Goals for 2013

Instead of the normal New Year’s Resolutions this year, why not set some goals for 2013? If you are really interested in doing something different this year set goals and make a plan. Here are the 5 areas we focused on in 2012 and I feel like we have become a better version of ourselves because of it. We still have plenty to work on in 2013!!

1.       Physical Goals

2.       Relational Goals

3.       Financial Goals

4.       Spiritual Goals

5.       Professional Goals

Physical Goals

Losing weight, working out regularly, eating better, or creating more balance are great goals to start with.  Make a workout plan that improves on what you are already doing little by little. If you don’t work out at all, don’t make a commitment from January 1 to workout 6 days a week. Decide in January to workout 1 day a week for 30 minutes. February can build on that. You didn’t make bad habits in one month, you aren’t going to turn the ship around in one month either.

Relational Goals

I divided mine up into different categories. I wanted to improve with my relationship with my husband and I made some goals that I kept and a lot that I broke too. I made goals to improve my relationship with myself…weird, I know. I don’t always have the best things to say about myself and I don’t want to continue that habit. In order for some of my ME goals to happen I had to say “no” to other good things. I also wanted to set goals in my relationship with Ethan; I want to be a better mom, even in the small things. I wrote down goals to improve relationships with my best friend, small group, and the people I see at church.

Financial Goals

Well you know we were all over these! We made specific goals for 2012 and are on target to meet them despite all of the bumps in the road. I’ve learned that for as many set-backs we’ve had financially, we’ve been blessed that much and more. Our financial plan started almost 4 years ago with both of us dreaming about what we could do if we had money. Start by dreaming about where all your money would go if you didn’t pay a penny to debt. For us that was a lot of money 4 years ago. We are a little over a year from that moment…our conversations have been so fun thinking about the freedom that comes with no payments!! Until then, we forge ahead!

Here is a podcast that we have recently listened to that helped us start thinking about financial goals for 2013. Check out the website- http://howtoberich.org/

Spiritual Goals

This is a big one for us too. We desire to be a serving part of our church family. We also want to put a plan in place to grow in our personal relationship with Jesus daily. We’ve learned in all of these areas that discipline grows when we do something even when we don’t feel like it. I’ve lapsed on my discipline in this area some this year and plan on making a better plan for 2013.

Professional Goals

I spend most of my waking hours at work and want those hours to be purposeful too. I chose some areas that align with my passion and pushed myself to do a better job. I teach physical education to K-4^th graders and I get energy from seeing kids get healthier. I have a considerable population of students in the overweight and obese categories and I want to do whatever I can to help those kids learn about the habits to become healthy kids so they will be healthy adults someday too.

YTD Debt Pay-Off: $13,151.90
Total Debt Pay-Off: $37,151.90

$1,000 Pizza!!

Well...it wasn't exactly a thousand dollar pizza. If you are new to our family blog, we are high-tailing it out of debt and for every thousand dollars we've paid off this year we get a surprise. In January of 2012 we were around $35,000 in debt and I made 35 envelopes with some sort of note of encouragement or little break to keep us motivated to move forward. It has really worked for us. We've kept the course and yesterday we opened the $12,000 envelope making us even closer to our goal. Our last 2 debts are student loans so the card inside the envelope told us to go back to those college days and get a pizza. Our goal is to pay off $14,000 by January 2013. We are right on track to make that happen. Thanks for checking in with us- it's just as encouraging to see people reading my blog as it was to go eat the pizza we earned! :)

Here's our next target---



YTD Debt Pay-off: $12,000

Total Debt Pay-off: $36,000



Say Cheese!

Fall is the perfect time for this party of three to take some professional pictures together. So we budgeted the cost for a photographer and prints and so far we are under budget! (Love it when that happens!!)

We decided to get one of our pictures blown-up in black and white at the UPS store. We spent $2.50 on the engineer print and then went out in search for a frame. I had this 75% off coupon to Michaels for custom framing and knew it would be our best bet. Our 24x36 inch print wouldn't be cheap to frame, but with 75% off- it should fit right into our budget...so I thought! We were at Michaels for 45 minutes trying to find the best deal for this print. I kept reminding them that I only spent $2.50 on the print so the MOST inexpensive frame is what I want! After they cut out all the bells and whistles and took my 75% off they quoted us $140!! What?! That's when we left empty-handed and went elsewhere!

