First blog in a long, long time.
Since I can't remember to journal maybe blogging is something I can do. Hopefully this will be more successful for myself than writing on paper was. Truly I don't even know if what I have to say is something people are even interested in. So I suppose this blog is more for myself and maybe for my baby girl to read someday because I'm sure I will talk about her milestones at some point.
A little about myself: to put it simply I'm a cloth diapering, babywearing, breastfeeding, organic eating, stay at home, Christian, crunchy conservative wife and mom. My husband is the most hard working loving man I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. We have a daughter who is the most amazing little person. She is six months old and absolutely beautiful little girl. We have two dogs, a springer spinal named Lola and a miniature schnauzer named Gracie. Both are fun dogs and definitely have a personality of there own. Lola is a little nerotic, she is such a fun spirited animal but she does have her quirks. Gracie is our old lady of the house who has definitely earned her keep. Gracie loves spending her days laying in the sun and harassing Lola. Our life isn't perfect by any means but it's a life of our own and a life that my husband and I have worked so hard together to build with the guidance of God we have come so far in our 8.5 years of marriage.
We have faced many challenges, ones caused by family, life choices, obstacles God had put in front of us, and after each challenge we learn a little more and gained a little more life experience. We are always faced with challenges but we now approach them very differently than before. Our biggest life lesson has been the world of debt. We are the typical American, we went to college on loans, bought new and newer cars on loans, ranked up a bunch of credit card debt, personal loans, basically living a life of what we thought we deserved. Because hey, we are successful college graduates with decent jobs.. We have since made the goal of becoming debt free as quick as possible. With the help of Dave Ramsey we are meeting our goal of becoming debt free. We haven't had much support from our closest family because they simply just don't understand our desire. We want to redefine what our life will look like and what our children's life will look like. We are sick of being the normal American, we want to change the definition of the normal American family.
Our debt snowball journey started a year ago, right before we found out we were pregnant. We got three credit cards paid off in three months! Then we found out we were pregnant and put everything on hold. We did manage to sell my car and our boat during my pregnancy. Yes, we had a boat on a loan... I do not recommend that one! It was a brand new one too.. Worst decision ever! Almost as bad as all our car decisions, of which we have financed not one, not two, not even three but a total of 5 cars! Yes 5 cars!!! Yup that was us, the idiots who thought that we deserved the upgraded, shiny, new car. Then we thought hat we deserved a new motorcycle, two of them. We ended up selling the motorcycles when we realized we couldn't afford the bikes and the boat loan... The boat won, even though the boats payment was well over $200 a month. Yup, we were the idiots who financed everything.
Since having our daughter in July we have successfully paid off around $8000 in debt. My husband has worked is butt off to help get us to this point and we still have a long, long ways to go. But we have made progress and it's amazing how much money you can put tours debt when you budget and tell your money where to go. We have one last car to sell that's on a loan. It has been the most difficult challenge to do because it's our family car. God has definitely tested our desire of braking the debt chains. We removed the temptation of justifying the car payment by purchasing a family car in cash. It's not the nicest cat but you know what, it does what it needs to for our family, it's safe, it carries us from point a to point b comfortably and did I say it's pod for! Now our car that's on a loan has been for sale for a few weeks now, and after some tribulations the good lord has put us through on this particular journey we finally have a pretty solid buyer. Few! That will be another 9k paid off once it sells! It's been such an amazing journey for our family and I look forward to changing our future and the future of our daughter and any future children we decide to have.
I hope you will find inspiration from our struggles and I hope that maybe this is what you needed to read for today. My spelling and grammar may not be that great, after all I am blogging via cell phone. I will do my best to catch all my errors but please if you notice them don't let them distract you to the point of not continuing, but if they do I understand. Thanks for reading and I look forward to blogging more.
