VICTORY is the word of the week! Today we sold John's beloved Nissan 350Z. I just want to note here how proud of him I am for giving up his car to help pay down our debt so that we, as a family, will have a better and more solid financial future. We had the car (along with mine) listed on Craigslist and also parked in front of his brother's office (thanks, Jay and Steph), so it would be seen as much as possible. We put it there not even one week ago and today received a phone call from someone who wanted to test drive it and ended up buying it! We sold it under market value but still managed to make a couple hundred dollars along the way - so we didn't take a loss on it and tomorrow we will head to the bank and pay this baby off! To add to the goodness, they are paying IN CASH, which makes our lives that much simpler. Total amount of debt paid off in one month (including cc, student loans, cars, etc.) since starting our debt free marathon: $9929.17! A small chunk of our grand total but a huge victory, nonetheless. We also had the joy today of finding out we will be getting a refund on our taxes this year instead of having to pay the IRS. This is HUGE, as last year, we had to write them some big, fat checks! I digress. Tonight, we update our whiteboard by our bedside and get to pull out that permanent red marker (hooray!) to draw a line straight through that car loan. And on to the next goal on the board, Nelnet (student loan) or my car, whichever comes first. Look out, this debt snowball is gathering momentum! Thank you for sharing our excitement in this victory and we hope we will celebrate another one shortly!
"The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty."
Proverbs 21:5
Faithfully and VICTORIOUSLY,
The Culbreaths
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Keep Attacking - by John
For us guys, it's hard to understand the feelings of insecurity about money. But I have been thinking about debt a lot lately and I feel it's a great battle. It's a battle where you just have to keep kicking, throwing punches, and staying on the offensive side of things, hoping that you just land one hit, one strike, etc. This has finally happened for us!
The first hit was us getting tired of watching our hard earned money fly out the door. You could call this "first punch" an attitude change. Dave says there's a turning point where you're so mad and fed up that you just can't live the way your were living anymore. This change has invigorated us - it has given us a feeling of power and confidence in our finances. We know this fight will be a long one, but this new attitude has set a fire in us to see our debt come to an end.
The second punch we landed was devising a plan. Our plan is Financial Peace University (FPU). Even though this is our third time through, this time it seems different. We have laid out our list of debts, deciding to attack it one at a time. We have a white board with this list by our bedside and we see it morning, noon, and night to keep our anger from smoldering. Once we conquer the first debt on the list, we will purchase a permanent red marker to cross it out. This board is forever changing our lives. We will keep it FOREVER! Our budget is tight and our debit cards have been screaming for use, but we use cash for everything these days. As the old saying goes, "One who doesn't plan plans for disaster."
The most recent strike has been figuring out what is a need and what is a want. We have given up our wondrous cable, our intelligent IPhones, and, finally, our luxurious vehicles. If we find something else that is not a need, we'll be getting rid of that, too!
I know this will be a long and arduous journey but I can't give up hope or my faith - we just have to keep swinging, and little by little, we will be able to beat debt down. I don't know when our next small victory will come - it could be a job, extra money coming in - but all I know is I have to keep swinging, keep attacking.
Faithfully,
The Culbreaths
P.S. - Keep your swords sharp, my friends.
The first hit was us getting tired of watching our hard earned money fly out the door. You could call this "first punch" an attitude change. Dave says there's a turning point where you're so mad and fed up that you just can't live the way your were living anymore. This change has invigorated us - it has given us a feeling of power and confidence in our finances. We know this fight will be a long one, but this new attitude has set a fire in us to see our debt come to an end.
The second punch we landed was devising a plan. Our plan is Financial Peace University (FPU). Even though this is our third time through, this time it seems different. We have laid out our list of debts, deciding to attack it one at a time. We have a white board with this list by our bedside and we see it morning, noon, and night to keep our anger from smoldering. Once we conquer the first debt on the list, we will purchase a permanent red marker to cross it out. This board is forever changing our lives. We will keep it FOREVER! Our budget is tight and our debit cards have been screaming for use, but we use cash for everything these days. As the old saying goes, "One who doesn't plan plans for disaster."
The most recent strike has been figuring out what is a need and what is a want. We have given up our wondrous cable, our intelligent IPhones, and, finally, our luxurious vehicles. If we find something else that is not a need, we'll be getting rid of that, too!
I know this will be a long and arduous journey but I can't give up hope or my faith - we just have to keep swinging, and little by little, we will be able to beat debt down. I don't know when our next small victory will come - it could be a job, extra money coming in - but all I know is I have to keep swinging, keep attacking.
Faithfully,
The Culbreaths
P.S. - Keep your swords sharp, my friends.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Maxed Out
Tonight, John and I watched a documentary on Netflix entitled "Maxed Out." I'm sure you can guess from the name of it that it was about credit cards - how Americans have gone overboard and kind of lost their minds charging everything to high heaven and borrowing WAY beyond their means! I can honestly say it really broke my heart.
