hopefully it's obvious that this is just one of many stories about our financial journey as husband and wife. but if i had to just write one post, neigh, one sentence about our journey it would be this:
God has done a great work in us, blessed us much and always provided.
hopefully that sets the tone i'm going for. i take no credit for the way that God created bryan and i, nor the protection, wisdom, and blessing He's given us to make wise financial decisions throughout our lives. while we've worked hard and learned a lot and have had great luck in our financial decisions, God has been in charge and leading the way.
so i'll try to start in the beginning. ish.
i married an amazing man. he is the hardest worker i know. he's always been like that too. he always had a job in high school, he paid for a lot of his own possessions. he got good grades too! he's amazing. i remember him working 60+ hours a week the summer after we graduated high school. he worked hard and he was never tight on cash, because he never let himself spend too much of that money. he planned on going to iowa state in the fall. i was so impressed by that 18-year-old.
meanwhile, i got a great job right after i graduated high school. i loved it so much that i decided to skip the typical college route. i didn't have a car at the time, but had a steady and decently paying job, so i bought a brand new car and took out my first loan. a friend helped me get a pretty good rate, and i didn't mind a car payment. i didn't know how else i was going to get around.
i also applied for the first credit card offer i got in the mail. i thought it might come in handy and i could get a cool picture on it. yep, that's how a 17-year-old thinks.
by God's grace, i knew that i shouldn't carry a balance on my credit card, so while i forgot to pay it off on time once or twice, i never got charged any interest or had outstanding credit card debt. i'm so thankful for that!
bryan went to iowa state for a couple weeks. after learning he didn't have as much savings as he thought, he dropped out. he decided he didn't want to rely on his parents money or student loans to get through school at that point, so he just worked and applied to go to dmacc, our local community college.
bryan worked around 30-40 hours per week and took 2 or 3 classes at dmacc each semester. he always paid with cash. i continued to work, got a few raises and lived stress free. both bryan and i pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck as we navigated the adult world. but we never bounced checks or went into consumer debt.
and that gives you a picture what we were like in our single years. then we got engaged.
more next week!
not to be a debbie downer when you've already established such an awesome graphic, but i keep thinking this series is called the 'count 'em up kids' and thinking how clever that is. but then i realize that in a weird way, i actually thought of that, so then i pretend that it's really not all that clever because i don't want to be conceited. but then i wonder where i even heard the phrase 'count 'em up, kids' in the first place, and whether or not enough people know about it for it to actually be clever, or if they'd be like, what the heck does that even mean?
ReplyDeleteanyway. also, liking the new series.