My husband had a great idea to go to an art and frame store across the street and ask for any clearance frames. He went in to ask while I stayed in the car with Ethan. In about 2 minutes he came out with a huge frame. With the look of shock/horror on my face he told me that the lady in the store gave it to him for free and it was the exact size we needed! Horror turned to joy and excitement really fast! We fixed a few scratches with a black sharpie and it is proudly mounted on our wall!

We paid off another $1,000 on October 19th making this $11,000 for 2012! We couldn't be happier! The next few months might be scary financially for most, but we have a very detailed budget for every dollar even during the holidays. We won't have to wake up on New Years Day with a financial hang-over from the holiday season. 


YTD Debt Pay-off: $11,390.72
Total Debt Pay-off: $35,390.72


Here are some of our family pictures- courtesy of Katy Gitto Photography

10,000 and 2

10,000
It's been a big last few weeks for us! We opened a $10,000 envelope which means we've paid off $10,000 of student loan debt since January 1, 2012. It was a huge milestone for us, we kept looking at our refrigerator and having to remind each other that, we've almost paid off $10,000 this year!! It was a strange but great feeling. The note inside the envelope told us to turn in the change from our change jar and cash it in for a date. Usually that's a pretty good chunk of change...except we recently used some of it to wash both dirty cars! We scraped up around $18 in change and went to see the final Bourne movie in a theater with leather recliners! It was a much needed night out together.

2
Ethan is now a 2 year old! He is also learning about money now that he's so big. Ethan has 5 chores that he can do to learn responsibility in our family and when he completes one of those chores he gets a sticker on a chart. After all 5 chores are complete he gets to put 5 pennies in his bank. We like it because it's a good way to get him to help out the first time asked and he also works on some fine motor skills by putting pennies in a slot. As he gets older these 5 chores will be ones that he will do without pay because he's a part of our family and then do some more challenging chores for a commission. Pennies work great since he has no concept of the value of money, we just want him to get excited about helping out.

YTD Debt Pay-off: $10,027.33

Total Debt Pay-off: $34,027.33

Just Say No!

Say goodbye to the $9,000 envelope. We didn't get too attached because it was only on our fridge for 10 days. HELLO $10,000 envelope! It's wild to see that huge number hanging on our fridge in a short 8 months. We are on our way to pay off $10,000 of debt this year.  Read more about our envelope system to pay off debt here.

We are going to celebrate our son's 2nd birthday at the end of the month. One of the words he loves to say (like most 2 year olds) is "NO!" He learned it from us. We know that our success is due to saying "NO" to lots of things. Saying "NO" these last 8 months was hard at times, but in all actuality, the progress we've made in such a short time made all of those NOs worth it. I don't even know what we wanted to say yes to over the last 8 months, but I'm sure if we would have said "YES" instead, we would have nothing to show for it now.

Check out my budgeting tips and make your money mind. After you decide where you want your money to go, say "NO" to everything else. You will be amazed at what you can do with a little NO therapy!

YTD Debt Pay-off: $9,000
Total Debt Pay-off: $33,000



Budgeting Tips

It's been enjoyable watching the Olympics these last few days. The teamwork, athleticism, coaching, victories, near loses, and world records make me want to soak in every second of the coverage.  I especially love the commentators and post-event interviews. *thick sarcasm* If I hear the word "catastrophic" one more time...anyway, the negative comments remind me of the disdain we have heard from people around us about our search for victory. Not everyone sees the road we are taking as a good thing. In a world where having stuff is a measure of success, we look very unsuccessful. We look stingy, poor, like tight-wads...sounds fun, huh?!

"The Lord doesn't see things they way you see them. People judge by the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7

We are intently training for our debt-free victory just like the athletes did. The secret to our success is the budget. It is the workout plan, it's the measure of our discipline. We budget every dollar that comes in on paper before we spend it in real life. I know that sounds too easy to really work, but month in and month out for three and a half years we have lived on this kind of budget. The best part is that we get to decide where our money goes. It's not restricting like we first thought it would be, it's very freeing. Our money is planned out so when we spend money, it's guilt-free. Right now we chose to put all our excess money toward student loans. We could certainly take that money and go on a vacation because it is still our money, but we are sticking to the plan.

