Let’s take a minute and talk about goals. One of the goals Bethany and I have, starting over 10 months ago, was to pay off the rest of our debt in 24 months. This was to get back on track for our original goal to pay off the school debt on our 10th anniversary, at the time we were 3-4 years behind.
Like we’ve mentioned before I like the quote “a statement closes your mind, but a question opens your mind.” I heard this on the survival Podcast with Jack Spirko. So in October of 2019 we changed the statement “We can’t afford to pay off our debt any faster,” to the question “How can we get back on track and pay the debt off in 24 months?” Well not even 11 months later, not only are we going to pay off the debt in under 24 months, but we will pay it off next week!!! That’s 1 year before our original goal of paying it off by our 10th anniversary and 13 months before the goals we set last October.
This still blows my mind, how asking ourselves one little question has changed our lives so drastically in 1 year. Now I did go from working 50-60 hours a week to averaging over 80 hours, and Bethany has picked up all the extra shifts at the preschool that she could and started a new online job, but that’s only the beginning. We were able to cut our phone bill from $170+ a month to below $70 a month by paying off our phones, so we own the phones outright, and switching to a prepaid phone plan. Oh yeah plus that eliminated another debt that we were paying, our phones!!!! We also started a sinking fund to be able to buy new phones when needed and not have to finance them! (not go back into debt) Next we were able to drop our internet bill from $60 down to $37 and get 8x the speed by shopping around.
We made over $200 selling things at a garage sale my sister and sister-in-law put on. I sold my old broken down truck. We started driving the more fuel efficient vehicle when we didn’t need the space to save on fuel…. And so on and so on.
Probably the biggest way we saved money brings us to another goal that we made this year, to lose weight / get healthy. My goal was to get down to 220 lbs and Bethany’s was to get down to 145. These were previous goals that we set before, but we hadn’t reached or sustained. On January 1, 2020 I weighed 243 lbs and Bethany was at 150 lbs. As of this morning August 18, 2020 Bethany is at 136 and has been consistently within 1-2 lbs of 135, for a month and a half, which by the way is a healthy weight for her. I, on the other hand, am at 199 lbs. as of this morning! I broke through the 220 lbs on March 17, 2020. I have argued for my whole adult life that I couldn’t get my weight below the obesity line for my height. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have been below the line for over a month now. I guess I should also say that once I hit 220 so quickly I changed my goal to 200. Now I’ve reached that goal and I’ve been saying my new goal is 180, but I haven’t really pushed for that.
So I said this is probably the biggest way we have saved money, let’s look into that.
We have gone mostly keto, check out Dr. Ken Berry on YouTube. We also have started intermittent fasting, which has brought us down to only 1-2 meals a day. At first this dropped our grocery bill by a 3rd, but then we started buying more nutritious and delicious foods like high quality steak and pork, ect… we are still saving some money on food but not a ton. Because we have both lost so much weight we had to buy some new clothes, that had the opposite effect, we had to spend money on them. The biggest way we have saved money is by getting healthy. We haven’t gotten sick. we haven’t had to spend money on a doctor or on medication. (Disclaimer: we have chosen to buy some supplements and Bethany has started to see a chiropractor, but again that is part of getting healthy now, so we don’t have to spend so much in the future.) We will post more about our diet and fasting in the future.
Finally, although we have been budgeting all along, we did go through Financial Peace University, (Daveramsey.com) in our Bible study group. We have been able to fine tune our
budget, account for Every Dollar we spend, and have money put away for emergencies. Now it almost seems like money is coming out of the woodwork.
Like I said it’s hard to believe how one quote can change your life when applied. Now we do have to give God credit. He brought the quote into our lives when we needed it and when we would heed it’s advice. He provided the opportunities we needed to succeed and put the people in our lives who have encouraged/supported us all along the way! So set a goal today! Then ask How can I…..?
Prayer requests;
– To finish strong paying of the debt
– That we continue to keep God’s will in mind as we plan our future
– Whether Mike should Keep his day job and if so, for how long?
– For guidance with our income sources
– For Lydia, as most of her friends move on to the big preschool from the little preschool and she isn’t going with them
