Each one of us has their own personal struggle, and we are no expection. Our challenge, throughout our entire marriage, has been with debt and the stress debt and financial challenges has caused on our marriage.
Periodically I’ve shared pieces of our story, how we’ve faced - not once, but twice - overwhelming debt that equaled, and sometimes surpassed, our annual income, and how we chose not to take the bankruptcy path, and chose to work through both the financial issues and the personal relationship issues that arose along the way.
Our first major struggle with debt was due to poor spending habits, and our second was because we didn’t adequately plan for the emergencies and unexpected events that inevitably came our way.
But while we are not yet done paying off this last round, over the last 2 years we have paid off $50,000 in debt, and over the last 10 years, paid off over $100,000. It’s been in an interesting journey, one full of lessons, growth, and faith.
Recently I talked with The Business Coach For Moms, Teisha Shelby-Houston (aka Lady T) about why we made the choices we did, how & why we avoided bankruptcy, where I drew strength from during those really tough times when I didn’t know how we were going to pay for groceries, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way about being a mom, a wife, and a business person.
While it is extremely uncomfortable to discuss some of these very personal details, Greg and I hope that by doing so, we can encourage others who are facing financial challenges, and give you hope.
If you are struggling with financial uncertainity, debt, or all the challenges that arise in marriage over money, I invite you to listen in and hope that somewhere you’ll find encouragement and hope in your journey.
We are. Like many couples, we started out our marriage with debt – matching 5 figures of debt - and it grew from there. Within a few years, it seemed like we were drowning and we didn’t know what to do. All I knew was there was no way I was going to file bankruptcy – I made a commitment and I was going to fulfill it. I just didn’t know how.
Thankfully, through the wise advice of friends, a financial education from Crown Financial Minstries, God’s amazing provision, and a lot of work on our part, we were able to pay off nearly half our debt within a few short years.
We were making good progress toward being debt free, but then we relapsed.
Life happened.
We moved, we had two houses (cuz we couldn’t sell the other one), and a variety of other emergencies occurred. And unfortunately, our only emergency fund was our credit cards. So more debt again.
And we’re working hard to get through it again. But this time I KNOW we can get out of debt without bankruptcy, by being smart, by being frugal, and by really being good stewards. God is amazing in his provision and I’ve seen him do amazing things in our lives and in others.
But still it’s a journey. This week, the following story from Jill Cooper at LivingonaDime.com arrived in my email box and I just had to share it with you. If you are at all in the battle of overcoming debt, I pray you gain more hope, conviction, and strength from Jill’s words. They were timely for me, and I hope they are for you as well.
I was at some people’s home the other day and as often happens with Tawra and me, we started talking about debt. Our hostess and her husband were like many people. They got married, got some credit cards, and started spending. They were up to their eyeballs in debt.
After years struggling and living with the stress of it, they decided to changeandhave now been debt free for a couple of years. When I spoke to the woman, she said something that I found interesting and it got me thinking. (Now we’re in big trouble– I’m thinking!) She said, “When you are in so much debt, you can really believe there is just no way out.”
Based on the e-mails and comments we get from readers, I know what she says is true. There is a way out in most cases, but the sad thing is that people often just can’t think rationally in that situation.
Have you ever seen a movie where a scatter-brained person falls into the water and starts flailing his arms and screaming “Help, I can’t swim! Help, I’m drowning”? The people on the shore look at each other and shake their heads, yelling, “Put your feet down.”
The person in the water is screaming “Help me, help me, I need help!” so loudly that he can’t hear them. He is splashing so hard he is causing water to go up his nose and into his mouth, almost drowning himself.
Finally he hears them, but he still doesn’t do what they say because he is too busy trying to figure out how to keep himself from drowning. All of a sudden, his feet go down and he realizes that he could have touched the bottom at any time.
Even standing, the water is up to his neck and a wave will hit him in the head once in a while but he can still walk to the shore one step at a time and save himself.
Many of you feel like you are drowning in debt and can see no way out. You may think there’s not a way to save yourself. We sometimes have ourselves convinced the only way for us to be saved from our debt is for someone to come and rescue us (like the government, family and friends and even God).
If someone does try to save us we are so afraid and we often fight so hard that we are liable to pull that person down and cause him or her to go under, too. (This can happen when parents help kids, when one spouse pulls the other down or even when friends try to help).
You might say, “But this is money– It isn’t water and I can’t just put my feet down and expect that all will be well. Maybe not, but you can do what we and other financial advisers have been yelling from the shore for years. It is almost as simple but you can’t hear it above your screams for help.
What is it? Stop Spending. Really stop spending. Stop spending on everything. Just stop spending.
