Ordinary with a Side of Vision and Faith
We are ordinary people who do ordinary things. Last year, we started doing ordinary things with vision and faith.
It was around this time last year we were taking a good hard look at our lives. On paper, we had everything going for us. We had achieved everything we had ever set out to do. If there was a list of goals, we had marked everything off. We attended college, got advanced degrees, bought a house, bought a bigger house, had good-paying jobs, got even better-paying jobs, bought stuff, bought more stuff, more cars, bigger cars, more stuff. In the midst of earning and spending money, we found ourselves buried in student loan debt, trapped by the things we thought we wanted, and living every month paycheck to paycheck.
It was around this time last year we struck a new vision for our lives and we started working towards it with the faith it could be achieved. We wanted out of debt, we wanted out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, we wanted out from underneath everything we had acquired and everything we were doing that seemed to just suck the life right out of us. We were running ourselves ragged to earn and to pay for the things that were ultimately running our lives. We dreamed of slower days, uncommitted evenings, open weekends, and time to just breath and visit and dream and laugh with our kids. We had gotten so caught up in doing so many things when what we really wanted was to just undo the mess we had created.
We knew more than anything, we wanted to get out of debt. We knew our everyday decisions and habits led us to where we were, and so we knew we had to work hard to not be that way. We learned to pay off as much as we could as fast as we could. That meant saying no to a lot of other things, but we had a vision and we were working to see it come true.
It took us about six months of making small adjustments and small payments, when we finally realized we could sell our home and use the proceeds to pay off ALL of our remaining debt. Yes, it would mean leaving the pool we just built, and yes, it would mean leaving the place we had lived for the past 7 years. But it also meant eliminating all of our debt, getting out of the hefty cost of the financed pool, getting out from underneath our oppressive mortgage, and having the freedom to say exactly where we wanted to be. We realized, we could sell it all and be completely free.
It seems unbelievable now, but we started charting the course towards debt-freedom in February of last year. We had no idea how we would do it, we just knew it had to be done. By December 31, 2020, we had sold our house and we had paid off every single thing we owed.
All we knew was what we wanted. What we learned is that with vision and faith, extraordinary things can happen!