 

 "Children do what feels good, while adults devise a plan and follow it." ~Dave Ramsey




Quick Budgeting Tips



1. I use excel (paper and pencil work too) and write down our payday and income for the month.

2. We start by taking our tithe out first (10% of our income we give to our church)

3. Next we take out living expenses (rent, water, trash, gas, and electricity)

4. We now budget food/toiletries

5. Deduct money for transportation (insurance, gas, and oil changes)
6. We take out daycare expenses next
7. We pay minimum payments on all our debts (the smallest debt gets special attention at the end of this list)

*Now that we have the "necessities" taken care of we can budget for things that are nice but not mandatory
8. We pay for 2 cell phones and wireless Internet
9. We each get spending money each month for things we want. We call it BAM!
10. We also budget date night money each month
11. For miscellaneous expenses we budget a different amount each month for haircuts, gifts, or whatever we have planned for that particular month
12. Finally, we pile all the remaining money onto the smallest debt we owe. (More here about the debt snowball)


Our latest small victory is paying off another $1,000 of debt this week. We opened the $8,000 envelope and it told us to enjoy a KC sporting event. We, however, decided to go to the zoo instead! It felt like a sporting event walking to Africa and back!

Don't worry...that lion is behind glass! She looks pretty ferocious!

Rawr!!

YTD Debt Pay-off: $8,720.36

Total Debt Pay-off: $32,720.36

Summer Fun

This summer I decided to teach summer school. It's not how I want to be spending my highly anticipated time off, but it boosts our income and helps our debt-free plan. We found out that opening one envelope is fun...but opening two envelopes in 4 days is even more fun!! Speaking of fun...we do have it! We just plan for our fun in advance rather than pay for it afterwards. This makes the fun stuff guilt-free and regret-free. BONUS!!

Here's some of the fun we've been having.

The Color Run KC-
We found out about this crazy 5k run that throws a colored powder on you every kilometer. Chris and I ran with our best friends Ryland and Lauren and plan on doing this 5k next year too!

July 4th-

Chris and I were both off on the same day and this rarely happens. So we planned a fun day as a family. It was over 100 degrees outside so we had to be creative. We spent the morning at an indoor toddler playground called Little Monkey Business and Ethan played so hard! We ate lunch at one of our favs...Culvers and then went to a afternoon movie. Ethan has never been to the theater and we weren't sure how he would do. We watched Brave and he watched it for about an hour and then...not so much! After that we spent the evening with some 100+ people from church for dinner and fireworks. Great day off!

Say "french fries!"

Our next planned fun: we're going to Branson, MO to visit Silver Dollar City and during that trip we will get to spend some time with my parents too.

YTD Debt Pay-off: $7,238.53 FUN!!

Total Debt Pay-off: $31,238.53 (over halfway to the finish line!!)



Stretchin' Our Dollars

We opened another envelope on June 15th! We have now paid off $5,108.58 since January 1, 2012. This is a big milestone in our debt-free journey. The note inside was encouraging. It reminded us that this process is slow, but worth every step. There are 5,280 feet in a mile, so if every dollar we paid off was equal to 1 foot, we are just about 1 mile out of debt. Our debt balance at the beginning of the year puts us at a little over "6.5 miles" in the hole! We're climbing out, and every dollar counts!

Here are some ways we save a few dollars here and there to make our income go farther:

1. We make our own breakfast, lunch, and dinner instead of eating out. We budget a few meals to eat out and they become even more exciting now that we rarely eat out. (I'm talking 2-3 times a month)

We also meal plan so we are only buying food we need for the meals we are going to cook. I like "roll-over" meals, because left-overs aren't always very exciting. For example: If I cook a roast in the crock-pot, the next night I can do beef and noodles or bbq beef sandwiches and make a totally different meal. My best friend Lauren rolls over spaghetti and meatballs to meatball subs another night. Genius! (less cooking too, by the way!!)

2. We grocery shop at Aldi for about 60% of our food- our staples (milk, eggs, pasta, baking mix, cake mix, seasonings, dressing, condiments, etc), some fruits and veggies, and low-cal popcorn and fudge bars come from here.

3. We price match at Walmart- we only price match things we normally buy, we don't buy things just because they are on sale!! These usually include boneless skinless chicken breast, chips, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and fruit. So for these items I bring in another store's ad for the week and show the cashier that the same item is cheaper and Walmart matches the competitors prices. Then I don't have to go to 4 different stores to get the best deals.

4. We buy store brand items on almost everything- diapers and wipes included. Even our son is in on this adventure!! :) Bonus: since my husband works at Target we get an extra 15% off!

5. We pay cash for groceries, dinners out, and special occasions. This helps us have a firm stopping point when we spend in these areas. We realistically look at each month and budget accordingly. Every month is different and we learned early on that we had to build in life to fit each month. Some months we are out of town several days and our grocery bill is smaller. Other months we add to it because we are having people over for dinner or need to make a side or dessert for a party and we need to make sure we have enough.

