Oh the Debt Talk

CELEBRATE!!!!!!!!!!

As of today, we have noooooo car payments/house payments/credit card payments...I paid of the last little bit of the last car standing this morning!
This is huge for us because we never would have been on this journey if it wasn't for our convictions in the Biblical areas of "owe nothing to anyone" (Romans 13:8), and then for God giving us the drive and determination to get ourselves to a life of living debt-free. We made the commitment 3 years ago, changed our lifestyle drastically, crushed the idea of striving toward the "American Dream", and had people hold us accountable along the way.
We've said all along it's been a heart change for us both. The things we once desired have just been plain unappealing. I will admit, when we moved to Bentonville, there were a few times at the beginning where I felt myself being swayed back toward the "come on, you deserve it" or "stop paying extra toward that loan for just this month and buy this awesomeness over here" or "wow - we could totally afford that house" but I am so thankful for God's patience with us in this journey and how He has ultimately provided.
Probably the biggest help He sent were dear friends who are on the exact same journey with the exact same convictions. Praise the Lord.

When we initially set on this journey, we knew once we got to the end, we have a considerable extra amount of money after everything was paid off, but we made the commitment to still budget and not change our lifestyle. No excessive cars/housing/furniture/whatever...we were going to call it Kingdom Money. Not sure what that means but we are confident God has a purpose for us and how to use it when we get there. I'm excited to see.

Now we still aren't 100% done, but we are about 80% of the way there.

My purpose in sharing all of this is mainly in part to praise God, hands down, for embarking us on this journey because it has been incredible the amount of blessing (not money blessing) that has flowed from it. I started an entire separate blog on this journey because some of things He did were just so incredible once we committed to this. This is by no means us. Nope. We are incredibly sinful/selfish/envious/ and greedy in our own nature to be honest. We have horrendous track records both individually, before we married, and our first year of marriage in regards to money. We had some CRAZY debt people. Praise the Lord for swooping us up and changing our hearts.
We said it from the beginning and we're still saying it - we want to be free of all ties so that we can go where He wants us without hesitation.

Oh - and a disclaimer: people have asked us a lot, but no - we have never taken a D.Ramsey class. We just made our own plan based on logic, committed it to the Lord, and followed it (making changes accordingly along the way). Simple, really. I've since looked at some Ramsey stuff to see if what we do is similar, and some things are, but there are some big things that we disagree on.