Doing the Debt Free Dance!

Cheer with me!  We are officially out of debt besides our house!!  

You might remember my post from last August about our budget.  In it, I was aiming for 2 paid off cars, no debt besides the house, and a decent emergency fund by July.  It's May, and I'm so excited to report that the debt is gone, and the emergency fund is making progress!  

As is often the case with us, this journey is an interesting God story!   We had pushed along for a while, trying to get out of debt and were not making progress.   Our church teaches a lot that you need to tithe on your income.  We hadn't been sure where to land on that and so we were giving some to the church, but mostly continuing to support missionaries overseas.  God convicted our hearts that we needed to come under the authority of the church and give our tithe.  So, we contacted our missionaries and let them know we needed to discontinue supporting them , and started tithing.  That was December.  Here we are in May - debt free!   We've paid off 3 credit cards, my school debt, and have 2 paid off cars!  

The cars are another awesome story.  We had a pickup truck that we owed more on than what it was worth and we hit a wall last June - we weren't going to make the truck payment.  So we traded it in for a lease on a Corolla and actually got a decent deal.  Then, we listed the Corolla on SwapALease and sold it a few months later.  In the meantime, my dad picked up a used Taurus with low miles for $1000!   He graciously sold it to us. =)   

THEN Chris got in a wreck in our 96 Honda and totaled it.  That was a sad day.  We didn't have cash for a new car and we were NOT going to take on new debt.  So we decided to be a one-car family.  As any of you who are also one-car families, that was tricky.  It involved much waking up of small children so I could take Chris to work on days I had to have the car.  We did stay home a lot more... :)  

Shortly before Christmas, some sweet friends surprised us and gave us a car!!!   Seriously.  They GAVE us a car.  No strings attached.  We were in shock.  

The moral of the story to me?  There is power from heaven when you choose to come under authority.  We came into alignment with the church where God had clearly called us (a story for later), and God started to move things in our financial world.