a little history

After posting a few times already, I decided you guys really should have a little back story on our family. Just so everyone can see where we have been, where we went wrong and what we've done right, and be able to follow us better going forward. We have had quite a challenging last year that set the ground work for where we are today.

Dan and I both worked a lot through high school and college. Along the way, though, we both opened credit cards thinking they were such a great thing to have. Buy now and pay later. COOL!! By the time we were married, we both had a few thousand dollars worth of CC debt and then we added at least $13,000 to that with our wedding and honeymoon. Add on 2 very poor decisions to buy timeshares and we had a good deal of debt started. (never attend one of those seminars where you get a free night stay at a resort in exchange for your time......you all know what I am talking about) Dan was making decent size payments on his $38,000 college loan and we both had car payments. All of a sudden, we had lots of things to pay for.

We married 7 years ago and have been blessed with 3 wonderfully sweet and funny kids. We both always knew it was our family plan for me to stay home and raise our kids. That is one decision we will never regret. I love spending my days laughing and playing with them. I could not imagine life any other way.

I worked a few part time jobs throughout our marriage and have done childcare on and off, which always helped financially, but the main source of our income came from Dan's full time job as a Construction Project Manager working for general contractor. Shortly after we were married, we moved to a town where Dan's company transferred him to work on a jail project for 2.5 years. When the project was over, we decided to stay where we were instead of moving back to where his company was located. He started working for a new company and within about 3 month we decided we needed to buy a house. We were sick of renting and "wasting our money". We purchased our first home (a condo) with NO MONEY DOWN and stretched ourselves to the max to make everything work. What a dumb idea!

Two years after moving into our condo, the bills were getting to be too much. We were still trying to pay off the hospital bills from the last baby and with our money being so tight, we were having a hard time not using our CCs. Our CC debt was so overwhelming. We would make our payments each month, but the interest rates were really getting out of hand. They would raise our rates at a moments notice. Lots of people told us to stop paying to see if they would start to work with us, but Dan and I both knew that the right Christian attitude was to keep making payments. We were responsible for our debt, nobody else. We knew we needed to do something, so we started talking about who would work more. I worked a lot of weekends already and was taking care of 3 little ones during the day and Dan worked 10 hour days during the week. It just so happened that Dan picked up a newspaper and there was an add for a newspaper carrier and the pay was great. This was a long driving route, but after paying for gas and taking into consideration oil changes and taxes, it was still about $900 a month. This meant Dan got up everyday at 4:30am, Monday -Saturday, and 2:30am on Sunday to do the route. It was a 7 day a week route and took him 2-4 hours. It was a big commitment, but we needed the money. We felt thankful!!

We also put our house on the market. We wanted nothing more than to get out of the payments, but we never even got a bite.

The paper route seemed to be a good solution, but we still had a problem. We had no plan. We had no budget and we never paid bills together. In fact, if someone asked me, I would not have been able to tell them what bills we had or even what Dan's paychecks were each week. All I really knew was the approximate amount that we were in debt. He took care of all the financial stuff and I took care of the kids and the house. We did not work together and we fought about this a lot. He liked being in control, but I was left in the dark. He was stressed out every time he paid bills. I think he just really wanted to take care of it, but it was not working for us. Our bills never went down. Even with the paper route, we just managed to get by a little easier.

We went along like this for another year. Every once in a while, we would say to each other that we would end up bankrupt if he ever lost his job. We had no savings, we contributed very little to his 401K and the minimum payments and necessities of life took all our money each month. There was not a lot left for anything. It was very scary and stressful. Dan was very depressed. He worked very hard everyday with the same end result of feeling trapped and hopeless. I felt very frustrated not being a part of financial side of things. This alone cause a great deal of stress on our marriage.

Then, one year ago this month, Dan came home in the middle of the day. Something that he never did. All I had to do was look at him and I knew. He had lost his job. His company was feeling the effects of the bad economy and needed to downsize. I started to cry. I literally thought we were done for. What in the world were we going to do?

Within a couple days, word that Dan was looking for a job reached his former employer. They called right away and told Dan they wanted him back. It was a comforting feeling but would require us to sell our house and move 4 hours away. We were fine with the moving part, but had no idea how we would sell our house. The value had dropped so much since we had bought it that we would need about $40,000 at closing. We just did not think we could make that scenario work.

