A New New Year’s Resolution
This year, my wife and I made a new new year’s resolution. No, that wasn’t a type-O. It’s just that this year, we actually made one we hadn’t made before. So, what was this groundbreaking idea? Three words . . .
ATTACK – OUR – DEBT
You see (to play off of the Pharoah’s dream), we have been guilty of allowing the lean cows to eat up our fat cows. When things were great for us financially, we lived it up. When things were not, we had nothing to fall back on. So our mistakes have been two-fold: we didn’t save for difficult times in the future and when the difficult times came, we didn’t lower our standard of living.
This is how we come to find ourselves in this sad state of affairs. The most recent statistics that I have heard (from 2 different sources) say that the average household in the US has $9000 worth of consumer debt and this totals up to about $900 billion worth of credit-card debt. Well, let’s just say that we have definitely contributed to these statistics and that our household average is considerably higher than the household average.
While we applaud our government for the tax rebate help, etc. that they are giving us, we don’t hold them responsible for our foolish choices. We’ll take the money Uncle Sam gives us for having 3 kids, but we need more of a plan than that.
So, what’s our plan? It’s not some complicated get out of debt quick scheme. In fact, it’s very simple: #1, we need to make more money. We are not able to pay our bills, so guess who’s looking for a new job and talking to his bosses about how he can make more money at his current job?
#2, we’re majorly cutting back on expenses. To the extent that we crammed our family of 5 in the Focus to go somewhere because we didn’t have gas in the van and no money to get any. We even buy the cereal in the bag now -you know, the kind that you have to shove in your mouth as quickly as possible after you get the milk in the bowl, because it gets disgustingly soggy in 1.45 seconds.
We feel like God is honoring this and the angels are probably going, “they finally get it!” Two confirmations of this: 1) We were discouraged that our pantry was as empty as our mini-van’s gas tank and it was a long time till I got paid again, when a cousin of mine called and said she had some money for us and it would arrive in the mail very soon. 2) We were waiting until the last possible second before going to the store armed only with a credit card (I’m serious -the last possible second! We even prayed at lunch for money to come in the mail so we could buy dinner.), when a large check arrived from a couple at our home church enabling us not only to buy dinner, but to take care of a couple of other things we had need of.
It looks like this may be a resolution that we may actually be able to keep. We realize that it will take time, hard work, self-discipline, and patience, but we are in it for the long haul. I think January proves it as it will be the first month in years that we have put nothing on credit card.
In my job at Terminix, I’ve learned lots of things, one of which is: it’s better to be like the ant and store up for the winter than it is to be like the grasshopper who devours everything in sight as soon as it is seen.
Debt is bondage. God, grant us freedom.
