God and Money - Baby Step 2 ...CHECK!

God: I have to start out by giving praise to God, maker of the heavens and earth, the one who has given Mat and I the strength and perseverance for the past 17 months to make it through Dave Ramsey's Baby Step #2.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! We could not have gotten where we are today without His blessings.

Money: So here's the update - Mat and I are FINALLY DEBT FREE!! We have worked so hard for the past 17 months of our lives, that's one year and 5 months...a very long time to sacrifice for the bigger picture.

Our debt consisted of a small amount of medical bills, a brand new car, and student loans for both Mat and I totaling about $68,500!  WOW!  It's amazing how much money you can *borrow*!  We are no longer slaves to the lender as of today.  It's a truly marvelous feeling and Mat and I are so incredibly blessed - I can't stress that enough.

Mat and I talked about it a lot today on our drive home from San Antonio and reflected on what the hardest part of this process was.  One of Dave's questions that he always asks was "did you have anyone make fun of you during the process" and our answer is definitely yes and that was tough.  We had some really great support from family and friends and also some not so helpful support of people laughing and challenging our efforts.  It was tough not being able to go out and spend time with our friends and go out and make new ones too. We learned to be patient and really stick to our principles on what we believed in.  We sacrificed a lot though but I can tell you now, it is so worth it.

We paid off the final payment on my car on October 30, 2011.  A day in history that will stand out in our lives and the lives of our children and grand children forever and ever.  We have set up the foundation for a successful and prosperous future and we couldn't be more excited for all of the hard work to come.

Baby Step #2 is still #2 out of 7...so we have a long ways to go!  Mat and I are establishing new goals and refocusing our minds for Baby Step #3.

We also have a few friends that have started Dave Ramsey in our small group and I am so excited for them.  Mat and I know how tough it can be and we can't wait till they can celebrate and toast their glasses after many months of hard work!

Cheers!

Thank you everyone for all of our love and support and we hope to be able to pay our blessings forward in the near future!!

And besides thanking God, we must also thank - Dave Rasmey!!

God!! Rental House!

God:  Mat and I are the PROUD new RENTER's of a home in Spring Branch!! We found a gorgeous 4 bedroom, 2 bath house with a giant backyard and renovated kitchen just within our price range!  We met the landlords and signed the papers tonight and I think it's a great match.  The family is really nice and the husband is an engineer! Yay for engineers!!  

This is the kitchen with gorgeous granite counter tops, stainless steel oven and dishwasher with a refrigerator with a built in ice maker!!

This patio is GIANT!! I absolutely love it and we are going to have so many friends over to sit out and drink wine with us! Just like Mat's parents!! YAY!!!

This is a view of *part* of the backyard from the second floor - the backyard is really big and I can't wait to start gardening!!!

This is the main living room/central area - i think we are going to need a bigger tv to mount over the fire place!

Another angle of the backyard! Anyone want to play some basketball?!

One of the bathrooms - they were both remodeled from what it looks like and they both have gorgeous sinks!

Mat and I have had so many of our prayers answered in the past few weeks and God has really been working in our lives in full force!  We are so excited to start a new chapter in our lives and to see what lies ahead!

On another note, my good friend Laurie had her baby on October 6th at 4:04 pm and her name is Tylee!  

This is mommie and daddie before baby Tylee was born :)

This is Tylee not too long after she first came out! Mom only had to push for 9 minutes! so lucky!

Daddy and his little girl (I think ive seen this girl in like 3 outfits already! I love it!)

Diaper change! sooo cute she looks so much like Laurie and Ty

Proud parents!

And my favorite picture of all - Laurie with her little miracle! Aww babies are so cute!

Thank you God for watching over my friends and blessing us all so much!  This has been such an incredible week and Mat and I are so incredibly grateful!!

God, Money...and PATIENCE!!

God: God is really the center of all of my posts because He provides so well for Mat and I and everything that we have been blessed with is because of Him :) He has been working in my life so much recently and I am able to see my patience really pay off.  Unfortunately, I haven't been praying nearly as much as I have in the past but I  am still thinking about God on a daily basis and trying to keep Him in my thoughts and actions.

Money/Patience:  Mat and I have some pretty exciting months coming up to finish out this year in an amazing way.  We will be finished with Baby Step #2 of Dave Ramsey's debt payoff plan in November!!!!  Some of the items in our debt payoff were some minor medical bills from Mat's kidney stone back in November/December of 2009, my student loans, Mat's student loans and last but not least, a brand new Honda CR-V that we bought in January of 2010.  We started our debt payoff in June of 2010 which was just after we got married :)

Also, in November we will be moving out of our apartment and into *hopefully* a rental home :)  I know it might sound strange, but I have such a peace of mind right now over finding the "right place".  I am excited about finding it but I'm not worrying over it.  Mat and I are keeping our eyes open and I've been checking HAR almost every day to see if anything new pops up.  We have some high standards of what we are looking for such as a large kitchen, spacious rooms, fenced in backyard, accepting of pets, W/D, and refrigerator lol...I've actually seen a few places that don't have a refrigerator or a dishwasher...We really don't want to be spending a lot of money on appliances....I know we will find something...God has it in His plan already and we trust Him!

Another really neat thing that happened recently was with work.  I originally started working as a Project Controls Analyst at work and then switched over to Project Controls Analyst/Engineer I for about a year now.  Recently, my company sent out an email with all of our job postings so that we can refer people to our open positions.  Well, they were hiring an Engineer I and Engineer II in my department so I talked to Mat one night and said "I should apply for the Engineer II position" and we talked about it for a little while.  I really wanted to talk to my boss about my career path when we did our PER reviews but I knew I had to wait a few weeks.  Well the day I decided I was going to talk to him about setting up a time for my midyear PER review, he called me into his office and said "so lets talk about your career" and it was a wonderful feeling that came over me.  It was like God had heard my prayers and answered them with those words.  It turns out they were thinking the same thing I was about moving me over to the full time engineering position.  I'm not sure of all the details but they did put my job as a PCA on the company website to fill.  I don't know what the future holds for this new position but I know God will be with me the whole time so there is no reason to worry :)

:-D

Mat and I are viewing a rental house today - it should be interesting!!