Equipping the Called

I have a pride problem. There. I admitted it.

When I realized a week ago that we need a miracle, I started struggling.

I can do it on my own.
We are self sufficient.
Why do I have to come up with the money now?
I can't admit to the whole world that I need financial help.

Prideful.

Even though I'm aware that it's there, I'm still struggling with it. It's hard to admit that we need help. But then I went to church on Sabbath and heard a message.

The sermon title was "Formed for God's Family." The speaker talked about four levels of fellowship. One of the levels is friendship, learning to share. He read Acts 2:44-45, which says "now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need." He also talked about how we are to share each other's problems and quoted Galatians 6:2. "Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

I felt convicted. We are not to live life on our own, relying on ourselves. We are to first rely on God. Then, we lean on each other. We're not in this alone.

So I ask for your help. If you are a believer in God, can you pray for us? Pray that God's will be done in our adoption. Pray that we will find peace in His decision, no matter what it is. And pray for that dear girl in Taiwan who is still waiting for a baba and mama. If you feel led, will you consider helping us fund our adoption?

A friend reminded me yesterday that God does not call the equipped. He equips the called. God has called us to adoption. Now we need to rely on Him to equip us to do His will.

A God of miracles

We need a miracle.

This morning we had a phone conference with the Taiwan coordinator. The agency in Taiwan has expressed some concern over our negative net worth. While they want to approve our adoption, they are afraid that the judge will reject our application. The agency is asking if there is any way that we can bring our net worth up to a positive number.

We need $11,000 in order to do that. We need a miracle. I am praying for a miracle.

If we are not able to improve our net worth, we will probably have to postpone the adoption. The option of submitting our application with a negative net worth was never presented, which makes me believe that we have two options. Either we fix the negative net worth or we wait to adopt until our net worth has improved.

I am trying so hard not to be discouraged. God has already worked miracles in our lives over the past eight years. Both my husband and I made bad financial decisions right out of high school. Both of us ran up credit card debt. Both of us borrowed money to attend college. Neither of us have a bachelors degree. Between the college loans and the credit cards and financing a car, we had a combined total of $96,000 of debt.

Then we found Dave Ramsey. We put together a budget. We saved a small emergency fund. We started prioritizing our debt payments. We made progress. We paid off a very large chunk of debt.

Then we both lost our jobs due to layoffs. God worked a miracle during that six month period. Even though the budget made no sense, even though the spreadsheet shows we should have missed payments, God provided. When Jeff was hired at his current job, his salary was enough to cover what both of us had made before. Despite six months of small unemployment checks, we met all of our financial obligations. And when Jeff started his new job, we had an even greater understanding of the need to be debt free.

After several years, we had made enough progress that we started praying for God's leading to move to the northwest. Jeff asked his employer if he could be allowed to move and work 100% remotely. The employer said yes! We packed up our car, shipped a few boxes, and moved to Washington.

We spent several months saving up money, sleeping on an air mattress, so that we could pay cash for some furniture. God provided. Then we decided it was time to start eliminating the student loans. We sent several large payments but God started impressing my husband that it was time to step out in faith and adopt a child. We've seen God's hand in our adoption so far.

Now we're getting ready to submit our dossier to court and have hit a road bump. Taiwan's culture is such that people pay cash for college. It is a lot cheaper to attend college in Taiwan than in the US. Student loans are unheard of.

At this point in time, our adoption is 2/3 paid for. Part of the money has already been submitted to various agencies and fees. Part of the money is sitting in our savings account, waiting for the next step in the process. A process that has been halted. When you put our financial situation on paper, we make a good income. But we own very few "things" and thus have a very low number in the Asset column. We still owe $30,000 in student loans and thus have a big number in the Liabilities column. When you add them together, we have a negative net worth.

I truly believe God told us to step out in faith and apply to adopt a beautiful girl in Taiwan who needs a family. I've seen His hand at work in the past six months. Now we need $11,000 to continue the adoption proceedings. We need a miracle. I am praying for a miracle.

Slowly but surely!

On September 24, we bought a bed. Since then, we've been saving our money and waiting.

Finally...

Today...

At 11:30am...

Our very empty living room

At noon...

Bruno wonders what has changed

"Is that for me?"

Our Aries cat claims it for his very own

We are very blessed! We finally have a couch and it was paid for with cash. I have to admit, it is hard to not be tempted to finance our furniture purchases. So far we've been able to purchase a bed, a folding table, folding chairs, an executive office chair for my husband's work at home job, and a couch. Not bad for six month of saving and shopping around. We're slowly furnishing our house and are avoiding debt.

