Jason and I have been in debt our entire relationship. Before we got married Jason had credit card debt. We both had student loans. And then we made the decision to move to Lethbridge so he could attend university. This brought huge buckets of student loans.
We have always struggled financially. We have always had debt. We have always been battling this debt beast that seemed to never give an inch. But indeed we slowly made progress. We paid off the mountains of student loans. And we then had the credit cards.
Credit cards are devious little things. You always intend to pay it off right away but something always happens. And so they slowly just fill up.
Finally I said enough is enough. No more. We made a serious plan and undertook the big task of paying all of this off.
We could easily have continued making payments each month and slowly chipping away at it, but I want to buy a home. And I want to have no debts when I do it.
With Jason being constantly behind in pay for 8 consecutive months we knew we needed to tighten our belts and dive into this.
So, that is exactly what we did. We tightened our belts. We cut kids activities and other frivolous expenses like cable. And we managed to hang in through it all. We even saved some.
But we knew we needed to dig deeper to get through this. So we sat down as a family and set a goal. No more debt by the end of June.
It was a very lofty goal and meant even more sacrifices. But the whole family was on board. It also was dependent on our son getting approved for disability with his ADHD combo and ODD.
After 3 months however, his disability paperwork is still pending and being processed. And everything I’ve read says even once the paperwork is approved it could take another 6 months to fill out the additional paperwork and see any money.
Last pay day Jason got 3 pay checks. He was finally caught up. That meant that most of his back pay could go to debt. (But we have to keep some aside because we know he won’t be paid at the end of the month).
Then last week Jason won the 50/50 draw at the Hitmen game. And finally yesterday we got a letter in the mail stating that we had this credit on the child supplement thing from 2012 taxes and they’d sent us $300 in the mail and when they determined that we didn’t owe them any money they would send the rest.
Ironically Jason and I had been discussing where to tithe our winnings from the 50/50. And I was bummed because we would still be short to pay off these debts completely. And it felt like we had nothing to show for all of this sacrifice and even for the awesome win!
But, that letter from the government changed everything. That is the missing amount we are short to be debt free. In fact after we tithe on the 50/50 and we tithe on that, I suspect it will be within dollars of what we need to be debt free.
Unfortunately most of the money isn’t in our hands yet. We know it’s coming and we just have to wait it out. But the thing is, we know it’s coming. And we know that within the next month or so we will be debt free.
Then we can focus on saving and getting a house. We could have taken all this money and gotten a house, but then we would still have these debts to pay. So we are just waiting. One step at a time.
Thankfully these last steps have been a full out run. Our goal had been to be in a home before the end of summer. But that isn’t going to happen. But when we get in a home we will do so with a healthy down payment and we won’t have to worry about the budget so much.
And with Jason’s job being so touch and go and unstable it will be awesome to get rid of this debt and allow us to live on that much less.
So for now, I have to be content to wait on the money to come and just be happy knowing that in the next 2 to 8 weeks we will hopefully receive it all and be able to be debt free.
And incidentally that will leave any monies we get (assuming Keilan’s disability comes through eventually) from Keilan’s disability to go to a down payment on a house. So really we are doing pretty good now.
Now let’s just hope Jason doesn’t lose his job….but even if he does we are in the best possible place to deal with it…