YTD pay-off: $5,108.58
Total Debt Pay-off: $29,108.58

What a week...

We moved to our new apartment one week ago. One week ago, we left our nice, comfy, air conditioned apartment. We left that nice, comfy, air conditioned apartment to live in an apartment that didn't have working A/C. This apartment didn't have working A/C until today...one week later! It's been a long, 85 degree week. I'm glad I waited until today to post about the move. Otherwise this post would look alot different!!

Through all of this, Chris and I had to daily remind ourselves why on earth we moved. Seeing the goal, dialed in the purpose of living in a older, cheaper apartment for us.

Here's the list:
(I need this handy when people look at us like we are crazy and say "why???" when we tell them we moved here)

1. Increase Margin- our income is maxed out at this time so we need to reduce expenses...$300 to be exact!

2. Decrease Risk - if one of us loses our job or something happens medically, we are more likely able to pay bills, food, utilities, and rent here than the other place

3. Increase Intensity- we were comfortable at our other apt. Living here will give us motivation to pay off debt quicker and save for a house sooner.

4. Further from Normal- 70% of people live paycheck to paycheck, so broke is normal! We haven't lived that way for over 3 years and don't plan on going back now!

5. Learn Contentment- we are learning already that we can make do with little. I want this same attitude when we look for a house someday, we want to make do with little then too.

 6. Our Desire to Give- we are filthy rich compared to most of the world, even at this apartment. Why do I deserve this extravagance when others have nothing? I'm ready to give like no one else!!


Debt Pay-off Update: paid off another $1,000 and opened another envelope on May 4th!

YTD Pay-Off: $4,228.60
Total Debt Pay-off: $28,228.60

One Down...Two to Go!

Chris and I celebrated a milestone this past week, we paid off one of our student loans. We have slowly knocked off debt after debt to get us to this point. We have followed the snowball principle and only paid minumum payments to all of our debts except the smallest one on the list. We attack the smallest loan and then roll on to the next one. Because we have lined-up our debts in order of amount, naturally these last two are going to take awhile to finish off, they are our largest amounts. We will be even more happy to pay them off since they have been along for the ride these last few years.

With all of the talk about student loan forgiveness going on right now, it makes me want to take care of my own mess even more, I don't want tax payers to pay for my loans. Chris and I signed paperwork declaring that we understood that the money we use for college we will pay back. It's hard to hear all of the college grads who think because college was expensive they shouldn't have to pay for it. I agree, college is expensive, but I chose to go and now I pay for that choice. I also learned along the way that I hate debt and because I learned that lesson the hard way, I don't plan on getting any more student loans to finish my masters degree. 

Total debt pay-off: $27,847.52
YTD debt pay-off: $3,847.52

There's an App for that!

We opened another envelope this week! Yay for another thousand bucks paid off!! The card inside this envelope told us to go on a well deserved date night! So we decided to head to the plaza and enjoy some KC BBQ and eat dinner at Jack Stack. The weather was so amazing that we ate on the patio...in MARCH!! After dinner we had cheesecake at THE Cheesecake Factory. It was fun to spend some time just the two of us and celebrate our hard work. We are only a few hundred dollars away from paying off our smallest student loan!! Can't wait to only make 2 debt payments a month!

A teacher at school told me about the perfect iphone app for tracking our progress. It's called Debt Payoff (right next to my NCAA app!!). When I got the app it was free, but it's $0.99 now! Sorry! On this app I can see the interest we are saving by paying hundreds off each month rather than just paying minimum payments. Here's some scary info- if we only make minimum payments from this day forward we will be debt-free in 20 years and 6 months and pay $23,000 in interest! Yikes!

Other features: I can make a pay-off plan (lowest balance first is the same thing as our snowball idea), calculate what our payments will be someday when we get a house, and there are pie charts!!! It's nice to see the interest we pay each month go down because we are knocking the principal down so much.

Envelope #4: $935.92 left to pay-off

Batter Up!!!

We knocked another envelope out of the park this week. Our tax refund helped and we are happy to say that we've paid off $2,000 in debt this year we have $33,000 left to pay off. The card on the inside gave us a little spending money to go buy some spring clothes. It was nice to pick up a few things that we've been wanting/needing.

