Tag: debt free

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Finance

Another One Bites the Dust

And by another one I most certainly mean another student loan!!!! We paid off a $9,300 student loan in like 4 months!!! WHOOHOOO!!!! Glory be to GOD!!!

We moved in last July to Luke’s parents’ house with six student loans and now we are down to two!!! That is so exciting right?!?!?! But the embarrassing and disappointing part is we paid off that student loan on June 5th and it has taken me this long to boast about the Lord’s provision and blessings! I want to be the person that shouts of His blessings off of the rooftops and I’m disappointed it took me so long to shout it from my proverbial rooftop…aka this blog.

I feel like I have had a split personality the last couple of weeks in paying off this student loan. Part of me was ridiculously ecstatic, especially since the Lord really came through in helping us make it happen (more on that in a minute). And part of me couldn’t help but think, yeah that’s great, but the two loans left are the giant ones and our time here is growing short. I really let other people’s my own doubt get to me.

I have to say I have always been quite the Doubting Thomas (John 20:24–29), a see it to believe it kind’ve person and have been very comforted in the way Jesus loved Thomas. And I’ve never been quite sure what the Lord’s promise has been with this debt. I know I distinctly heard or felt God telling me to trust Him in paying off the loans. But if I am being really honest, I believe He said He would do it this year… and let’s be real, the Lord asking me to trust Him in taking care of my debt…yeah I can get behind that, I can believe that because I know and trust that the Lord loves me and will work everything out according to His will and glory, but to believe that He is going to do it in a specific time frame sounds well…nuts, crazy, made up in my head, maybe even wishful thinking… especially when that timeframe is rapidly approaching and the thought of debt being gone is a sweet sweet dream… a deep desire of my heart. It weighs on me in a way I can’t explain and it makes me feel like a decision I made 10 years ago is slowing me down from doing what God is calling me to do today… those longings He placed on my heart to serve Him, bring Him glory, and love others the way He has loved me are dim shadows of what they could be. (Now I know that the Lord can do whatever He wants whenever He wants and have no doubt in my mind that He is absolutely using this debt for His good purpose, yet I still feel longing in my heart to move forward, to serve, and love in those specific ways.)

That split personality was rearing its ugly head this last two weeks. Some of the people I shared our newest payoff with were excited for me, but continuously made suggestions and comments that made me feel like they clearly didn’t think God was going to make this miracle happen. Which partially made me think I was crazy for even thinking it was possible, but also partially fueled the flame of my belief. More and more I felt the Lord encouraging me to seek the impossible, believe the impossible, to believe in a Sun Standing Still kind’ve miracle. The Sun Stand Still idea comes from Joshua 10:12-13, where Joshua asked the Lord to stop the sun and moon from moving until they won a battle and the Lord did it! He made the impossible happen. This has come to me now two separate times in the last few weeks and I have never heard of it before. I read a random blog on Pinterest or Facebook about buying a house from an author I had no idea was a Christian, where she talked about having a Sun Stand Still prayer to the Lord and then a couple days ago again, someone I know on Facebook wrote about a book that is called something like Sun Stand Still, and showed a quote from the book about how if we aren’t believing God for the impossible then we are wasting our faith and not truly seeing His power and might. I am also currently reading the book of Joshua and God has been calling me to be strong and courageous  over and over again (AND WOW! I am continually in awe of how God uses the writing of this blog to grow my faith! SO cool! Just writing this reminds me of how He continual speaks into my life.)

I have to say I have been so excited to trust the Lord with paying off these loans and to tell you about it, but as the days went by and I didn’t make time to write, my enthusiasm dwindled little by little and doubt began to creep in. It has been a very busy two weeks, finishing the school year, being in a friend’s wedding, and starting summer school made it a little overwhelming. But in writing my flame is rekindled and I am declaring here and now to believe the Lord for the impossible! $30,000+ more paid off by the end of this year! Who will believe God for the impossible with me?!?!? What is your SUN STAND STILL prayer? Let’s pray together for each other!

Speaking of praying for the impossible, please pray with me for a friend…Her name is Allison and she is 5 months pregnant and she just found out she has leukemia. Please pray for complete healing and safety for her and her baby and strength and guidance for her husband. Thank you!

Leave your prayers in the comments! I will be praying for you!

Categories
Finance

Faithful

God is faithful!

Isn’t that awesome?!?!? I’m a little teary eyed over here… the exciting news hoped for last week is… we paid off another loan today! $8,000!!!!  I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot to me! I had NO idea at the beginning of this year that come February 2nd we would have saved $8,000 to put towards paying off a loan. We had some of the money saved from the end of last year, but a good portion of it we saved from this last month (EVERYBODY that includes Christmas and buying our loved ones presents). How can this be? Oh wait… God is Faithful!

This got me thinking about budgeting and paying off debt vs just spending the money we make…with our budget, living with my in-laws, and the faithfulness of Christ we have been able to save $8,000 in about 3 months. WOW!!! I had no idea we even had that much money or spent that much money. I worked my whole first year of teaching and yes we had rent and such, but we really saved nothing to pay extra on our debt…and in three months of working at it (I should say three paychecks not exactly 3 months) we saved that much money?!?!? We have always had a budget and really stuck to it, especially while I was in school, but last year we didn’t save or succeed in paying off debt when we finally had the money too do so; we just spent. I am learning a lesson I didn’t plan on, when you don’t save you spend so much more than you realize! I really want to be a good steward, even after paying off debt! I am so thankful for this unexpected lesson.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…the numbers! So we moved in to my in-laws at the beginning of August. From August through December we paid off two loans totaling a little over $10,000. From the end of December until today, February 2nd, we paid off another loan, just over $8,000. Let me say it again, GOD is FAITHFUL!!! I’m gonna geek out on numbers for a second…so hold on…that means we have paid OFF $18,000 in about six months and with our monthly payments included we have actually paid about $23,000 total towards student loans in those six months. WHOOOHHOOO!!! Here is where it gets a little complicated to explain…we are walking with the Lord towards the goal of $54,000 paid OFF in 2015. That goal includes paying off the three private student loans we have. $54,000 was the round estimate of those three loans. We have paid off a little over $8,000 of that with the loan we paid off today. Which would leave us with $46,000 to pay off the rest of this year, BUT (the Lord is Faithful) when I went back to add up the two private loans we have left I got $43,500 not $46,000 and lets be real $2,500 less is a whole month of saving!!!