There were so many people who owed so much because of poor decisions and no education on what they were getting themselves into. There was one mother who was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (her family had no idea) and when the collectors started calling, she ran away and killed herself. In another instance, two mothers were interviewed about their children; one had a son, one had a daughter. Both of these "kids" went off to college and racked up thousands upon thousands of dollars in credit card debt - and both of them saw no way out other than to kill themselves. How tragic is this? Killing yourself over money?
All the while, the movie flashed back and forth between the lives of American people and the United States government (don't get me started), who, as you can imagine, doesn't give a rat's behind about any of it (and even allows some major credit card lenders to right bills for them!). These people need help! I wish I could go out and educate them on the dangers of credit cards and borrowing money at such high interest rates that they'll be dead before they pay anything off. They need hope and they need a plan.
While I've never felt like killing myself over finances, I know what it's like to be neck deep and higher in debt - it sucks! But I have hope. God gave my husband and I hope through Dave Ramsey. We don't use credit cards or really even our debit card. We pay cash so we can see where our money is going. And we REFUSE to take out loans! There's no excuse for living beyond your means - NONE. Period.
I'm not even sure what I want to say the point of this post is....but I do want to say if you're in a place where you're drowning in debt, don't give up. Have hope. There is a way out. It's not fast - in all likely hood, you didn't get into this situation quickly in the first place and you certainly aren't getting out of it that way, either. So start over. It's never too late. I know it's hard and I know it's overwhelming, but with hard work, patience, faith, hope, and a plan, you'll get there! We see the light at the end of the tunnel and it only makes us want it more!
Hoping this offers a word of encouragement to you tonight, and remember...
"The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is SLAVE to the lender."
Proverbs 22:7
Wise words to live by.
Faithfully,
The Culbreaths
There were so many people who owed so much because of poor decisions and no education on what they were getting themselves into. There was one mother who was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (her family had no idea) and when the collectors started calling, she ran away and killed herself. In another instance, two mothers were interviewed about their children; one had a son, one had a daughter. Both of these "kids" went off to college and racked up thousands upon thousands of dollars in credit card debt - and both of them saw no way out other than to kill themselves. How tragic is this? Killing yourself over money?
All the while, the movie flashed back and forth between the lives of American people and the United States government (don't get me started), who, as you can imagine, doesn't give a rat's behind about any of it (and even allows some major credit card lenders to right bills for them!). These people need help! I wish I could go out and educate them on the dangers of credit cards and borrowing money at such high interest rates that they'll be dead before they pay anything off. They need hope and they need a plan.
While I've never felt like killing myself over finances, I know what it's like to be neck deep and higher in debt - it sucks! But I have hope. God gave my husband and I hope through Dave Ramsey. We don't use credit cards or really even our debit card. We pay cash so we can see where our money is going. And we REFUSE to take out loans! There's no excuse for living beyond your means - NONE. Period.
I'm not even sure what I want to say the point of this post is....but I do want to say if you're in a place where you're drowning in debt, don't give up. Have hope. There is a way out. It's not fast - in all likely hood, you didn't get into this situation quickly in the first place and you certainly aren't getting out of it that way, either. So start over. It's never too late. I know it's hard and I know it's overwhelming, but with hard work, patience, faith, hope, and a plan, you'll get there! We see the light at the end of the tunnel and it only makes us want it more!
Hoping this offers a word of encouragement to you tonight, and remember...
"The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is SLAVE to the lender."
Proverbs 22:7
Wise words to live by.
Faithfully,
The Culbreaths
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
"Stuffitis"
I've been thinking lately that we have a lot of "stuff." Stuff that we want(ed) but that we don't really need. And then, lo and behold, the next chapter we were assigned to read in our FPU class was about "stuffitis" - something I feel has become rampant in our society as of late. Now I'm not saying that stuff is bad - stuff can be fun! It's more the idolatry of it and the "I need, I need, I need" frame of mind that gets us (note: me) into trouble (translation: debt). If you have the money and the means to pay for it, by all means, get it. But if you have to have it because all your neighbors have one and you want to go bigger and better, so you decide to finance because you got the wonderful "90 days same as cash!" deal, you might want to rethink things. And we all know that the majority of the time, this won't be paid off in 90 days and then you're stuck with a payment plus 24% interest on something you bought to impress and one-up someone. Yeah, enjoy your stuff!
We certainly are well provided for and taken care of, but we could stand to do better in managing our assets and not being overcome by stuffitis. There are so many things we've bought that we don't really need at this time in our lives - things that we can make payments on for a million years but we wouldn't be able to go on vacations and do things during those years because we had to have that one item. Kind of like being "house poor" - we are "stuff poor." So we've decided to make some major changes to help turn ourselves around in getting out of debt and getting into a new frame of mind and out of stuffitis.
