was on track each year. I could afford to save about $20k a year, at a minimum. Based on that, he put together some projections:

In other words, “By the end of 2012, you should have 69k…” (and so forth). Over the next several years, these figures were remarkably accurate. Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world, they say.

When I saw I’d have almost $180k by 30, it showed me my goal was realistic and gave me the courage to keep going.

The Why

Any good motivational speaker will tell you that it’s not enough to just “set a goal” - you need to have a strong reason WHY you’re pursuing the goal in the first place. Your “why” will keep you motivated when the going gets tough. When I first started saving, my reason for “why” was purely financial. I thought, “Wow! With no house payment, I will be rich!”

However, money itself isn’t really a great motivator. What was I looking for the money to give me? Freedom? Less Stress? A great marriage? I needed an answer bigger than “I want a big bank account.”

I eventually realized that paying cash for a house was not about "being rich". It wasn’t even about having a “nice” house. For me, it was about creating freedom for my future family. If my future wife wanted to work outside the home, great. If she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, great. Either option was fine with me, as long as she was doing something she was passionate about. Without debt, those decisions are easy. I also knew “money fights and money problems” are the #1 reason for divorce in North America, which only added more fuel to the fire.

Love and Money

In late 2014, I began dating my (now) wife, Lauren. When we met, she was in the process of getting out of debt and working two jobs. I loved her work ethic and determination. Due to some missteps in her early twenties, she saw first-hand how destructive debt was and she shared my values of living a debt-free lifestyle.

After dating for about a year, I wanted to get married. I pushed pause on the house savings goal temporarily while saving for an engagement ring and honeymoon. In 2016, we got married. Thankfully, Lauren’s parents set a very modest $10k budget and paid for almost all of the wedding, which helped immensely. My parents also covered many of the traditional “groom” expenses, which meant we only had a few out-of-pocket expenses.

After we got married, with our combined incomes, we kicked up the savings goal to $30k/year. To help meet our goal, we lived in a small studio apartment, with only $600/mo rent. When I say small - I mean small - 300sq ft. No washer, no dryer, no dishwasher. My wife, Lauren, is a saint for even marrying me after suggesting we move into such a small place. It was a sacrifice for both of us, but we were going after this goal together. But hey, at least the apartment was in a hip/cool area of town.

By the beginning of 2017, our house fund was at $170k. By this time, the glamour of the "tiny home" lifestyle was wearing off on both of us. The small space was driving both of us crazy - everything from cooking to laundry, etc., etc. was a daunting task due to the space. Don’t get me wrong. Our space was “cute” (kudos to Lauren on that) and looked like something straight out of HG magazine (with “tiny homes” being the craze), but it wasn’t functional at all. We began talking about a house. However, with a hot real estate market, and rising home prices, I doubted we’d get anything decent for $170k. I wondered if we should continue to save for another year. When I first started saving, $170k would have purchased a great home, but now those same homes were worth $225-230k. It was naive on my part, but I didn't anticipate a rising real estate market when I started saving years earlier. If we saved another year, we could get close to $200k. Maybe that would help?

Crossroads: Go for it? Or keep saving?

If we were about to make the largest purchase of our lives, we needed some guidance. Should we do this now? Wait? Lauren and I had the chance to spend a few minutes with Dave Ramsey 1-on-1 to get his thoughts.

First, he told us, “Don't get married to a house. There’s a house on every corner." He recommended we maintain our “walk away” power and put in low offers on several homes. “Fire and see what hits,” he said. “You might be surprised. With cash, you can move fast with 'we'll buy as-is and close in two weeks' and that's appealing to sellers."

Second, he said, don’t buy too much house. He said, "Most people think they need to buy a house and stay in it forever, and as a result, they buy way more house than they need. Everyone moves sooner than they think." He felt, if we were able to get a good deal in a decent neighborhood, we could sell in 2-3 years.

Lastly, he said, if nothing else, we could consider a small mortgage and pay it off really fast, consistent with his advice.

The Home Search

Lauren and I agreed: we would start looking for homes and see if we find anything. If not, we would keep saving.

We reached out to a realtor and began the search. With a hot market, it didn’t take long before we found a nice townhouse that fit what we were looking for - it was close to Nashville, in a good area of town, and wasn’t too far away from work. Luckily, the price was within our range, too.

After talking with our realtor, and analyzing all the variables (the condition of the home, recent sales in that neighborhood, etc), we put in a competitive offer with a good amount of earnest money ($6k) and agreed to split the title insurance costs. We tried anything we could do to make our offer more appealing. Out of several offers (including other cash offers and offers higher than ours), ours beat out the competition. After everything was said and done, we agreed on a purchase price of $168,500, cash.

On the day of closing, as we signed the papers, we shared our story with the closing agent. He smiled and said, “Cash really is king.”

Conclusion

We believe living debt-free life is a worthy aspiration and we hope our story encourages you wherever you are on your financial journey.

If we can do it, you can do it, too.

Thank you’s

Lauren, my wife ❤️ For being on this journey with me from day one. We make a great team. I love you.

Mom / Dad Mom, for supporting my dreams, even if it meant moving away. Dad, for believing I could do it.

Jeremiah Terhark For inspiring me to go to college without debt and showing me I could make money from my dorm (thanks for those early projects).

Dr. John JewettFor giving me my first “real” job at the Dell Rapids Public School. This was the fuel I needed to get through college debt-free.

Dave Ramsey For going bankrupt and teaching others what you've learned. You've changed our family tree, forever.

Jon Shearer For giving me (a young, hotshot college student) the shot at his dream job where I could grow so much personally and professionally.

Jon Gallion For being a great friend and roommate (and never raising rent).

Erin McAtee For telling me I was doing the right thing, even when others were saying the opposite. You stopped me from giving up.

Zach Hurd For taking all my money, investing it, and making me feel good about it.

Jim / Joyce Snyder For raising a daughter who would eventually become my wife and being an example of what it means to live debt-free.

Jenny Lee For encouraging me to share my story. Here it is.