God is so good!

Organization and frugality - groceries

Today has been a fairly productive day. I ran out of yarn on my kitty blanket so I'm again without a knitting project! If hubby is able to get off work at five, we'll be visiting Joann's to buy more yarn and some knitting needles for a baby hat.

Kitty blanket - in progress

This morning, I went grocery shopping at Safeway and picked up most of our groceries for the week. We literally eat week to week at our house, running out of groceries at the end of each week. It's crazy!

I've been collecting receipts for the past six weeks and today I started my spreadsheet. We shop at Whole Foods, Safeway, the Asian market, the farmer's market, and occasionally, at Target and Trader Joe's. I'm compiling a list of all the staples - things like refried beans, pasta, jarred tomatoes for our pizza sauce, coconut milk, etc. Most of these stores carry the same products, so I'm recording which store has the lowest regular price for each item.

My plan is to take this list with me each week. When I see that something is on sale, I'm going to stock up. It's frustrating writing down the same basic shopping list. Since most of our meals are the same from week to week, I'd like to have two months of pantry ingredients on hand. And I'd much rather pay sale prices!

A hallmark day!

Our bedroom at 11:25am

Our bedroom at 11:55am

Praise the Lord! We have a bed!

It's a queen sized organic EcoMemory Foam mattress, covered in bamboo fabric, made in California, and is produced with zero emissions.

Best of all?

We paid cash!!

It was a very long eleven week fight with multiple air mattresses but worth the sacrifice to avoid debt. We finally saved up enough money to order the bed on Friday. Thankfully, the mattress store had one in stock and could deliver this morning.

I am in desperate need of a good night of sleep. Thank you, Lord, for a new bed!!

DEBT FREE!!!!!

Image: Chaiwat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This morning, we submitted our final payment to the credit card company. We are credit card and car loan debt free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am absolutely ecstatic. We have been working toward this day for six years and finally reached our goal. We refuse to ever again pay interest on another credit card or car loan. Never again will we throw our money down the toilet.

We paid off $42,389.02. That is insane! Out of that, $28,064 was credit card debt. Twenty eight thousand dollars!! We could have bought an amazing car for that amount of money or a huge chunk of a house. We could have toured Europe!

What do we have to show for it? Not much. We financed most of our wedding costs on a credit card. Food. Books. CDs. A very rare cash advance to pay another credit card bill. All of it was a waste of money. I have no idea how much money it took to pay off that $28,000. I didn't keep track of how much money we paid in interest, just the initial balances. Knowing how much money we paid in interest over the life of the credit cards would be depressing. I just don't want to know. I've learned my lesson.

We used Dave Ramsey's principles to guide our journey. First we saved up a $1,000 emergency fund to cover any real emergencies. We used it several times and were always grateful it was there. Then we started paying off our smallest balance debt, throwing as much money at it as possible. When that was paid off, we took the minimum payment from the first debt and rolled it into the second debt, plus threw as much money at the debt as possible. Rinse and repeat until we finally paid off the last credit card company.

Now we can finally start saving up for our move! We're leaving Arizona in 93 days. Once we arrive in Seattle, we'll split our money between building up a bigger savings account and buying new furniture. After saving up six month's of living expenses, we'll start paying off our student loans ($41,596.16 left to go).

We are so excited! Our lifestyle does not change much because our credit cards are gone. We will still be living very simply, paying off the rest of the money we borrowed during college. The one thing we do want to change is to institute a date night and some (just a little bit) of fun money. We rarely spend any money other than groceries and bills. It would be nice to buy a new book or some nice quilting fabric once in awhile, of course fully paid in cash.

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Leave of Absence

This morning my laptop's network card died. Sadly, it was a very sudden and unexpected death. The timing of things is very interesting.

Last week - my husband's desktop died (4 years old)
This week - my laptop's network card died (5 years old)
Ongoing - my cell phone is freezing up and I expect it to die at any time (3 years old)
Ongoing - our tv display is slowly dying, pixel by pixel (20 years old)

We still have a number of computers around the house, since my husband is an IT guy and seems to collect these things. I have a Dell Mini and an HP Tablet, but neither of them are my primary workhorse. My husband still has his work laptop, which is good because otherwise he wouldn't be able to work from home anymore.