Dan had signed up for unemployment the same day he was laid off. Unfortunately, we did not qualify for much because of the income we had from the paper route. I picked up any and all hours I could at the part time job I already had and picked up another job in retail. Thank goodness for the holiday season!! Dan got busy right away sending out resume after resume. He was given 3 weeks of severance pay which we stretched as far as we could. We called all our CCs and banks to see if we could stop payments for a month or two due to hardship. Luckily, our banks were willing to work with us. Between that, Dan earning some Christmas tips doing the route and having a few generous family members gift us a little extra for Christmas, we were getting by, but not without the use of those dreaded CCs. As the weeks continued on, with no interviews or job offers in the area, we started to get really worried.

We started considering taking the job with his former employer. We prayed about it a lot and talked it over for a few weeks. Although we had no idea how, we both started to feel like this was what we were supposed to do. So we called up is former employer and set up a meeting. It was a bitter sweet day. Dan was offered a great job, but we had no idea how to sell our house or make it work.

His new job was about an hour a half from my home town and where our church was located. We had no church or church school for our kids in the same town as his job. We knew that Dan would have to commute everyday back and forth to work. The company generously gave him a company car and would take care of all gas. That was a life saver. They also agreed to give us a monthly subsistence check for one year to take care of rent while we tried to sell our house. This was only a loan though, and we would need to pay it back. The drive home from our meeting was a long one knowing how much we would have to figure out in just a few short months. We decided that God was guiding us and helping us make the right decision and He would continue to stay with us (as He always does) until we figured everything out.

Once we moved, I would no longer have my two jobs, we would lose the money from the paper route, and although the salary from Dan's new job was about the same as his old one, the overall income would be much less. For the first time ever, we sat down, together, and had to figure out how to make a budget work. We needed to find a way to make our outgoing payments less so we could keep up with all the bills. After a few phone calls, one being to our pastor to ask for advice, we were able to find a bank who would consolidate 3 of our CCs for us. We lowered our monthly payments and locked in to a great interest rate. I can't tell you what a relief it was to know the CC companies would not be able to raise out rates again. We still had a ton of other CCs and loans, but this would make it work so we could pay them all each month.

Dan started his new job the following Monday. He stayed with my sister and her family and drove back and forth for work. I stayed back with the kids and packed the whole house. The kids and I moved a month later. We spent the next 2 months driving 4 hrs back and forth from our new town to where the condo was to get it ready for the market again. We fixed it all up, painted everything and replaced a few things. The challenge with selling was that ours was one of 4 identical condos for sale on our same block. We priced ours within the range that the rest were, but soon realized that we were ALL overpriced. This really did not surprise us. Nothing was selling and the market kept dropping every month. We had many people advise us to try a short sale. That meant we would have to intentionally stop making payments for a few months so our bank might agree to accept a lower offer. Again, that was just not something we could do. The bank did not get us here, we did. We were determined to find a way to make it work without intentionally defaulting on any payments. I guess it would have been a different story if we were unable to make them, but somehow we were still current on everything and we wanted to keep it that way.

We finally decided we would rent out our house. We were blessed to find a wonderful couple who signed a 3 year contract with us. We figured it would take at least that long until the market went up enough for us to sell and break even. And, we wouldn't have to worry about losing any rent money if our tenants decide to move out after a year. Our mortgage and condo dues were $1500 a month and what we would receive in rent was only $900, so we would still lose $600 a month. Now that we wouldn't be selling our house, we needed to look at other living options for ourselves knowing the subsitence money would not be there forever. By chance, I found an ad for a mobile home that had just gone down in price. It was only 9 years old and had 3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. I think Dan thought I was kidding when I called him and told him I though we should go look at it. Once he realized I was serious, we went and looked at it and decided to put in an offer. We ended up paying $16,500 for it and spent about $5000 remodeling which we paid for on a CC. We figured it would take us about 2 years to pay off that loan and that payment would be cheaper than rent. As soon as we had that loan paid off, we would live for only $280 a month (lot rent and taxes) for as long as we wanted. After spending a few weeks to fix the trailer up (and getting no sleep) were pretty excited about it. We needed to downsize more, so we had a few more rummage sales and then rented an off site storage unit to fit everything else. I never thought I would live in a trailer, but I was so happy I did. It made me very proud of my family to know we did not end up in bankruptcy. We did not choose to stop payments on the house to do a short sale and we never once stopped paying on our bills. With some very generous help along the way, we were making it work. Our little trailer means the world to me!!

We truly accomplished more in the last year than I think either one of us have in our life. It's been an exhausting (both physically and mentally) year, but one of the best ones we have gone through. It has made us really ready to work together to deal with all the debt for the first time in our life. God knew we needed to do this too, so He put us in a position where we had to. If Dan would not have lost his job, we would be in the same sinking boat that we were in a year ago. God loves us and is blessing us through all of this and we praise Him for that!!
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