You know, there's that phrase, the more you make, the more you spend, right? The more you make, the more you can say, oh, that little extra thing I can have. Oh, maybe instead of getting a used car this time, I can get the new car, right? And so, you begin to have this lifestyle creep that that creeps into your financial choices. And then what can happen is now you're living to chase after your financial burdens, right?
One of the decisions my wife and I made when we went to go buy a house 10 years ago, the banks had approved us for a mortgage up to I think it was 400,000. And we were like, what kind of payments are those going to look like? You know, they're going to be huge mortgage payments. So, we made a commitment to not purchase anything above 300. We found a house for 280. We put down 40 and because I'm a veteran and the and the rates were great, we ended up with a mortgage rate below 3%.
So, we got this very affordable mortgage and we decided we wanted an affordable mortgage so that we wouldn't be chasing after mortgage payments. Um, when we purchase a car, I just had to replace a vehicle, we were looking at a lot of different cars and eventually, you know, settled on a used Subaru Outback. Maybe it wasn't the choice of the car I really wanted, but it it it fit the bill for what was appropriate to be being financially responsible without getting into to debt and allows us to continue to help family members because we're not overspending on ourselves.
And we're also relaxed. You know, we don't have the financial stress right now, which is nice. I'm getting closer and closer to retirement. So, we can put a little bit more away towards those days as well. Living with less also helps to keep me grounded with those who have less. I know there is in our culture a celebration of excess. You know, we have a marketing industry which wants us to aspire to the grandest and the best that make us somehow feel better about ourselves, right?
And that can, you know, definitely lead us down a path where we can be making all kinds of money. We can be making a half a million a year and still find ourselves living paycheck to paycheck. So, part of being an EOCC business owner, uh, one of the things that I did in order to also pay my a fair wage to my employees is I looked at how much I could live off of as opposed to how much I should be earning, right?
So I actually paid myself less than what my position actually should have been paid in order to have enough to pay my employees correctly and to also have um a buffer within the business. Eventually, my business coach helped me to understand over time that I needed to save up a buffer like three to six months of business expenses so that I could get through those dry periods which would happen like initially I didn't have that but with time I you know I I built it up and and I have to admit it certainly helped a lot with sleeping well at night because I knew there was always this buffer but it took a time little while to build it up and part of it was also taking a smaller salary. it wasn't paying myself as much as I should be paid quote unquote for the position that I had.
Um, and my wife and I would just talk about it. She had some income. I had income. We had enough to pay our bills and a little extra to put away. And and so that's the choice we made. And it was it was the appropriate choice at the time. And and it worked out.
