Q. My wife and I are in Baby Step 2 of your plan, and we’ve got our 20th wedding anniversary coming up in a few months. We had always planned on taking a 10-day luxury trip to celebrate, but now that we’re trying to get out of debt it seems pretty unrealistic. Should we pause the Baby Steps and celebrate like we originally planned, or would it be better to concentrate on paying off debt?
A. If it were me, I’d want to pause and celebrate in a smaller way. Then, in a year or two when you’ve reached your goal of being debt-free, you could have a big double celebration – for your anniversary and for gaining control of your finances.
Think about it. Why isn’t the 21st, 22nd or 23rd anniversary just as big as the 20th? No reason really. It’s just an arbitrary milestone we human beings decided on and created. But you can “undecide” stuff like that anytime you want.
If you two, as a couple, are in agreement on that point, then it suddenly becomes easier to delay pleasure in order to win. And trust me, when you agree on things like that, the celebrations become even sweeter.