People constantly ask me, “How did you get out of debt?” What it all boils down to is I stopped spending. I bought only the bare necessities in food, shelter and clothes and sometimes I even did without those. My grandson has a T shirt that just makes me crack up. It shows these bears on their way to a camping trip. One has a TV strapped to his back, another a boom box, another a computer and so on. The caption says “The Bear Necessities”. We all laugh at that, but the truth is that’s the way most of us think and live.
Here’s an example of the thinking that helped me get out of debt. I went to the grocery store the other day where they had coffee for fifty cents. I thought, “Boy would I love to buy a coffee and sit at one of those tables with a book and read,” but I didn’t do it. I bought the bargain loaf of bread that I came for and left.
Once, when I did a similar thing, I had a woman sarcastically say to me, “It’s only fifty cents”. That same woman was the one I mentioned at the beginning of this story, who was “swimming” in debt at the time. Each fifty cents makes a difference, each $50 makes a difference and, if you are buying a car or a house, don’t tell yourself that $500 here and there doesn’t make a difference. If you spend because you say, “Life is short. You need to enjoy it while you can,” you cause your own stress and will always have financial trouble.
If this is your attitude, life is going to be very short for you and your family. Because of that extra $.50, $50 and $500, you are almost under water. Stop being afraid. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop screaming and flailing, put your feet down and save yourself. Stop listening to that little voice that says there is no way out and you can’t save yourself. That voice is only you deceiving yourself. Don’t choose to believe you are drowning when you really aren’t.
Would a financial crisis in your family jeapordize your homeschool?
If you weren’t able to allocate any funds to homeschool curriculum or resources what would you do? Could you continue to homeschool?
Personally I’ve worked very hard to ensure that I could be at home with my children, even though it requires me to work from home. But we still have faced interesting financial times. A couple years ago, I realized that I needed a curriculum backup plan.
While I believed that I could homeschool with just an internet connection and a library card, I needed to know that my kids could continue to be homeschooled even if I couldn’t invest another dollar into curriculum or resources.
Now I’m electic in my resources, and am homeschooling four kids from a kindergartener to a high schooler. So, what works for me may be different than what works for you, but here are some of the strategies I used in creating my homeschool backup plan:
1. Identify your needs for core basic curriculum – Reading, Writing, and Math.
Afterall,if they can read and write they can learn anything. And Math is well… just plain necessary to do much of anything in life. Identify where your children are and where they are going.
2. Identify which resources you think you need to buy.
Make a list of what you think you’ll need, if the world is perfect. I’m not talking about buying full curriculum packages for all twelve years – that’s not within most people’s budgets AND not flexible enough for adapting your homeschooling to your child’s changing needs or interests. But having a list of what you think you need becomes your starting point to begin the next step.
3. Look for free, nearly free, or low cost alternatives to those things you think you need to buy. Can you use alternatives?
For example, I really like Sonlight’s literature based curriculum, but buying twelve years is just not possible for us. So I identified which materials we already had, and found some interesting alternative literature-based programs for a lot less.
To help save you some time, over the next few weeks I’ll share some of the resources I found with you.
4. For those curriculum or resources items you absolutely must buy, purchase them.
Some things just have to be purchased. Identify what those are for you and begin budgeting for them and purchasing them. For us, this included another copy of Mastering Mathematics (elementary math), a few volumes of Life of Fred (middle and high school math), a used microscope, the Robinson Curriculum, and a refurbished duplex, laser printer.
5. Create a list of basic core curriculum tools or resources you may use, just so you have it on hand when the time comes.
It’s really tempting to save your favorite resources and links on the computer, but computers fail. By writing out or printing off a list of the resources you’ve identified and storing it a binder or a safe place, you’ll know that you have the information at your finger tips, even if your computer has died.
6. For Science, History, and electives, identify what resources you can tap into for free or nearly free.
There are so many resources available for science, history, and electives it can make your head spin. There’s fabulous materials out there, thanks to the generosity and effort of others. In the coming weeks I’ll share some of my favorites. But I encourage to make a list of those that you really like so you can find them later if you need them.
Homeschooling is a fun journey. Work, yes. But fun and amazing. It’s worth putting the effort in to ensure you can continue, even if you can’t invest any more money into it. Our greatest investment is in our children. To me it’s worth taking the time and effort to safegaurd that investment and the investment we are making into their education.
About two years ago, during a tough economic spell, God put it on my heart that I needed a backup plan. How would I homeschool, what resources, what curriculum would I use, if I didn’t have the funds to buy any more curriculum?
What would you do?
We’ve encountered our share of economic challenges – some of our own doing (debt) and some just part of life (moves, lay-offs, medical emergencies, etc.). So, it seemed very plausible that there might come a time when I couldn’t afford to purchase anything for our homeschool.
