Our new adventure...

Four years ago God put it on my heart to get out of debt. At the time, it was just a dream. We've never really been good with money. Well, I should say, I'VE never been real good with money. My poor dear husband should get some kind of medal for living with me all these years. lol I was in charge of our banking and really, my budgeting was to spend until we ran out. O.k. honestly, sometimes my budgeting was to spend until we were in debt up to our eyeballs. I mean, we could just pay it off, right? Right? cough, cough.

riiiiiight.

Well, four years ago, I decided I'd just use our tax return money to pay off our debt and we'd be done with it once and for all. I mean, how hard could it be to stay within our means? Yikes! From then on has been quite the learning experience. We have seen God's hand in all this many times. Like when both cars needed new brakes and new tires all in that first year and we had NO savings at all. We still managed to stay out of debt that first year without a safety net of any kind. The next year when we didn't have to use our tax refund for debt was amazing! But. But, I still didn't really know much about budgeting. Every year, we'd get to the end of the year and it was only by God's grace that we'd make it debt free.

Well, this year we've decided to step things up a notch. We've cut everything that isn't necessary and are saving whatever we can over this next year. We're also going to fix up our home and next year...

We're putting it up for sale! We are going to try to sell it and buy something completely with cash only! We have a lot of work to do. First off, we need to sell about half of everything we own. The new home will probably be much smaller than what we have now. We also need to fix up the house. There are a lot of things needing fixing. We'll be...

1. painting the hallway, two bathrooms, one bedroom and maybe the outside of the house
2. finish the trim work around the tile job we did last year
3. fix up our front yard, we lost a lot of grass with this last winter
4. fix up the back yard, it's a mess
5. replace the carpeting, it's original to the house and quite yucky
6. recaulk the bathrooms
7. replace two windows

It's a tall order but we're hoping that once we finish and sell this home, we'll never owe anyone anything ever again.

The hardest part for me will be selling everything. It's overwhelming to think about! I do know that it will be worth it though. I was reading Knock off Wood yesterday and she said something that really hit home to me. She said, "The greatest challenge in making my home look attractive is keeping it clean." My home will never look good if I can't keep up with the mess. So now, I'll be releasing all this stuff out into the world and I'll be making my job easier.

We're also under attack. This year has been hard. Many things have happened that have tried to make us go off track but we are trying to stay firm in this adventure even when hard things fall onto our path. Right now, I am without a vehicle. My poor old truck is in dire straits and we just don't have the money to throw at it. We are hoping to save enough to fix it but for now, I'll be content to stay home. I won't talk about the other things but lets just say there is no doubt that someone would love to see us fail. Only by God's grace will we succeed. I will rest in His promises.

Our hope, is to be able to use our money for God, instead of junk from now on.

Blessings,