When I moved to Cincinnati and after having the boys I felt like I wanted to reconnect with religion. I felt adrift, spiritually. Although both Dennis and I grew up Catholic -neither of us went through confirmation. This was purposeful, since we felt that there were many things that we didn’t fully connect with in the Catholic church. Our marriage was performed by a Christian non-denominational pastor and we had not been attending church/service after that.
One day a coworker, whose opinion I value, told me about a place called “Crossroads” that was for people who had ‘lost their connection to the church but not to God’ and we decided to try it out. I will leave my impressions and likes/deslikes about the place or another post but there is no doubt that the place has left a huge imprint on our lives. First of all, we met and connected to one of the closest friends we’ve had since college and second of all, we were touched by their message: especially one about money.
I wrote on another post, how they used the tale of the three piggies to bring to life the wolf as the negative driver and seducer – as money. This message left us reeling and resulted in several, heart to heart conversation between Dennis and I. It has so affected us that we have decided to embark on a quest to be “debt free” and to live more modestly.
After my graduate degree graduation, both pre and post babies, Dennis and I pretty much spent what we wanted. We purchased exactly we wanted and when we wanted. We got the big house, and the nice cars, and the nice clothes and the latest gadgets. We were very generous to both of our families and flew them to visit us multiple times. When they visited, we behaved extravagantly and ate out and paid for their expenses fully. In our own day to day lives, we rarely cooked and ate out constantly. We did have a budget – which I carefully tracked every month – but we didn’t adhere to it.
After hearing the series on the wolf – Dennis and I talked about what we wanted in the next 5 and 10 years and decided something crucial – we wanted to have the freedom to react to life, regardless of what it threw at us in the next years. We wanted to be able to live on one salary, if needed, to allow each other to explore and live out dreams (not by buying things but by living). We wanted to have the flexibility to be there as the kids start school, in the next 2-4 years.
First we modeled how we could get down to one salary once we didn’t have car and student loan debt. After we made the budget work –by making huge adjustments – we then added the debt back in and committed to save every single extra penny to paying off the debt. The only debt we would maintain was the mortgage.