On a Journey

I've posted before about DEBT and said I'd comment sometime on our own personal journey...

I've always thought finances are a difficult area. Money isn't something you can get away from. It's involved with everything we do. How we deal with our finances is important. Not just so we can be "well off", but because God has entrusted it to us and we are accountable to Him for what we do with it. With that said, I'd like to share some of our personal experiences with finances and the journey we've been on this far.

My husband and I took a finance class while we were engaged. It taught us good principles that we thought were valuable. We've lived on a budget since we got married. Throughout the years, we've made some wise choices and some unwise choices. All of those have balanced out and we are pretty much in the same place now that we were six years ago. Realizing that we haven't gotten very far, we've recently gotten more focused, set some goals, and are disciplining ourselves to stay the course.

Our FIRST GOAL was to pay off all credit card debt and stop using them. The rule in our family now is that we don't use credit cards. We currently have $0 balances on both our cards and don't plan on that ever changing. Not even for "emergencies". Which leads me to our SECOND GOAL...an emergency fund. We now have an emergency fund that holds over one month living expenses. We've had that in the past but with making cc payments and spending too much, we haven't had it in awhile. In the future we will increase that to 6 months living expenses but we have a step in between that we must tackle first. Our THIRD GOAL and the one we are currently working on is pay off all debt. We owe on an auto loan and my student loans. This year our focus is paying that off. As soon as that is done, we will apply extra payments to the student loans. It is called a debt snowball and gets rid of debt faster when you pay off one debt and apply that monthly payment to another. We are living very frugally this year. Disciplining ourselves to put everything above a need towards that car loan. (I'm telling you all this partly to hold myself accountable!) We sold our extra vehicle today to lesson our monthly expenses so we'll be sharing a car for awhile. I've already enjoyed the freedom these first few months of 2008. I can see the progress we are making and it makes the sacrifices seem small. After we pay off all debt, the FOURTH GOAL will be to increase emergency fund to 6 months living expenses. FIFTH GOAL will be to save for a down payment on a house. Then we will purchase a reasonable home and start the SIXTH GOAL of working to pay off our mortgage early. A lot of these principles we've come across listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio and applying the advice he gives. These are not new principles, just focused steps to take if you really want to be DEBT FREE.

All this with the END GOAL of being able to give more to the Kingdom of God without being a slave to the lender. We want to be free to give however God would have us. We want to know that we have been faithful with what He has entrusted to us. The journey along the way will grow us. It has already. It is definetly teaching me contentment and thankfulness for all that I have been given.