’nuff said! : ) Chris and I are praising God for this huge blessing of being debt free this early in life & marriage. We started Financial Peace University back in January with not a huge amount of debt. Neither of us have finished college which meant we didn’t have any school loans to pay off. We are still renting, which we are both totally okay with. Thankfully neither of us have acted on having “house fever”. Don’t get me wrong, we both have had the feelings of “house fever” but after Dave’s talk last night about real estate & mortgages we both feel completely fine with not rushing into buying. So with no school debt or mortgages to pay off we just had our car loan to pay off.
After listening to Dave’s talk about debt we went home and took a big chunk of our savings (don’t worry, we still left $1,000+ for our emergency fund) and paid it on our debt. I seriously did a little dance after I transferred that HUGE chunk of money over. “One step closer to becoming DEBT FREE!” I said. : ) Then this past weekend in Charlotte I was sitting outside sipping on sweet tea with my Dad talking about budgets & finances. This is just one of the many things I love talking to my Dad about. He’s the one that I get my nerdy business side from. haha! I love it though! So we were outside and I was sharing about Chris and I’s zero based budget. Feeling a little bit frustrated that we still couldn’t come up with enough for our health insurance. I know, you’re thinking “What? They don’t have health insurance.” Yeah, yeah we know. It’s something we’re not proud of but ever since we got married we never had jobs that would provide it. With both of us owning our own businesses we could just never make enough to pay for it. Or, we just never took the time to research & find the money to pay for it. It just wasn’t a priority. Which now, makes me sick to even say. So, I’m telling my Dad about this and to make a long story short, he reminded me of some money that he’s been hanging on to for me. See, I have pretty amazing parents. They paid for all of our college. Since I never finished school, I still had a nice chunk of money left. I had my Dad hang on to it so that I wasn’t tempted to spend it. I had completely forgotten about it. One of the other reasons I’m thankful I had my Dad hang on to it. haha! He said, “Ruthie, why don’t I just write a check for what’s left on your debt, that way you have that extra $265.00 a month to put towards your health insurance.” Oh my gosh. Just writing this brings tears of joy to my eyes again!
So that’s our story. I know everyone’s story is different and that’s what I love about life. Everyone has a story and everyone’s is different. Chris and I know how blessed we are to have had this gift given to us by my parents but we also know that we still have a journey ahead of us. We still aren’t homeowners, we don’t have a family yet and we’re only on baby step 3 but we are SO incredibly thankful. Thankful that we have the tools that we learned from Financial Peace University to continue with us on this journey of living a life like no one else so that later on we can give like no one else! Ahhh! Now that get’s me fired up! To think that in 5, 10 years we’ll be at a spot where we can give freely. Because that’s what life is all about, it’s not about what we can get it’s about what we can give.
In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ Acts 20:35
*No we are NOT pregnant. ha! After lots of people thinking that baby step 3 meant we were going to start trying or that we were pregnant that is not the case. Baby Step 3 in FPU is saving 3-6 months of your monthly income. So no kids for us yet. We’ll just plan on loving on our nieces & nephews! 🙂