 

The next loan we hope to pay off is closer to $10,000. Please pray with us for the money to pay that one off as soon as possible so we can start tackling the BIG BEHEMOTH, which is closer to $34,000. We will continue to believe that the Lord is faithful and trust in Him.

More importantly please pray that we grow closer to the Lord and trust in Him more and more each day!

Next post I will share some tips on how we are sticking to our budget, admits living in the real world and still actively loving on people.

Categories
Finance

The Day, The Name

My post titles are starting to have a pattern to them…I’m not sure I like it…but hey that’s what is in my head right now. PS I wanted to let you know, I did not write a blog post last week, but I did however write the About Me page and that’s basically the same thing…right? Anyway I thought I would tell you a little bit more about the day I decided to write this blog and where it’s name came from.

I have to admit, I should have written this sooner because the day or days that I decided to start writing this blog have become a bit foggy. It was a special day though because I got to spend my whole day chatting with some very special ladies that I don’t spend nearly enough time with.

First, I went to lunch with a dear friend, Alyssa, who is preggo, which is inspiring in and of itself. (For those of you who don’t know me, I am on this journey to pay off debt because I desperately can’t wait to have kids and really want to/feel called to stay home with them…which is something I can’t do with all this DEBT.) Talking and just being so overjoyed and excited with her renewed my resolve. I just LOVE time with her! And now I can’t get enough of her little baby bump too!

Then I got to have pastry with another dear friend, Jane and her sweet little one Felicity. Jane is super inspiring to begin with, her and her husband along with their two little ones have worked to pay off all of their debt (we went to Fresno Pacific University together) and they have just succeed in becoming debt free!!!!! They were just one payment away from debt free on the day we got pastry! And she gave me a novel idea…pray for the money to pay off the debt…hmm well as a Christ-follower you may be thinking…DUH!!! Don’t get me wrong I have prayed a lot about student loan debt… A LOT.. I prayed that we would be disciplined enough to payoff the debt, I prayed that we would make enough money to pay it off, I prayed that I would not make paying off debt my idol, and other things like that. I would often wonder, can I win the lottery or win the money off of HGTV (my favorite channel) or the dream house, all with the only thought being to pay off the debt, BUT I never just asked God to provide the means. AND that people was the exact moment, with Jane’s words, that I began to think maybe the Lord was asking me to trust Him to payoff this debt.

This thought only continued to be confirmed as I then went to visit my friend Alex to celebrate her birthday! We sat and talked about debt, teaching, marriage, and life in general. Throughout this conversation we kept coming to the consensus that trusting God was the answer, the answer to EVERYTHING. He would get us through. As we were talking, my mind was drawn back to Jane’s statement of praying for the money over and over.

The next day…New Year’s Eve, Luke and I were spending a much needed lazy day at home together. We were watching either The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, well Luke was sleeping and I was contemplating the conversations from the day before, living with my in-laws, paying off debt, and what the Lord was trying to tell me. I decided to take a shower…my best thinking, praying, contemplating, and such always happen in there…plus I needed to get ready for our New Year’s Eve dinner. Clarity aka the Holy Spirit, struck me then and there. Like I’ve mentioned before, I struggle with faith and trust, but in that moment and only in that moment so far, I felt sure and ready to go on this journey. See we plan to move out of my in-laws in or around December and house payments/rent and other responsibilities will come, especially financially (my in-laws are blessing us so much!). So we won’t have the ability to pay on the loans like we do now. And I just felt the Lord asking, will you trust me to make it happen. I thought Yeah! Yeah! Yeaaaah! the Lord can do it and so I shared my thoughts with Luke. He immediately was on board and really got this blog up and running… he may have thought the details were a little crazy ($54,000 in one year is a LOT of money), but here we are :).

The name of the blog picks up right where this story left off. Maybe a minute after I agreed to trust the Lord and shared the news with Luke, I began to doubt…did the Lord REALLY say He would make it happen? Did He really mean $54,000? Is this all in my head? Wishful thinking? Does the Lord really tell us such specific things? Oh NO!!! What if I just thought this all up and God is up there thinking…this girl??? And they just kept coming…all the doubts over and over. I began to preach the gospel to myself and to pray about my word and trust just kept coming up, at least as much as the doubts. (See what I’m talking about preaching the gospel to myself and my word for the year here). And that is how the name Trusting in the Dark was born. It’s sometimes dark here…I don’t know everything the Lord is calling me to do, I don’t know if He has specifically asked me to trust Him for $54,000, but I DO know He has called me to TRUST HIM this year and He has asked me to ask Him to provide. So I am here, little ‘ole me, trusting in the dark, not able to see all the details, yet trying and learning how to trust through His amazing grace.

Please pray for my trust and faith to abound.

PPS hoping for some exciting debt news next week! Stay tuned!!!