One of the first things we decided to do was cut costs wherever we could. We got rid of cable (saved $100+/month). We stopped eating out so much and I've been cooking A LOT (saved countless dollars here - we eat out about once a week with our friends for gamenight). Then, last week, while we were out to dinner, we decided that we didn't really need our fancy phones to play on anymore. So we headed over to AT&T and dropped all of our data plans and replaced our phones with the cheapest thing they had (yea for go-phones!). Hooray for saving $80/month on phone bills! We still have our iphones and now they are glorified ipod touches that we can still operate apps with on wifi. How nice! And now, we come to the big ticket items.....our cars.
Now, let me just say here how much I love my car. I LOVE my car. It's the most amazing vehicle I've ever had, period. It has all the bells and whistles I could ever want or imagine. I love this car. But as we were sitting in class the other night, I kept thinking, I don't need this car right now. I really, really want it but I don't need it. My husband had already offered up his to sell so we could go down to a one-car family and so what was stopping me from doing the same? God has really changed my heart in the past week about this - and I've been able to detach myself from that idolatry so easily, it's not even funny. I look at our white board by our bed and our payment plans and I'm just so MAD at all of this debt that I am willing to do whatever it takes to kick it to the curb as quickly as possible. I. Want. OUT! So, with all that being said, we are selling our cars. Both of them. And we will buy a "beater." I completely realize that in a couple of years, I can have this car again - without the payments and the stress of being buried by the debt it carries! It just is going to take some time, some patience, and some (lots) of sacrifices (that we are more than willing to make). It's a relief to me to just have been able to make that decision. I literally feel like a one ton weight has been lifted off my shoulders and my hope has continued to be restored that we WILL get out of debt and we WILL do it in 2 years.
Our hearts have been transformed, our hope is renewed and we are pumped (Dave calls this "gazelle intensity")! We will leave you today with a word of encouragement from the Lord and from Larry Burkett (to be found in Chapter 10, Pile up Plunder, from DR's Financial Peace Revisited).
"In the house of the wise are stores of food, choice, and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has."
Proverbs 21:20
"Attitude is the only difference between saving and hoarding."
Larry Burkett
We hope that you will be encouraged today and remember it's never too late to start where you are.
Faithfully,
The Culbreaths
We certainly are well provided for and taken care of, but we could stand to do better in managing our assets and not being overcome by stuffitis. There are so many things we've bought that we don't really need at this time in our lives - things that we can make payments on for a million years but we wouldn't be able to go on vacations and do things during those years because we had to have that one item. Kind of like being "house poor" - we are "stuff poor." So we've decided to make some major changes to help turn ourselves around in getting out of debt and getting into a new frame of mind and out of stuffitis.
One of the first things we decided to do was cut costs wherever we could. We got rid of cable (saved $100+/month). We stopped eating out so much and I've been cooking A LOT (saved countless dollars here - we eat out about once a week with our friends for gamenight). Then, last week, while we were out to dinner, we decided that we didn't really need our fancy phones to play on anymore. So we headed over to AT&T and dropped all of our data plans and replaced our phones with the cheapest thing they had (yea for go-phones!). Hooray for saving $80/month on phone bills! We still have our iphones and now they are glorified ipod touches that we can still operate apps with on wifi. How nice! And now, we come to the big ticket items.....our cars.
Now, let me just say here how much I love my car. I LOVE my car. It's the most amazing vehicle I've ever had, period. It has all the bells and whistles I could ever want or imagine. I love this car. But as we were sitting in class the other night, I kept thinking, I don't need this car right now. I really, really want it but I don't need it. My husband had already offered up his to sell so we could go down to a one-car family and so what was stopping me from doing the same? God has really changed my heart in the past week about this - and I've been able to detach myself from that idolatry so easily, it's not even funny. I look at our white board by our bed and our payment plans and I'm just so MAD at all of this debt that I am willing to do whatever it takes to kick it to the curb as quickly as possible. I. Want. OUT! So, with all that being said, we are selling our cars. Both of them. And we will buy a "beater." I completely realize that in a couple of years, I can have this car again - without the payments and the stress of being buried by the debt it carries! It just is going to take some time, some patience, and some (lots) of sacrifices (that we are more than willing to make). It's a relief to me to just have been able to make that decision. I literally feel like a one ton weight has been lifted off my shoulders and my hope has continued to be restored that we WILL get out of debt and we WILL do it in 2 years.
Our hearts have been transformed, our hope is renewed and we are pumped (Dave calls this "gazelle intensity")! We will leave you today with a word of encouragement from the Lord and from Larry Burkett (to be found in Chapter 10, Pile up Plunder, from DR's Financial Peace Revisited).
"In the house of the wise are stores of food, choice, and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has."
Proverbs 21:20
"Attitude is the only difference between saving and hoarding."
Larry Burkett
We hope that you will be encouraged today and remember it's never too late to start where you are.
Faithfully,
The Culbreaths
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