Morning Cup

The boys and I (Mom) enjoying our morning cup of coffee/milk.

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Welcome

Welcome,

 First you must know, there is nothing special about me other than the fact I am a sinner saved by the grace of God. Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (ESV) I am a wife and stay-at-home mama to two little boys, just striving to glorify God with my life. We live in a pretty normal New England town where the cost of living is high, it’s rare to know your neighbor’s name, and it gets “wicked” cold in the winter!

I’ve never considered myself a writer, nor have I ever considered starting a blog until recently. You see, my husband and I, through mortgage and student loans, find ourselves in a lot of debt, and recently we needed a new car for him. He commutes nearly 45 minutes each way to work every day. The car needed to be reliable and great on gas. Unfortunately, this only put us deeper in debt as we had no cash to put down. While we can afford all of our monthly payments (including the new one) with the one income, this cycle of debt isn’t cutting it for us anymore. We want a better future for our family free from the bonds of some bank.

How do I see this happening before our kids have grown and gone? Although it is not out of the realm of possibility, I am not planning to work outside of the home. There are four main ways I can see saving money and making an extra cash income to help support our family: 1) Regularly analyzing our spending habits and acting on our discoveries, 2) Putting every spare penny toward our smallest debt and snowballing from there, 3) This blog, and 4) Our tea business. I will go into more detail on each topic in other posts.

My goal for this blog is to give an honest take on the ins and outs of getting out of debt. I will share my failures and successes along the way, and you might hear a funny story or two about our crazy life with little boys. I know that God has blessed me with the gift of encouragement and that is my prayer for this blog. Not only do I want to show you what things may or may not work in paying off debt, but I want to encourage my readers, whether I have one or thousands. (Hopefully, I have at least one because that would be pretty embarrassing.)


Much Love,

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April 3, 2034: 19 More Years of Debt

April 3, 2034...the day we are expected to pay off our last student loan. Our sons will be 23 and 20 for goodness sake! By the grace of God we plan to have all of our loans paid off well before that dreadful date. (Shhh, don't tell the bank.)

The reality is that our family is in tens of thousands of dollars of debt. It's not something we are proud of, but it's true. It's time to face the reality and do something about it! At the beginning of 2015 we decided after 6 years of marriage that we would finally put a budget plan together. Why it took us so long to start is beyond me, but it is what it is. We began very committed to living within the budget. As the year went on I found myself adding a few dollars here and there, especially to the grocery budget. I committed myself to an exercise and eating program that just made the grocery budget grow bigger. (Side Note: that is NOT how you "budget". You have the money you have. Stick to your set budget. If you're seeing things that may need to be adjusted, talk about it with your spouse if you're married. Do not just make up random numbers.) Items that I didn't NEED kept making their way into my shopping cart, and we were quickly back to paying our minimum monthly payments on our debts. No extra payments were made each month as we had originally planned.

In September 2015, God drew our attention to our debt situation. We put a full price offer on a house that was a little bigger in the perfect town, but it would have put us at the top of our budget. Meanwhile, we would have been needing to put minimum payments toward all of our other debts. They rejected our offer, praise the Lord! In November we took my husband's car to the mechanic. While it was still running we were told that the entire engine needed to be replaced! With too many unknowns we chose to look for a new car. I'm sure some might question this decision, adding debt when all we really want to do is get out of debt. Sure, it'll keep us there longer, but my husband needs the reliability and in the end it was the best decision for our family. Besides that, the term of the loan is officially 6 years. But this is our first targeted loan, and our goal is to pay it off entirely in 2 years -but may happen sooner as things currently appear!

As of now, January 2016, these are our debts : a car loan, and two substantial sized student loans. We do also have a mortgage, but I am not counting that as debt for this blog. I am proud to say that we do NOT have any credit card debt. And against the advice of financial guru, Dave Ramsey, we do have and frequently use our credit card. We just don't ever let the interest accrue and earn a bunch of cash back rewards. We view it as always having a 1%-5%  (sometimes 10%) cash back coupon on our purchases!

One of the things I like most about this blog is that unlike many other blogs that I have seen, my blog will allow you to follow our journey from the very beginning. Please join me by subscribing. We might even learn a thing or two together along the way.

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