Our second chance

I feel that Monte and I are in the mist of a second chance from God. Let me explain myself a little bit further…

Monte and I have had debt from the day we got married. I think our biggest mistake was not having a budget for the first 6 years of our marriage. I feel that if we did have a budget from day one, we would of had more control.

On our honeymoon we bought a very expensive timeshare that we have only used two times. At the time we thought it was such a great idea. We didn’t think about kids or the fact that we didn’t live anywhere near our parents and had to use our vacation time to visit them. Oh how they prey on honeymooners… grrr! We would love to sell our timeshare, but they are hard to sell. I have found that out the hard way, they are just a pain in the neck! I think Dave Ramsey would refer to this as a stupid tax. Making this mistake has taught us a lot about buying anything on an impulse. It will never happen again.

Between our three boys they have had six surgeries and many doctors appointments. We have always had a lot of medical bills.

Also, most of our married life we have had a car payment. So all those things add up quickly and have left us living paycheck to paycheck.

In 2005 Monte was a part time pastor in Sheridan. We lived rent free in a parsonage for 10 months. Monte was working 2 jobs, so there was little time for budgeting and I was beyond busy caring for an infant and two toddlers.

About eight months into our rent free living, I started to take over the finances. One of the reasons I did it was so Monte would have more time with the family. I also felt like the Lord had given us this opportunity and we needed to be doing something constructive with our money. I wanted to become debt free. I wish I would of come to the realization earlier because 2 months didn’t help a whole lot. Shortly after we moved to Avon and accrued moving costs. We found we were back at square one.

Monte lost his job in July 2007 and within one day he was employed. The Lord has always take care of us and supplied all our needs. I often forget this and get stressed when an unexpected problem arises.

With this new job I feel that God has given us a second chance. Monte is able to get a bonus based on his volume. He has to work long hours, waking up at 4:30am and not getting home till 6:30pm, to accomplish this, but we feel this is our chance. For the last eight months we have been living off Monte’s salary and using his bonus checks to pay down our debt. We should be out of debt (not including our house) in five months. I am now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is so exciting. We are so thankful for this second chance and are looking forward to yelling, “WE’RE DEBT FREE” in October!