About Me (The Engineer): Bio
- Age – 30’s
- Kids – 2 boys
- Living in – Kansas
- Occupation – Engineer
- Education – Bachelor of Science, Disciplines: Mechanical and Electronics
- Hobbies – Movies, surfing the web and saving money
I grew up in rural Manitoba, Canada, living my happy little life in the cold harsh winters and beautiful summers. Manitoba (at least where I lived) is so flat it makes mole hills look like mountains… it was so boring we used to go to Grand Forks, North Dakota just for fun (that should put it in perspective). Anyway, I was a typical lost teenager trying to find myself… the only real hobby I had was snowmobiling (which I had to give up when I moved stateside). After high school I went to a community college in Winnipeg and took Mechanical Engineering, I learned a lot but ended up only going one year. That next year I moved to Winnipeg with a friend of mine and we rented a house and went on living beyond our means (read: maxed out all my accounts and cards). On top of this I decided to sell off my paid for truck and leased a brand new car. Already at 19 I had learned about debt and found myself in over my head.
Eventually things progressed with the girlfriend and marriage came about… I packed everything I own into a couple suitcases and moved across the border. In getting married we decided that I would move to Texas with her since she refused to come and cope with 50 below winters. Eventually I got a job and worked as a maintenance man at our church for a couple years. After realizing that I was going nowhere fast, I enrolled in college to finish up the engineering degree. College was good, though very expensive… especially with bad spending habits and credit cards. After college we re-evaluated our lives and decided that we wanted to move to Kansas to be closer to her family (and mine somewhat). I got on as an engineer at an electronics manufacturing facility a couple hours drive from her folks. Unfortunately the spending spree was still in high gear, plus I bought a new truck, a house and all the student loans had kicked in. On top of that we decided to have a child, so when my son was born we got hit with thousands upon thousands of medical bills. I decided at this point to research debt elimination, extra cash ideas, freebies and ended up reading a lot of blogs and decided to start my own to help keep me on track. With over 200k in debt at the time, things were pretty bad.
That brings us to now. With much effort and work we have paid off tens of thousands of debt, with much to go. But I feel relieved that we are making progress… without any strings attached or bailouts.