We really, really want to replace some of the dying electronics. We shopped around for a television and blu-ray player at Christmas but decided to wait until we paid off our last credit card. Then the computers started dying. We wavered a bit on replacing them but decided that we are going to remain faithful to our financial plan of paying off the last credit card. Lord willing, provided the dentist appointment next week is routine, we should send in our last credit card payment in six weeks.

I am very excited that we are so close to being out of credit card debt! I am also mourning the loss of my primary laptop. The two emotions are conflicting but the desire to be out of debt is stronger.

However... I will be posting very little until I am able to replace my laptop. I love the Dell Mini's size, but it is a pain to type on. I have lost access to my RSS feeds and thus will not be able to keep up with everyone's posts. Productivity around the house should be very high without ready internet access and without the distraction of fiction books!

I'll be back as soon as I can. Until then, stay safe and have a wonderful January!
~Cassandra

Done! Complete! Finished!

I interrupt this normally scheduled Nano time to bring the following important announcement:

We have paid off our lowest balance credit card!!!

I sent the final payment this morning.

We have paid $1,589.25 since August 30th. Our goal was to pay off this card before November 30th and we are 4 weeks early. Wahoo!!!!

If we had paid only the minimums, it would have taken 60 months to pay off this card. Under our current interest rate, we would have paid $403 in interest over the next 60 months. The $403 doesn't even include the hike in interest that our credit card recently informed us about. Instead, we paid $21.23, for a savings of $381.77.

Hubby and I both need to visit the dentist ($95 each just for an exam and x-rays!) and we're also planning on diverting some of our snowball into savings. We are very gun shy about employment as we've suffered several layoffs in the past 18 months and would like to build up a bigger emergency fund. So we'll be taking a few days to discuss our next financial goal and then I'll post about what's next.

One. More. Week.

$699.82 starting balance
- $256.59 snowball payment
+ $8.67 interest
- $164.00 contract paycheck

= $287.90 current balance (82% paid)

Total paid in October: $999.37 If I had realized we were that close to an even thousand, I would have found the extra 63 cents! Oh, well.

I didn't even realize we could find that much money to send the credit card company. A good portion of that money is from my contract job so it's too bad that my hours are so unpredictable. It will be hard to duplicate months like October because I can't predict my hours and I am paid a month after completing the work.

Woohoo!! Another week and that credit card will be gone! Adios. Sayonara. We don't ever want to see you again!

We've also reached another milestone. Our consumer debt is now 50% paid. We owe about $21,000 but we've paid just over $21,000. The numbers are way too big and each month doesn't make much of a dent. But we're at the half way point and are slowly chipping away at it!

Blessings of the financial kind

God is so very good and I am so very proud of my hubby!

Hubby met with his boss today to discuss his job performance and how hubby feels about the company thus far. He walked away with a raise and a bonus! Praise the Lord!

Hubby's boss also gave him a $50 gift card to the Olive Garden so that hubby can take me out on a date. It's the boss' way of saying "thanks and I'm sorry" for taking up a good portion of our evenings and weekends in October. Hurray! We've never spent that much money at the Olive Garden. This means we'll be able to get an appetizer, two entrees, and dessert! What a treat!

2/3 complete

$703.48 starting balance
- $3.66 half.com payment

= $699.82 current balance (66% paid)

We're making progress!

This upcoming week, my paycheck will clear the bank and that payment will be sent to the credit card. That should be another $160. We're so close I can taste it. Thanksgiving will be oh, so sweet because we will be slaves to one less lender.

Change in terms!

We've reached another financial roadblock. Yesterday we received a letter from the bank saying that one of our credit card interest rates is going up to 19.24% (variable, of course). We've done nothing to warrant this change. We've made all payments on time, haven't gone over the credit limit, etc. This is the same credit card that we are trying to pay off by the end of November. Coincidentally, the interest rate change will go into effect on December 1.

So far, this doesn't sound like a problem since the card will be paid in full. We were hoping to receive or apply for a balance transfer rate on this credit card because it is currently our lowest interest rate. Now it will be our highest. Balance transfers to this card would not be beneficial at a higher interest rate, even if the balance transfer is 0% for six months. Our plan was to transfer a balance from a higher rate card and then let the balance at 0% interest sit while we aggressively paid off a higher rate card. That's not going to happen now.

I've seen numerous articles that say that some banks are now starting to charge fees if the user does not charge anything to the account or annual fees regardless of usage. The new credit card legislation (link is a pdf) goes into effect in February and I'm afraid the banks are trying to take advantage of the last few months before they are restricted. I'm really nervous that we're going to be getting rate increase notices on all four of our credit cards.

