Okay...so I'm not sure if this is going to be way too much information into our personal finances, but the reason I am posting this is because I am sure that there are people out there who may benefit from this.
Here is a little secret....my dad helped us buy our house. It wasn't that we couldn't afford it, but we only had 10% down. Unless you have 20% you have to pay mortgage insurance = money down the drain. He didn't want us to have to do that, so he lent us the other 10%. It was $30,000! We have a ten year loan with him that is due at the end of five years with a huge balloon payment due at the end of the five years. (My dad is a business man...we are also paying interest.) Are you keeping up?
Well, we have been making our payments to him course, but as of last month we still owed something like $24,000. We of course still have 31/2 years to pay it off, and then we even have the option to refinance with him at the end of that if we want. However...
Debt of any kind...even to your sweet dad...even house debt is like JAIL!
Danny and I paid off all of our debt except for our last house several years ago. Credit cards, cars, student loans etc... It was freeing. But now we feel the BONDAGE.
There are things that we would love to do but can't because of debt. We would love to travel a lot more with our kids...to far away places...in airplanes. But we can't.
We have savings accounts for college and missions that are substantial, but still need more and because of debt, they aren't enough.
And the list goes on....
Soooo.....one night after watching the movie, "Facing the Giants", it finally hit us!
"With God, all things are possible."
We decided that we would go to the Lord and tell him we wanted to pay off our debt to my dad in one year! Now, on a school teacher's salary with 6 kids this might seem crazy, but we know we can do it!
And let me tell you, it has been so exciting! We have been able to cut the fat out of our budget, and are already down to around $19,000!
We knew that we would hit opposition right away...so we were prepared, and it came.
Four of us needed new contacts or glasses, our little girls and I had to go to the doctor all this month and Danny's car needed an emissions test and registration, gas prices skyrocketing! All these were kind of rare expenses. But we didn't let it get us down. We know our faith will be tested...but it's worth it to press forward!
I plan on posting more about this in the future. How we found "fat" in our budget, what we cut out, and how God can do ANYTHING!
It has been an amazing process to see the Lord take over in our lives when we are willing to give it all to him!
When we are done with this we want to start working on paying off our house as fast as we can! We don't want to be in bondage anymore for anything! And God is making it happen! He gets all the credit!
I would love to hear your success stories in this area!
More later!
1 comment:
This is what I love about you- always willing to share with people the tough stuff! Budgeting is something we would love to do but since we are self employed we don't have the same income every month and sometimes don't get paid for several months.It is very hard then to figure out what we can spend and what we can save. we do the best we can and are constantly praying the Lord sends us more work. We feel we have been blessed by decisions made long ago to put the Lord first.ie: missions(instead of Major League baseball for Thomas), me staying home(instead of working while I had 2 kids in school all day and could of), and another child even though we really liked our lives with 2!2009 was extremely hard for us with the economy and Thomas' disease & surgery but we were blessed to be in a better place now than we ever have been!With God all things are truly possible! Good luck!xxoo
Post a Comment