Today is a great day. It's sunny, beautiful and peaceful. Since Dave works Saturdays, we do school on Saturdays so I give my kids Friday off school. What a peaceful wonderful day it is. We get our errands done, we hang out and relax. We talk, laugh and do all our upkeep stuff, like nails.
Except it's the first Friday of the month....which is the day I pay ALL the bills. The regularly scheduled ones, not the straggling medical bills from my surgery that come floating in one by one. Before, I'd be up at midnight working on bills and trying to juggle my checkbook while dreaming of sleep. Instead, I'm chilling at my rv dinette, going through my checkbook and paying bills online while the kids sing to Veggie Tales.
You see I'm gonna be honest here for a minute peeps. When we both had good paying jobs, we had big ole bills. Somewhere along the way, as we increased our income we increased our bills. Just like most people in the "good ole American dream". While we had a continious income we had continious bills. Oh let me count the sheer amount of bills, not counting normal stuff like house, utilities, cars, insurance, and credit cards....we had karate, daycare, work clothes, school stuff like choir, fundraisers, the nanny, and the list goes on and on.....
So one of the major reasons while I'm content to live in an RV and travel with Dave's job? Well let's look at Dave's job first. It's a well paying job, but while we were supporting him in Texas and us in Utah, it didn't seem that well paying. Groceries x 2, housing costs x 2, gas x 2 and etc. So let's look at the past six months of my life: I had a major surgery which required 8 weeks off work and still it was so hard to go back to work. My heart wasn't in it, neither was my body, I was exhausted and not even trying to put my happy face back on. I wasn't healed up yet. So when 5 days later, they laid me off, it was the biggest blessing the Lord has ever given me. I can't describe the weight it removed off my chest. Dave's immediate response to this news was to begin playing to move the kids and me with him. He knew from that first instance what we needed to do. And you know what...........it's brilliant. Far from perfect by brilliant.
We leased out our house, we gave alot of stuff away, we put some stuff into storage and then moved with a couple of totes of crap into his rv in Texas. When you consider the sheer amount of bills and drama we have cut out of our budget and/or life, it staggers the mind. We own our RV outright, the lot fee includes the utilities and is dirt cheap compared to rent/mortgage payments. My tiny fridge means I shop often but there is NO waste of food building up in the pantry and fridge. Yes, this is a temp thing. It won't be forever, but for the next year or two this is our future. (unless the Lord changes that, we are in his hands). We get to travel at the drop of a hat, we can go visit family and friends if the thought hits us right. We do school together, we do everything together. I have never been closer to my kids.
And before we did this, I've never sat down and paid all my bills at the beginning of the month in one lump sum before. What a blessing. We aim to be completely debt free by the end of the year (cars included) except for the house in Utah. Now some of you are my heroes. You are debt free or else you learned that lesson years ago and now strive to be debt free.
And while there are no guarantees in his line of work, we are padding our savings and paying off our bills while spending all of our time together. Very unorthodox methods for achieving a dream but we didn't plan this, the Lord did. How very blessed we are that the Lord set us in motion for this blessing! You often hear how "walking on faith" is the only way, well peeps let me tell you, I had to learn the meaning on walking on faith the hard way. Quit stressing, quit forcing things to happen in your life (can't tell you how many blessings I've screwed up by forcing things I wanted), and listen to the Lord.
And so I'm off to snuggle with my youngest for nap time! Blessed be you and yours.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Good Feelings