Now, I know that it is possible to completely homeschool with just a internet connection, access to a printer, and a library card, but I’ve never had to do it. So I set off to figure out what resources might be found – and was amazed at what I found.
Not only are there some wonderful resources out there, but also there’s a certain feeling of security I have knowing without a shadow of a doubt that economic reasons were not going to keep us from homeschooling.
So, over the next few Monday’s I’ll share some of the information I found, so that you too can know that there are some great resources out there for you and your family, if you choose to prepare your homeschool for an economic emergency.
Next, I’ll share the top strategies you can use to ensure you have the homeschool curriculumn and resources you need, even during a financial crisis.
Until then, enjoy the journey.
…Shannon
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So far in this series on lowering the cost of meat in your grocery budget, I’ve covered my three key strategies:
- Knowing my buy price
- Buying in larger quantities, and
- Doing the prep work one time.
Again, my goal is to handle the meat once, usually with a day or two of buying it. That way, when I’m ready to cook, I just pull a bag out of the freezer, and either cook it (if the dish allows) or defrost it so I can cook it the next day without any extra prep work.
My husband and I have been using this method since we were first married, when it was just the two of us. Then a meal-size package was only two peices of meat; now it has to contain enough for six of us. But the methodology is exactly the same.
Preparing Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breats for the Freezer and Future Meals:
To start, I gather up my tools:
- the platter of chicken
- quart-sized, Ziploc freezer bags
- kitchen shears (scissors)
Kichen shears, chicken, and freezer storage bags - all ready to go.
For the storage bags, be sure to use Freezer grade bags. After trying multiple different brands, I’ve chosen to stay with Ziploc, but if you don’t have them available or you are not using freezer-grade bags, be sure to double bag your meat so you don’t get freezer burn.
Also, kitchen shears (scissors) are a must! Trimming chicken with a knife is a major pain (in my opinion). If you don’t have a pair, I highly suggest investing in some. They are indespensible for preparing chicken and other types of food.
Also, if you don’t like to handle raw meat, you might want a pair of sterilized rubber or latex gloves.
And as always, be sure to follow proper food handling guidelines, especially when working with raw chicken. My rule is that no one can do the prep work with me unless they wash their hands before and after touching the meat. And they can’t touch anything else while working with the meat.
For each piece of chicken, I do two things:
1. Trim all the fat and gristle off using the kitchen shears. I am not gentle. And I probably chop off more than most would. But I save all the trimmings for making chicken stock later and/or for pet food.
Trim the fat and gristle from the chicken breasts
2. Cut the chicken breasts into serving size peices. Now that there are six of us, I have different size peices for different members of my family. But remember a recommended serving size is not a whole breast of chicken; it’s 3 oz or the size of a pack of cards. Most chicken breasts can be cut in half or even thirds to get good sized chicken.
For thick peices, I’ll also use the scissors to butterfly cut the thick parts so that each peice is of similar thickness.
If stir fry chicken is on the menu, I’ll cut up a breast or two into stir fry sized strips.
And if chicken strips are on the menu, then I’ll do the same – cut some into the size I use for chicken strips.
Cut the chicken breasts into serving size pieces
Then I bag up the chicken into meal-size servings. So each Ziploc bag contains exactly the amount of chicken needed for one meal. For our family of six, a tray of chicken usually yeilds 3-5 meals (bags), plus a bag of trimmings.
Marinade can also be added before freezing
When you are done you’ll have several meals worth of chicken and one bag of trimmings for stock or pet food later.
Ready to freeze and cook later
To save freezer space, flatten the bags and stack them in the freezer.
Flatten bags fit better in the freezer
I like to have a consistent place in the freezer for each type of meat (poultry vs. beef vs. trimmings for stock). But if you don’t have a system like this in place, be sure to label the bags with a permanent marker (don’t use water based, it won’t be readable later).
Now, all I have to do is grab a bag and throw it in the heated pan and start cooking. This really works well for baked chicken dishes, stir-fry, and sauteed chicken.
For fried chicken or breaded chicken, or marinaded grilled chicken, I’ll pull the bag out the night before and let it defrost in the refigerator. Then it is ready to go the next night. And, if you have the marinade in the bag already, all the marinading is being done during the defrosting. (works wonders and saves a ton of prep time.)
So, if you aren’t doing something like this, I highly recommend giving it a try.
We’ve encountered our share of economic challenges – some of our own doing (debt) and some just part of life (moves, lay-offs, medical emergencies, etc.). So, it seemed very plausible that there might come a time when I couldn’t afford to purchase anything for our homeschool.
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