Our apartment lease is up in May and we had to make a decision to stay here or move somewhere cheaper to keep this debt-free game from going into extra innings. So we recently decided to turn in our 60 days notice and we're preparing to move out. We started looking for apartments but every place we called about is ready now...we're not. So we are learning to step out in faith. Yikes! I was using craigslist to soothe my fear of homelessness, but it was only making me more insecure. Chris and I decided that we aren't actually practicing faith...just fear and self-reliance. So craigslist is going to wait until we get closer to the move-out date and we are going to treat our fear of homelessness with a huge dose of prayer.

Envelope #3: $747.09 left to pay off

The Envelope Please!

It's been a long time coming, but we managed to finish off our first of 35 envelopes this week. We decided to sell our dust-collecting Wii on craigslist and got $150 out of it.

On the inside of the envelope the card read,

"$1,000 paid off $34,000 to go! We have a long road ahead of us but I know we'll make it!! ROADTRIP- QuikTrip drinks to celebrate the first of many steps!"

We always get a quiktrip drink on our way out of town to visit family or go on a long trip, so it is fitting for us to start this long journey with a QT drink! The neat part about paying off this past $1,000 is that it marks $25,000 of debt gone since we started this 3 years ago. I have a feeling if we wouldn't have put it toward debt, we would have nothing to show for it now. So glad we chose the road less taken, it feels so good!

Envelope #2 has $891.49 left to pay off. Good news though...our tax refund is pending in our checking account right as we speak. After a friendly car repair, we have a big chunk going to debt. I have a feeling envelope #2 isn't going to get settled in on our fridge!! YES!

In 1 Month...

It's been a month since we had to buy Chris a new car. Since then we have been putting all our extra money to build our $1,000 emergency savings back up. In the last month we only made the minimum payment to each of our 3 student loans. As of yesterday, we now have a fully funded emergency fund (yay!!) and we are ready to start paying off debt again. We call this snowballing.

Dave Ramsey's strategy for efficient debt pay-off is to put your debts in order from the smallest amount owed to the largest amount owed. Start working on the smallest one first, making only minimum payments to the rest. As soon as the smallest debt is paid off take all of that money and put it toward debt number 2. It's a snowball effect. When we started paying off debt we didn't have much of a snowball because all of our money was spread out over several debts. Now that we are only down to 3 debts our snowball is huge compared to what we used to snowball!!

The encouragement in the beginning was to be able to pay off small debts quickly and be done with them. Now since we are at our largest debts, they don't go away as quickly, but we see this huge chunk of money that someday will be ours to choose where it goes! We could literally send someone from our church to the Philippines every 2 months with our snowball right now. We can chose to do that someday when our money is ours again!

Oh and that $1,000 envelope hanging on our fridge- it only needs $50.79 to open it. Read about our envelope motivation system to finish our last $35,000 of debt in one of my older posts.

All in one Accord!

Since my husband's older car died (RIP) over a week ago we had to do a little adjusting to our normal life and financial routine and buy a different car. We decided on an amount and we weren't going to spend a dollar more. We looked at so many cars, I didn't think we were going to find the one! I realized that this is why people don't by cheap cars...it's hard to find a good one. We had to put in a lot of time and effort to finally arrive at the car we ended up buying. We found an ad on craigslist for a '97 Honda Accord and were really impressed with it's condition and it was mechanically sound. We offered $500 under his asking price and he tried to get more from us, but the beauty of not bringing any more money than what we wanted to spend was that we REALLY couldn't spend anymore! The guy took it and we were set!

We are now putting all our extra cash back into our emergency savings account to build it up to $1000 again. This is the first time in 3 years that we've had to completely drain our emergency savings. We used to have a credit card "for emergencies", but we found ourselves using it for wants most of the time. When we decided to stop using credit cards and put $1000 in the bank it was like walking on a tightrope without a net. I was really afraid something major was going to happen and we were going to wish we still had a credit card. But as things came up (and they did) we used our savings or we had excess in our budget to cover it. Part of the adjustment was that we had to define what a true emergency was. With our credit card, when we were out of money and I was hungry and didn't want to cook- eating out was an emergency! When our favorite band came to town when we were living paycheck to paycheck with no excess- our credit card funded that emergency! Now, we actually have the money but we don't choose to spend it on those things very often.

Bump in the Road

We just started our big debt-free push on January 1st. It only took 17 days for our first major kink in the plan to happen! That has to be a record! Yesterday at 7:25am Chris called me and told me his car broke down on the side of the road on his way to work. Ethan and I jumped in the car to go get him, fortunately it was a day off of work for me. After towing the car, looking into the problem, and the huge expense to fix it (which was our first choice), we had to say our goodbyes and are now looking for another cheap car to replace it.

