If you’ve been here for the whole debt free series, you may remember the story of how my husband and I started on a debt-free journey. (It’s in the 1st post, if you want a refresher.)
You may want to know WHY: why would we choose to sacrifice, be weird, work like crazy people, not buy a house, just WHY?
And you know, I guess I never really thought the WHY was all that important. But my husband said that it is (!) and suggested I write this post.
- We don’t owe anyone anything. We can (as long as we can feed our children) go anywhere and do anything. I actually always assumed we’d move about a month after becoming debt-free and we haven’t but we are looking into our options.
- We are not burdened by needing a certain level of income, just to survive. We can take jobs or opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t work. We know exactly what it costs to feed our family every month, no extras. We know what we need to make and we know we can make suggestions with flexibility if we choose to take a job – is there a place to live? could we plant a garden? etc.
- We can serve God however and where ever He leads. That may mean going with very little notice. And I know in God’s sovereignty, that sometimes selling a house takes time. But instead of stressing over whether we got the most out of any one investment, we are free to go at any time.
- By becoming debt-free now, our kids will never remember the times when it was super lean around here, or the long hours daddy had to work to make this a reality. We are setting ourselves up to help our kids learn how to budget and be financially sound and know how we can realistically help them with college or starting a business.
- The sooner we are able to be out of debt, the more quickly we can make our money work for us instead of going to a black hole. There is no savings plan on the planet that has a higher yield than the interest you are paying out on any given loan. So the quicker the loan disappears, the faster you can actually hold ground, then grow.
- We have learned to live below our means. We’re not living paycheck to paycheck. Yes, we keep things pretty tight around here, but that doesn’t mean we don’t loosen the belt from time to time.
- We appreciate (now and later) more things. We already know that when we get our “roots” for our family that we will have so many things to be grateful for – like a car manufactured in the same decade, a closet for our broom, and a yard, just to name a few. Without this experience we could easily take all of those things for granted.
- There are many passages in scripture on not being a slave to debt. We really feel like God called us to take the steps of faithfulness to be debt-free before knowing what our next step would be. By taking these steps we get experience the truth and weight of these passages.
Are there more ideas that you have about being debt free? Why you would do it or have done it? Would you share in the comments?
Or maybe you have a question of “how did you do that” or “why when….” whatever. I’d be happy to try to answer them.
Thanks for sharing in this journey with me. I hope I can encourage you in yours.
Leave a Reply