March Madness!

March is almost here!  And with the new month comes a new season.  I am so excited about spring - warmer temperatures, livelier attitudes and lighter clothing are things that I truly look forward to as soon as the calendar turns from summer to fall.  

What does this mean for the blog?  Well, I have a ton of ideas that I am so ready to implement.  I have previously expressed that my husband and I are taking a true journey to debt freedom.  With a significant amount of student loan debt to unload, we are taking every opportunity to share each step we take toward achieving our dream of debt freedom with others. So, during the month of March, I plan to blog about the variety of methods we are using to decrease expenses and increase income.  

We have only officially been on this road since January 1 of this year.  In a very short amount of time, our household has had the invaluable benefit of shared knowledge from other bloggers and vloggers.  Some things we are figuring out on our own and others we have researched through Pinterest and the blog world.  I can't wait to share our findings with you!  

Stay tuned and be blessed!

It's Saturday, and I have never been so excited.  We have a very busy weekend ahead...and I have yet to accomplish a thing on the long to-do list.  Either way, I am so excited to sit for a bit in my pj's and listen to the children play.

We are still so heavily entrenched in the debt-free journey.  I find myself so pensive, wondering how long it will really take, will it really happen, am I taking the right steps to help get us there...so many questions, that sometimes I find myself so caught up in the how's that I stop taking steps forward.

My heart knows that the sky is the limit when it comes to what I can do to bring in more income, reduce expenses and put money directly towards debt.  But I cautiously take timid steps forward, afraid of what may happen if I don't stay grounded.

March should be a very interesting month.  I am looking forward to documenting the daily debt free journey and seeing what happens by the end of the month.  Maybe I can find ways to grow the blog...right now it is just a journal of my thoughts.  Not very interesting to read, but still very therapeutic to write.

March will be the month to deal with commitment and time management.  If the word for the year is STEWARDSHIP, then it has to concern all aspects of life, including my commitment to certain endeavors and how I manage my time.  I will try new budgeting software, and will report how that turns out.  I will also start selling a few things on eBay.  I am looking forward to seeing how all of these things yield more money for our family and assist us in paying off debt.  Spending time at the library more in March will also add a new element of getting the kids out of the house but not spending money to do it :)  We are also looking forward to SPRING!!!!

Blessings to you on your Saturday :)

Redirection

I think every time I sit down to write on this blog, I find myself reaching for words to assess my life and where it is going.  Since I graduated from undergrad in 2003, I have been searching for who I am...who I want to be...where I want to go.  I have been aiming at nothing and hitting it every time, as Zig Ziglar would say.

A funny thing happened when the clock turned to midnight and the calendar turned to 2016...I started to really think about my life, my husband and my children and where we want to go.  I want to do better, I want to be better and in a few years when my personal calendar turns to 40, I want to be able to look back and see that my trajectory was actually aimed at something God pleasing, God glorifying and career sustaining.  I started the year frantically trying to figure out how we could save up for a down payment on a home...renting is starting to become far too expensive and we really have started feeling like it is time for us to be in a nice home.  We are responsible, accomplished adults...our lifestyle should start to reflect our level of success, right? WRONG! I also realize that we owe a significant amount of money to creditors due primarily to massive amounts of student loans.  I quickly asked myself how we could accomplish saving for a down payment on a home and simultaneously paying down debt.  I started asking people with Finance backgrounds what would be the best course of action...paying down the debt, saving for a home downpayment and paying the debt later, or doing both simultaneously.  The answers that I received ran the gamut and I was utterly confused...and this was only a few days into the New Year.

I soon picked up Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover off of my bookshelf and blew the dust off.  My husband and I read most of this book several years ago...loved the principals but were not motivated to follow them.  I know that the book contains sound Bible-based teaching on personal finance, and Dave does not honey-coat his approach to tackling debt.  Just a few pages into the book and I knew that I had to start focusing on paying down debt.  With my husband on the same page, we have started the debt snowball. Right now, it literally feels like we are throwing little snowballs off of a mountain of debt...but we have started somewhere, we are committed, have a plan and these are the most important things.

But along with starting this debt snowball, I have again started a period of introspection.  I have started thinking about my value as an employee.  If I was an employer, would I hire me?  Do I take advantage of every moment at work to work as unto the Lord?  Am I maximizing my income so that we are being good stewards over what we have?  Where do I see myself in five years?

These are hard questions, with no real answers at this point.  I am in a period of self-discovery and trying to get out of my own head so that the Lord can minister His will to me while I contentedly rest in the path on which I currently journey.  That is so much easier said than done.  I sometimes frantically run to the most popular job search engine and sit for hours trying to find that one gem job. Although so many people tell me that they got their best jobs through their network, and I have seen and believe this to be true...there is this small voice inside of me that refuses to let go of the control...and just surrender the whole process to Christ.  That is the place that I need the most work.  That surrender.  I get into cycles of trust-thrive-no trust-survive.  As Paul said, What a wretched man I am!  Lord, help me to trust you.

So, I am going to let God take care of these things.  I want to use this blog as accountability to focus on the things that God has put before me: working towards debt freedom, being a good steward in my current jobs, being a better mother and better wife.  I can't wait to look back on this post on December 31, 2015 and see myself in a better place :) A place of stewardship and trust.