Dave's baby step 1 is to have $1000 in savings for emergencies. We just made a $400 online payment to our smallest student loan, it was still pending and we decided to pull that money from the land of pending and put it in our savings account. I get paid in a few days and we can scrape up another $600. It actually worked.!!We aren't financing the car, we are really excited to buy a car that we came up with the money in less than a week. Our biggest inconvenience is having both of us work and getting Ethan to daycare with one car the rest of this week.

Our plan now...buy a car and the money we don't use on the car we will put back into savings. Our extra money, intended for debt, will build our savings back to $1000 for any other emergencies that might appear in the next 17 days. When our savings account is funded we get back on the debt-free train! Choo-Choo!

We are praising God for providing. We are thankful that we didn't have to go into crisis-mode, we just made some adjustments and made it work.

Envelope 1: Still have $492 left to pay before we can open it! We'll get there...tortoise style!

Going on a financial diet!

We are getting very close to opening our first envelope on our final debt-free push. So far this year we have paid $918. Yes!!! In order to get this huge snowball rolling, our finances had to go on a diet! We have correlated our financial journey to a diet so many times it is really starting to click now! We are financially overweight, in order to dig out of this hole, we have to cut our spending (calories) and create good habits (exercise). It takes discipline- everyday! A quote that keeps coming around to us is "Do the next right thing!" That sounds so much easier to do the next right thing than to look at our 35 envelopes and become discouraged.

This past year my husband, Chris, was the master of discipline in his eating habits. In 2011, he lost 90 pounds and since we've been married he's cut 110 pounds. People come up to him and ask him how he did it and he's most frustrated that he doesn't really know what to tell them! He didn't do anything unreal like a fad diet, or find a magic weight-loss food, he didn't exercise hours on end- he just cut calories and kept track of them everyday. If he missed his calories one day, he just picked back up the next day. It might change the way you look at a budget when you think about it related to counting calories. We aren't doing any get rich quick scheme to pay off our debt, we are just doing the next right thing...as boring as that sounds! :)

Chris just started his own weight loss blog- http://chrisbrownweightloss.blogspot.com. So proud of him!

June 2007- The day we got engaged- on top of the Empire State Building! 

November 2011 - Four years of marriage and 110 pounds lighter!

2012 Here We Come...$1,000 at a time!

It's not that nothing exciting has happened in the last 6 months, I've just been too busy enjoying it I forgot to share! We love posting about all Ethan can do, but for the next few months we need  to be motivated to kick our last 3 student loans out of our lives! I was inspired to make an envelope for every $1,000 we are still in debt this week. In each envelope is a note card with an encouraging word, fun activity, or scripture verse. Some of the activities are absolutely free others will cost a little money to do. I figure it will motivate us all the more to keep going. By the time we open some of the envelopes I will probably forget what I wrote, so it's a surprise for me too! We have been paying off debt faithfully for 3 years now and I would love to be completely debt free in 2 more years. Enter the Tortoise and the Hare!! We are so proud to be the tortoise!
In January 2009, we took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University Class and we woke up to the situation we were in and found the tools to do something about it in our 2nd year of marriage. Many of the couples in the class with us were older and change was going to be a huge challenge for them. We weren't set in any financial ways yet. So glad we are now Dave Ramsey poster children and can testify to Biblical finance everyday of the week!

In January 2009, we were in debt $56,000. We thankfully didn't own a house to add to that amount. In the last 3 years we have paid off $24,000. Mathematically, we should only owe $32,000 now right? Nope, interest loves our company so we have $35,000 at least to pay off. We're hoping to change our relationship with interest someday to make it work with us, not against us! Whew- there is a lot of shame with debt, it's hard to share the amount without feeling like I need to justify it. I am not proud of it, that's why it has to go!

Here is where we keep all of the envelopes $2,000-$35,000

We've had this cute little locked box for a few years and we always tell people that it's where we keep Chris' gallbladder, now we have a better story! :)

Here's the first envelope. If you can't see, we have already made a $508.66 payment and we are already halfway to opening it. Are you excited to see what is inside??? So are we! :)

Here's the rest of the gang...coming to a fridge near us! Can't wait to see how many of those get opened this year!

Can't leave this post without showing off Ethan! He got a drum set for Christmas and is in love with it.

Christmas Day at Church with the Walters. Yes, Ethan is very happy to be in the picture!