So from July 2005 until fall of 2007 our financial goal was simple – PAY OFF THE HOUSE. We lived on about 60% of our income and paid about 40% of it to the mortgage company every month.
This took lots of discipline because really, we could have totally cheated here and there – splurged on a vacation, etc. But really we just sat down when we first moved in and came up with a figure. And THAT became our payment. Since I paid bills online I really didn’t even look at that pesky monthly payment coupon with the “real” mortgage payment. We treated our “new” payment as the minimum payment.
Of course had something dire happened we could have stopped paying extra, but in all honesty I don’t think we ever sent less than what we had planned. After all we had that nice big emergency fund, right 🙂
So sometime during 2007 (truthfully, probably long before that) God began working on both Mark and I and he began calling us to get involved with the orphan. Sometime in October during a lunch at Chipotle I sprung “SOOOO, what do you think about adopting?” on Mark.
Me, the gal who had joyously declared our family complete 4 years earlier. Ha ha!
Our adoption story is well chronicled here and if you want to read more of it, go here and then work your way forward – so I won’t go in to a ton of detail here.
But as we began to look at international adoption, and decide to adopt two kids, of course the dollar signs got bigger and bigger and bigger.
But then we realized something – within a couple of months the house would be paid off.
And all that money that we had been sending to Wells Fargo? Well what better place for it to go?
It was then that we began to get the first glimpse of how our new found freedom gave God more and more room to work miracles in our lives and open us up to adventures we never knew possible.
But God had another lesson he wanted us to learn even more….
…to be continued
- Part 1: The Early Years: In Love and In Debt
- Part 2: Joining Financial Baggage
- Part 3: Driving Our Debt Around
- Part 4: The Baby Years: Baby Steps, Baby Boy
- Part 5: The “B” Word: B-U-D-G-E-T
- Part 6: The Envelope System – It Makes Your Budget Work
- Part 7: The ever-important emergency fund
- Part 8: Dumping Debt
- Part 9: Freedom to Make BIG Changes
- Part 10: Facing Setbacks – Meet Murphy
- Part 11: I Met Dave
- Part 12: Taking Advantage of the Housing Boom
Your story keeps me on the edge of my seat, even though I know parts of what comes next, I can’t wait til Fridays to see your next installment. It gives us such hope for where we are (finishing up Baby Step #2 in December!).
This brings me so much encouragement, as we are working towards being debt free. We don’t want to pay off the house though, we’d like to sell it and rent. We are not even sure if we will ever buy again (another story). I loved getting to know you at T4A. Your spunky, fun attitude is really refreshing.
I love this series. We just completed BS2, and need to get moving on BS3. I love how you stayed discplined after the original debt was payed, and love even more what it has allowed you to do for the Orphan.