October Debt Update

Thank you, JT, for your kind words concerning our progress in our debt reduction. And then it occurred to me that it's already 2/3 of the way through the month and I haven't posted about it yet.

Well, then.  Here we go.

In September, we only paid minimums on our loans (the last of our non-mortgage debt).


 Second 10K Chunk, started 5/1/12

 

Fundraising Thermometer

 
In October 2011, I finally added up how much debt we had left since starting Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps in February of 2008.  We had reached the halfway point, but the last debts were Eli's two massive student loans that totaled more than $50,000.  It was overwhelming to look at that large number, but when someone suggested that we split it up into manageable chunks of $10,000, the debt thermometers were born.  We finished the first one in May 2012, and hope to be done with the second one by the year's end.  We can hope, right?

So, we've been working with these visuals for a year, and we've paid off $16,913.71 in this year's time.  Sometimes it's depressing to listen in on the Dave Ramsey show, and people pay off twice that in a year's time, but then I have to remember that hey, we could have been SPENDING that money and NOT getting out of debt.  Progress is progress.  We have $35,000 left to go.

To just lay it out there for anyone also in our shoes, the longer it takes us to get rid of this debt, the harder it is for me to maintain the intensity.  The upcoming increase on the focus on materialism in our culture (commercial Christmas) is not going to make things any easier for me.  It will only serve to cause me to battle my inner definitions of wants and needs.  The catalogs have already started coming in the mail...

So, if you would keep us in your prayers as we continue this journey to be good stewards of the resources provided to us by our Lord.  We want to eliminate our debt so that we can use these resources to support  missionary friends overseas and in other ways that we feel led to give.

Thanks, guys!

Cheers!