Now we have to decide - do we close the accounts for which we receive notice of increased interest rates? Keeping the accounts open and facing increased interest rates is going to hurt our finances. Closing the accounts and taking the hit on the our credit scores is also going to hurt but only if we try to apply for credit. I hate credit cards and regret the mistakes I've made with them.

Over the halfway point!

$1,028.48 starting balance
- $25.00 minimum payment
- $300.00 snowball payment

= $703.48 current balance (65% paid!!)

It feels good to make some real progress this week. We owe less than a thousand dollars!

I hate that the bank will only allow me to make payments every three days. I probably need to start making one payment a week instead of sending multiple smaller payments. The $300.00 payment hits our account on Monday because I had to schedule it in the future due to having just made the minimum payment. It doesn't seem fair that the bank can charge interest on my daily balance but I can only send payments every three days. That's just a bit lopsided in their favor.

For this upcoming week, I should be receiving a paycheck for my contract work shortly. As far as I know, that will be the only payment for the week. The only other possibility is the mail in rebate for our tire purchases but I don't expect that check in the immediate future. The fine print stated that rebates can take up to six weeks and I mailed in the paperwork a week ago.

We are in route to having this credit card paid off by the end of November, which was our goal. I am very excited and can't wait to see one less bill each month.

One third complete

$1,278.60 starting balance
- $244.00 contract paycheck
- $6.12 half.com payment

= $1,028.48 current balance (35.3% paid)

When we started aggressively paying off this credit card, Bankrate calculated that it would take 60 months to eliminate the balance. Calculating our current balance, Bankrate now states that it will take only 36 months of minimum payments. In only 6 weeks, we have eliminated two years of minimum payments! Every little bit really does help.

First time for everything

What a great day of firsts!

• First day we've not turned on the air conditioning since June. I hope it stays that way!
  
• First time I've filled out a Citizen Survey for my city.
  
• First time I've gone shopping at Walmart at 5AM. Great customer service and the store is perfectly clean.
  
• First time I've applied to participate in a credit card program. Earn 20% of any balance paid above the minimum for the next three billing cycles. I can't use the card (no worries there) and my credit line will be reduced by the amount paid above the minimum. I had called to find out why my interest rate was raised 1.75% and they offered this instead. I applied, but hubby and I discussed this program and decided we won't take advantage of it. Because the payments are applied to lowest interest rates first and we recently transferred a balance to this card at a much lower rate, we would actually be losing money by paying off the 1.9% interest instead of the 10.24% card we're paying on now.
  

We might be visiting another small art museum for the first time tonight. It depends on how tired we are after doing the last bit of grocery shopping at the farmer's market.

The balance grew...

I meant to post this yesterday but I fell asleep at 6:30 last night and woke up at 6:30 this morning!

We made NO progress on the credit card last week. I have a feeling that the first week of each month will be the one that we are unable to make a payment. Hubby gets paid at the end of each month but most of our bills are due within the first 10 days of the month.

$1,266.04 starting balance
+ $12.56 interest

= $1278.60 current balance (19.6% paid)

This week will be much better. I was paid on Friday but I'm waiting for the check to clear the bank. As soon as that clears, I'll be sending a payment.

Our snowball will also be affected this month as our car wouldn't start on Sabbath and we found out our battery needed to be replaced. We missed church. That's another $100 we've had to put into the car. Combine the new battery purchase with the new tires and we've paid almost $550 into car maintenance in less that two weeks! The beauty of it all is that we have an emergency fund (for the battery; the tires were budgeted) and haven't had to use the credit cards. God is very good!

Slow progress, but forward motion nonetheless

CC1 progress

$1,272.98 starting balance
- $6.94 Half.com earnings

= $1,266.04 current balance (20.34% paid)

I found another reason to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Blunt Money's post on how interest rates are calculated shows that most credit cards charge a daily periodic rate, meaning that I am accumulating interest every single day. The term APR is misleading because you would think that it's an annual percentage rate but it's not.

Sure enough. I looked up my last statement on this credit card and they are charging interest every single day. That means that today I'm being charged interest on the interest that they charged yesterday. Compound interest strikes hard. I feel justified sending multiple payments every week if possible. It will save us money on interest because our daily balance will be lower.

We were hit hard with expenses last week. Four new tires plus alignment (which we desperately needed) cost us $416.75. Ouch! We have a $58 mail in rebate but that money can't go to the credit card until I get a check, which usually takes 4-6 weeks. Oh, well. At least we had the money in the bank and could pay cash even without touching our savings account.

