Some wonderful news! As of today Eric and I are officially DEBT FREE!

Because of the move to California and the constant driving to and from states for Eric's basketball camps and finding a place to live Eric and I had built up about a $750 deficit to his credit card and had a $1600 loan to pay off. Now I know there are some people who think that's not a lot of money or think that I have nothing to be excited about but you kind of have to understand the kind of person I am.

Being in debt is the scariest thing to me. Growing up I was always surrounded by money problems. My parents just always made it a point to teach me that I should never ask for money because there wasn't extra cash lying around, and when I did ask for money (especially my father, I love him very much!) I would get a long lecture on how money was tight and I was asking a very big thing. And so I made sure to hardly ever ask for money, I just didn't want to go through the trouble! So I learned to live without. But with that I also became deathly afraid of owing people money, I didn't like owing people something that I didn't know I could pay back. I hated the feeling! I once borrowed $200 from my friend Kira so I could drive to California to visit Eric (many thanks to that wonderful lady) and I was working at Applebee's and I was only get $175 each paycheck (I wasn't working very often) and so it took me a while to pay her back and in that time I had no money myself! Hated it! I never wanted to borrow money from anyone again after that. So during the summer that me and Eric were first married I was only making $200 a week from my nanny job, which trying to find a home in California and then trying to live off the rest caused me an insane amount of stress. I started getting chest pains I was so stressed! So when Eric started having to drive back and forth for basketball camps I became even more stressed because of the amount of times he had to use the credit card for travel and food. So we ended up with the debt on our credit card, and no means to pay it off anytime soon, which was a huge negative in our lives. Then when we finally found a place to live we had to take out a loan for about $1600 to move in so it added more money that we owed to people. I was slowly slipping into madness...just kidding, but it really overly worried me. How were we going to pay the bank back?? How were we going to pay back the credit card??

So we moved to California and the Lord answered our prayers and provided me with an incredible job that allowed Eric and I to pay our bills and live comfortably, and little by little we were knocking off the amount to our credit card. But it still wasn't enough for me, I wanted that deficit gone! But then something wonderful came in the mail. A check from CBU (Eric's college) for $2500. It was a pell grant  that we had applied for MONTHS before. So we paid off our $1600 worth of debt and we were able to pay other bills and buy supplies that we needed for the apartment. I was ecstatic! Then just a week ago we got the second check for the school for $2875 and we were able to pay off our credit card! Also our car has been having some troubles and so we'll be able to fix that as well!

VOILA! DEBT FREE!!

I couldn't be any more happy with life than I am right now! I am very proud of Eric and I for becoming as money savvy as we are. I'm pretty impressed with myself as well. I am always on top of billing due dates. have never forgotten to set money aside for anything, and I've become pretty good at budgeting things! I mean I'm not the best there ever was but I think I'm doing pretty well. :) I know there will come a day when Eric and I will have to take out others loan to pay for school for me or to put money down for a house or a second car, but right now I'm just going to soak in the feeling of freedom!

Well there's an update. Life is good! :)