"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