Groceries were also a big expense because we needed a few things that aren't weekly purchases - olive oil, kitty litter, two bags of cat food, and a couple other odds and ends that couldn't wait. We spent most of the grocery budget on staples, building up our pantry again. I'm probably going to have to use the rest of our snowball for September ($40) to buy additional food. We don't have enough to last two weeks.

I keep reminding myself that we are making progress, even though it doesn't seem like it some weeks. It's a blessing to be able to cash flow expenses rather than dip into savings or use the credit cards. All of our bills are being paid on time and we even have extra money some weeks. I have to look at the big picture, not just at the previous week. The big picture looks so much better! God is very good.

Shopping for tires

We are trying to balance debt pay off with taking care of car maintenance, clothing needs, etc. It's really hard spending money when we're so focused on getting out of debt. Each month, we take a look at our finances, determine what our snowball will be, and decide if there's anything we need that month. This month, we were planning on new tires. Next month, we will be ordering hubby a six month supply of contacts. December will be all about credit card progress, unless an emergency arises before the end of the year.

We've known we need new tires for awhile. We have two tires on the car that are a year or so old, one that is several years old, and one tire from when we financed it in 2005! The plan is to replace all four tires so that they match and will wear evenly.

Hubby had a client appointment this afternoon and walked out to the car only to find that one of our tires was flat. Interesting timing, as we're currently searching for good deals and can afford the tires tomorrow! Hubby changed the tire out for the donut and realized that we had no tread left on that tire and that's why it finally gave out. We are overdue!

It's confusing shopping for tires. I'm looking at an ad from Tire Pros that has free installation, free balancing, and sale prices on the tires. Pepboys Auto is offering that if you buy any three installed tires, you get the fourth for free and, if I'm reading the website correctly, they offer free installation. Discount Tire Company has a $40 mail in rebate on one of their tire brands but charges for installation. Walmart has decent prices on tires and $5 installation fees but I don't really trust Walmart to take care of my car. All of the companies charge outrageous prices for disposing the tires but I'm having troubles locating a company that recycles the tires so that we can avoid the disposal fee.

I think we might have to just pick a company and go with it and hope we got the best deal. They all carry different tires, so how are we supposed to compare? I'm so confused!

Mini-milestone and goals revisited

Last week's progress on CC1:

$1,448.98 starting balance
- $176.00 contract paycheck

$1,272.98 current balance (20% paid)

We're finally making some progress on this credit card! I received my paycheck last week for time completed in August. It's the first of several large paychecks, my next coming 10/1.

This week hubby and I will be shopping for new tires for our car. We are overdue and the goal is to pay for four new tires by the end of September. We have to wait until his next paycheck (Friday) to have the cash, but that's where most of our snowball will be directed this month. Unfortunately, we can't neglect essential car maintenance just because we're focused on paying off our credit cards.

Hubby and I have decided that we're going to start trying for a baby when all the consumer debt is paid off. I'm so excited about this as we now have a concrete goal of when we're going to start growing our family. Before, we just talked about "when we can afford it," "when the debt is paid off." Well, we have $69,500 in total debt and that pay off is years away.

We're following Dave Ramsey's baby steps:

1 - $1,000 emergency fund DONE
2 - Pay off all debt except the house
3 - Build an emergency fund that covers 3-6 months of expenses
4 - Retirement savings
5 - College funds for kids
6 - Pay off home early
7 - Give like you've never given before

Because we have no house and no plans to buy one... we're rearranging the steps a bit so that we can start growing our family:

1 - $1,000 emergency fund DONE
2 - Pay off all consumer debt (credit cards and car)
3 - Build an emergency fund that covers 3-6 months of expenses
3a - Start trying for a baby while building our emergency fund
4 - Retirement savings
5 - Save up a minimum 30% down payment on a house
5a - College funds for kids
6 - Pay off home early
7 - Give like you've never given before

That's the plan for now, though things will probably change once our consumer debt is paid off. What's left for consumer debt?

CC1 - $1,272.98
CC2 - $3,037.29
CC3 - $4,363.78
Auto loan - $4,565.83
CC4 - $9,105.16

We are $22,345.04 away from having our first child! I am very excited. That's so much more optimistic than the original figure of $69,444.98 for our total debt.

Reminder - Dave Ramsey Giveaway

If you haven't entered today's $999 emergency fund giveaway, please do so! Having an emergency fund allows me to breathe easy because I know the money is available to cover a trip to the doctor or car trouble, should the need suddenly arise.