Exciting update!

A little over 6 years ago my rock star husband decided to be intentional and productive with his hour long commute to and from work every day.  Dave Ramsey's Take Control of Your Money podcast quickly became his favorite.  He actively started applying the principles of Total Money makeover to our personal finances. We got on a budget, made every dollar accountable for and started setting goals for what we wanted to do with our finances.  As we began building a 3-6 months savings account, we realized (michael grasped the concept much quicker) that if we hustle and work a little harder in our spare time to make extra income we could get to our goal even quicker.  Lets just get real down and honest, this was not a fun easy season of our lives. I drove a very hideous 1996 white jeep cherokee that was super duper ugly (but paid for) and Michael drove a 2001 Honda accord with high miles (but  paid for and more gas efficient for his long commute.)  We lived in a 2 bedroom townhouse and saved pretty much every extra penny we have. I can vividly remember several good friends buying a new sporty SUV's and purchasing a new homes and I was frustrated that I was stuck in my ugly jeep and small townhouse.  My sweet husband led me well and said, well what are we fighting for? Why do we not choose to buy new cars? Why are we not buying a house yet? This was probably the most pivotal moment for me because I had to figure out WHY I wanted to commit to this process!

We have huge things we are passionate about, ministries we want to help fund, mission trips we want to help pay for, adoptions we can help contribute to, and in the process our real hope and passion is that we can help positively influence those around us.  We truly believe that financial stress contributes to a large majority of stress and marital breakdown in families.  By choosing to discipline ourselves and commit to the process, it gives us the opportunity to give hope to other families drowning in debt desperately needing a plan to take action! I now had a WHY that was worth fighting for. Debt freedom would not only allow us to GIVE like crazy to the things we are passionate about, but would also give us the experience and knowledge of how to help lead others down the road to debt freedom.

So my super fun exciting awesome news!!!???!?!?!?

 This  morning at 9:07am my rock star husband wired the money to completely pay off the mortgage on our townhouse. GONE! WAHOOO!!

For the last 3 years we have been working our tails off in several small businesses to bring in extra income to get us to our goals as fast as possible.  We paid off our townhouse mortgage 24 years early! EEEK!!

Why do I share this?  Our hearts desire and biggest prayer is that our story can provide HOPE for others who feel stuck, feel like attacking their debt is impossible.

It is not only possible, it is worth it. Ive heard the saying before: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Make a plan, get on a budget, commit to the process, set a goal and DO IT!

I can tell you this. It is worth it ALL. Its worth selling your super awesome fabulous DREAM CAR to drive something you can pay cash for and put the $900 per month payments towards attacking the rest of your debt. It was worth the 3 years of Michael working nights and weekends to build a small business that allowed us to cash flow expenses and stockpile extra income to throw on the debt. It was worth the crazy (and passionate) opinions we got as we started another home business with a direct sales company to help others and build another stream of income to build even more momentum on our debt snowball.  While living on a budget has been foundational in our pursuit of debt freedom, hard work and hustle to build extra income for our family has given us the massive momentum to attack the debt even quicker.  We are not done yet. We still have huge plans to attack our current mortgage. The townhouse income will give us even more momentum money to become completely debt free!

Now GO TAKE ACTION!  Get on a plan that will help you tell your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went. We have completed Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and highly recommend that class.  The company we work for AdvoCare has an excellent Debt Buster system free to distributors that has helped many people on our team begin to take the steps necessary to make a plan and get out of debt!