By David Stenhouse

My wife and I paid off our mortgage in 19 years, finishing that part of our lives in 2016 and have been completely debt free ever since. No car payments, credit card debt, etc. Nothing. Our daughter has been through college and married. This was all done on a single income covering the last 31 years of our 32-year marriage. For the past 16 years, we have been running our own business.

I am a computer forensics and electronic discovery consultant for law firms in the Pacific Northwest. My wife handles the bookkeeping, corporate requirements, and helps me with business decisions. Our teamwork has developed over the years and we stay out of each other's lane. It's a wonderful partnership.

From a distance, our lives appear modest and uninteresting. A closer look, though, reveals two people that work together, running their own business with no employees, and doing so in a manner where they fully depend on each other and nobody else. And, zero debt. To us, that is very interesting. We are very proud of our operation.

The Foundation Is Built

On a random afternoon in 1993, I had finished my shift with the Washington State Patrol and found my pregnant wife preparing our dinner. Asking about her day, she replied, "I could get used to this". At that moment our roles were fixed. I would bring in the income and she would handle raising our daughter and building our home life. Hardly a plan for wealth building.

Holding a degree from Seattle Pacific University and being the most disciplined person I have ever known, my wife was more than capable to out earn me. I was a cop making 26K and we were in our early 20s. With life coming at us fast, she wanted to provide our daughter with a home free of strife while supporting me in my career. Our roles were to be traditional. They still are.

This post isn't just about finances. This post is about developing one's freedom from the world's grasp. I'm not describing retiring in your 30s and traveling to exotic locations as a few do, but raising a family, owning a home, and laying roots in a community as most of us do. Doing it in a manner where one controls their life as much as possible. That is accomplished through self-reliance and delayed gratification.

The World Only Takes

Everyone wants a piece of you.

Relying on yourself creates a rash of difficulties. Health insurance is one of them. When you don't belong to a "group", insurance choices diminish and costs rise. We pay over 20K each year for premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. Because of this, we try to keep ourselves fit by rarely eating out, enduring daily 6-mile walks and other fitness (see my blog post about our Peloton Bike HERE), and eating only whole foods with no added sugar. It is a grind, but we do pretty well. 2025 is going to see us increase our fitness activities even more (I will admit, I do succumb to sugar cravings and lose my mind now and then....).

The world tells you to solve problems by buying a new product, opening another subscription, or hiring a service. Costs for these items add up, not only digging into your finances but giving away freedom by depending on others to fix your problems. Those solutions aren't always readily available. Time to learn how to fix things on your own.

Having a fully-remodeled house in Sammamish, Washington is nice. Living in one of the wealthiest communities in the U.S. may bring about visions of a Range Rover parked out in front of a beautiful Northwest home; however, our 1,800 square foot home with no garage will beg to differ. It resides on a horse-acre lot, so there's that, but Sammamish wasn't Sammamish when we moved into the area in 1997.

I remodeled the house myself over a decade of exposed subfloor and studs, sheetrock dust, and tools strewn about. I am fortunate to have been forced as a kid to understand home/auto repairs and knowing how to properly use the tools needed to get a job done.

For our business, I depend on commercial software to assist me in my electronic data analysis. Since 2020, I have said goodbye to some of my best software tools due to rising licensing fees, choosing to navigate with a step-down level of packages. I have supplemented the losses with a newly-acquired ability to write Python code (learned during the COVID shutdowns). This part has been difficult.

Relying on yourself also requires you to know when the problem is outside of your abilities. We do hire out some maintenance work around the house so I can focus on income, but we do most of it ourselves. Dependance on others is limited here.

Losing My Job - Ego Checked

I have read posts on X why one should delay paying off a mortgage, using math to explain the numbers. That math works if you know you're going to have a steady income. Suddenly lose that income, and you see the value in locking up your most important asset.

In 2000, I left law enforcement to pursue a private sector role. I wanted to make more income and learn how to run a business. That income increased greatly in 2005. My wife and I decided to treat the increase as if finding $20 in a coat pocket, using it to prep for life's upcoming expenses. We didn't change our lifestyle much and socked the increase away.

In December, 2007, I was informed my Seattle position would be coming to an end. Although I had a decent severance, my wife saw our expenses depleting the funds over a 6-month period. That was the day I said goodbye to depending on an employer to make my decisions and tell me my worth. We were going out on our own.

These are the unexpected moments where debt's weight can become heavy. I focused on the family's best interest in building a solid financial foundation. Once again, delayed gratification was at the forefront.

I laid out my work lifestyle in blog post on our personal website detailing what it takes for us to operate our business. Since writing that post, not much has changed. You can find that HERE.

Compounding Interest Is Key

One has to know "some" relief is on the horizon and we have been forming that relief over our lives by investing for the future. I cannot keep up this pace throughout my life, noticing in my 50s that my recovery periods from physical and mental tasks grow in length. My body is a device that cannot be factory reset, so we have to build a war chest to supplement us for when I can't take on as much.

Married in 1992, we have been investing in mutual funds the entire time, through employer packages and personal brokerage accounts. Time is the key when investing, building wealth through compounding interest over decades. The earlier a person enters the markets, the better. If one isn't investing, my unsolicited advice is to just get in. Get in now. What you build is another tool that keeps you from dependance on others.

Last Thoughts

When you remove debt, you gain the ability to say "no". When you work for yourselves, you leave your valuation to clients paying you. There's much control.

I don't have to work for an undesirable client and can be discerning. We don't worry about financing anything. We don't have to think about how much equity is in our home to finance a new one. Debt free is literally that. You are freeing yourself of weight. Weight that you never knew was there until it's gone.

My wife has been the backbone of this lifestyle. When playing the marriage game, I hit the jackpot. She desires more than anything a house free of strife and arguments over finances. I have given her plenty of anxiety in our marriage with my bad decisions, but we motor on. Our desires are the same, with both understanding building our lives over time free of debt is where we want to venture.

Carrying around a camera since childhood, David Stenhouse has a love for capturing people, machines, and America. A former Special Agent in the U. S. Secret Service and Trooper with the Washington State Patrol, he is now so blessed to spend each day running a business with his best friend, high school sweetheart, and wife, Shay.

You can follow David on X.