Life After Debt Freedom pt.1

A lot has happened since I last wrote on this topic in 2020, when we completed our “baby step 2,” and wiped out our last student loan!

That unforgettable year, we lost a lot, or so we thought. In actuality we gained an entirely new life that we never saw coming…

After my husband was at tandem let go from his occupational therapist job after calling out an unethical circumstance and Covid shutting down work for this health field too, my husband picked up work as a local handyman.

He worked for his dad leaf blowing, in trade for his old leaf blower, and literally started blowing leaves and installing grab bars so we could eat and pay rent.

in those two years since, that has turned into an incredibly successful company. See, blessing in disguise!

November 2020, our company was accepted to complete a large project that paid off our last student loan. To break the news, Hunter quickly threw together a surprise date, picked me up, took me to the nicest steakhouse we’d ever been to, and told me he was about to pay off our last student loan. We were ready, it was a moment we’ll never forget.

For the past two years we’ve been in baby step 3A, 3B, and are as of TODAY currently in….baby step 6!!! We’re paying down our mortgage, because we JUST closed on our construction loan to build our new house!

In 2021, while I was entering my third trimester we found ourselves in a pickle. We needed to move out of the barn apartment we’d been living in, and quickly.

So, we did what any happy couple would do- we sold everything and bought a camper to flip and live in, because ya know, we’ll “save money on rent.”

*face palm*

Phew. Not only that, we dipped into our 3 month emergency fund to pay for it.

*Double face palm*

See, our plan was to build on the new property we bought that May, roughly 6.5, virgin acres. Our dream. We bought plans for a small house, started getting the electric installed, the water hooked up, cut down trees, put in a *cash* gravel road.

But, then that whole plan collapsed. Once the camper was delivered everything fell apart in it and what went from a brief flip turned into a fiasco.

A client from a project, where the profit should’ve covered our meager down payment scammed us. Time was ticking for us to move out, our property had no utilities and wasn’t ready, and we had to go.

So, we moved into our half finished camper on a friends property (we actually briefly lived in a hotel for about a week) for four weeks.

Shortly after, our friends needed to sell that property, which none of us knew going into the parking agreement. The camper still wasn’t finished, and we’d had enough roughing it.

It was the worst summer. Literally. So stressful and HOT. However we persevered and made it through by the grace of God. We had good intentions for that “adventure,” but it didn’t turn out that way.

At the end of last summer, our company worked on a rental house, and the landlord got ear we were looking for a rental house and let us move in as soon as the handymen finished working. UHM THANK YOU GOD!

We were planning to deliver our new baby at home and that meant we needed to find a place to live ASAP.

Literally the same week we needed to move, God gave us this rental. We had our baby, finished flipping the camper, sold it and at least made back the money we put into it replenished the emergency fund, and have spent the past year working our tails off, growing the company, reconfiguring our entire family dynamic and saving, saving, saving.

We began investing shortly into 2022, both in an IRA and our kid’s college. We kept saving for the down payment of our construction loan and enjoyed a couple picnics on the property while we waited.

That season of waiting is now complete, as we’ll finish out the dirt work and begin setting in the concrete foundation!

( So stay tuned for our first home build!)

And as of today, we’ll have filled the rest of our emergency fund for now (we’ll cushion it more when the mortgage is paid off) and paid off a super old medical debt we were alerted to recently that’d totally slipped through the cracks and been lost in the mail. Whoops.

We are officially in baby step 6, and we have a crazy goal of paying off our home in 3 years max! Whew! We can’t wait! To not owe a payment to anyone in the world- sign us up already!

It was surreal being in the closing office and signing our contract, because in all honesty, as excited as I was, I thought- I never want to do this again. Lord willing we ever buy rental property investments, and if we do, we will show up with ourselves and a check and be our own bank!

It’s been an incredible journey and of course this isn’t the end. There’s more life to unravel, good and bad, which we’ll take all in open hands.

These past two years we’ve gotten to taste what it’s like to be incredibly generous to our church and our community, and more than anything (ok it may tie with the tiny vans sneaker collection I’ve started because Poshmark is the best for crazy deals— just kidding!!! ) that is what brings us ultimate happiness. Serving and giving to God and His kingdom. Because, at the end of the day, it’s all His anyway! So we will do the best we can with what He’s given us in grateful openhandedness.