My Passion, story and encouragment

I know I talk a lot about living financially free! I am passionate about it! How can you hold in precious wisdom that is so life changing? Our story has never been a way to say "hey, look at us and what we've done!" It's a story of amazing blessing and hard work that I want to use to encourage others to find the peace that we've found. I hear so many stories of financial hardship. We could have been one of those stories. We lived off of very little income when I heard the call from the Lord to be at home with my children. It was hard and frustrating to have no money to do anything. We were just making ends meet. About 9 months after being at home living on a very small income we were introduced to Dave Ramsey and his 7 baby steps. Dave learned financial freedom the hard way. He did it all wrong before he did it all right. Through his budgeting plan we learned to make a very precise budget that gave us freedom. We knew exactly what we could afford and what we could not. There is freedom in spending when you have a budget to do so! There were times in our life where extra spending was not an option. Our family has medical bills each year because our son has a heart condition. We also seem to use our maximum deductible by random things like unplanned hospital stays or procedures, etc but because we have a plan, we can pay cash each year.

We began the road to financial freedom with college debt of nearly $38,000 at our highest point of debt after Jeff graduated in 2005. That was 5 years ago and we were on a repayment plan for a 30 year loan! We could only make minimum payments for the first few years. I truly believe that hard work and diligence (and trust in the Lord) will bless your efforts even more as it did us. When we finally got serious about getting out of it, it wasn't long before we saw incredible results. We did make mistakes along the way. In fact, we'd be farther ahead if we had "waited" on a few things but we are still moving forward and that is what counts!

No matter what your income or current situation, I believe even the worse case scenarios can find freedom with some effort and trust in the Lord. You may have to sell something, downgrade or wait to upgrade your lifestyle....but trust me, its all worth it!

When you have a financial plan as Dave lays out you KNOW what to do when you have extra unexpected money such as a tax return to either put towards debt or savings instead of buying the new TV (we do still have the "old" style of TV). Here's what I know...stuff leads to stress but financial freedom is incredibly peaceful! If you walk through my house you'll see updates that need to be made, hand me down furniture, carpet that needs replaced but you won't find financial stress in our life. You'll find us dreaming of what house project we can save up for next or what vacation we want to take....it's incredible. And yes, I do get impatient and want to do it all at once! But paying cash is so much easier than doing it all upfront and paying for it with a loan.

Dave's famous quote is "live like no one else so later you can live like no one else." It's hard work but so worth it!