About

I am a loving wife to my amazing husband Nathan and  new mommy to little Molly. Here is our original goal we set back on early 2008:

“We are taking a step of faith together and plunging into the debt free lifestyle. We began our journey to true financial freedom in January 2008. Lord willing, we will have all our debt paid off (with the exception of our loans with forgiveness programs for teachers) by July 4, 2009! This blog will serve as a documentation tool for our journey. We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength!”

 

We didn’t meet our goal. We faced job changes, had a baby, Nathan went back to school, we moved, Nathan became a youth pastor, basically life happened. Our new goal? Live obediently unto the Lord. For us, that meant obeying and trusting Him when He provided us with a home before we felt like we had all our ducks in a row to buy, (His ducks turned out to be better than our ducks, imagine that!)

Living obediently unto the Lord also means to follow the calling on our lives for me to stay at home with our daughter. This means living below our means and living simply with less. It also means saying no to credit cards and doing what we can to pay off our student loans. This blog is still a way for me to share with others the ways in which God is providing and ideas and victories we’ve come across in our “living with less” journey.

 

What blesses me more than I can express is that it also means using the home that He has blessed us with to bless others! We want to be good stewards of this home– not just our finances, but the house too.

 

Why don’t we set a date/goal for the student loan payoff? Because we really don’t know when we will be able to pay them all off. Honestly, we’d love to have them paid off by the time we are 30, (about five years from now.) But, it’s in God’s hands. All we can do right now is be obedient to His timing and His plan. We are still working to pay off our debt; we are simply approaching it in a different way than we were before.

 

The good news? God is so faithful! We have gone from having over $42,000 in debt in early 2008, to having just over $30,000 in non-mortgage debt. We have 3 student loans left to pay off and a mortgage now. However, the payments on that mortgage are less than renting in our area, and we are gaining equity!

 

All in all, we acknowledge that God is in control and we will do our part in His grace to live on a budget, live on less, and give of what we are given!

 

Praise God for His abundant grace, discipline, and love!!