How much money we made and spent this past month.

To knock your mortgage down below $40k with 25 years left on your mortgage loan, you have to be doing something that other people aren't doing. Let's talk about budgeting.

I used to think that budgeting was making a list of where you spent your money last month and shrugging.

Nope. Budgeting is looking at the month before it begins, and telling your money where you want it to go before it ever arrives. We do that every month, and at the end of the month we give all of our left over money towards the mortgage principal.

(I went ahead and deducted our tithe/missions/charitable giving from our income right off the top, since those numbers are personal. So our combined income this month is a little bigger than the number here.)

Income: $4,100.00 (Matt's window washing, my remote church secretarial work, and my full-time babysitting gig.)

What we spent last month and have budgeted to spend this month (except we don't have personal property tax or an oil change in June, and we have a higher gift budget for this month): 

Auto Gas $109.00

Oil change $28.00

Car Insurance $95.00 (USAA)

Food $200.00 (Aldi)

Health Insurance $4.00 (Obamacare, with a super high deductible, which means we pay thousands(sssss) of dollars to have babies and stuff)

Electric $70.00

Natural Gas $107.00

Water/Trash $63.00

Life Insurance $25.00 (USAA, but shop Zander for term life if you're overpaying)

Gifts for family: $40.00

Phone $52.00 (Republic Wireless)

Internet $40.00 (Cox)

Personal Property Tax $70.00

Leftover money for the mortgage: $3,301.00

Do you see how I didn't get my hair or nails done? Do you see how we didn't get coffee or gelato? Do you see how we didn't buy new shoes or a new couch or go see a movie? What about cable, Amazon Prime, and Hulu? Absent. Can we afford those things? Mhhmm. Yep. 

We are making our choices. We are ordering our priorities. We are trading pleasure now for freedom later. And there is plenty of free pleasure in my life EVERY DAY. I don't know what your numbers look like, but we're not starving, homeless, or uninsured.

Am I proposing something radical, or at least out of the norm? Yeah. 

It's just a minimal lifestyle for a season, and then freedom from debt.

Proverbs 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. 

We are tired of serving rich men in big banks. The Bible says you can not serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). The Bible says to run out of debt like your life depends on it (Proverbs 6:5).

^This is why we don't spend our money on pleasure or anywhere else, because we believe whole-heartedly that we owe it to someone else, and we're commanded to run until it's repaid.

We're running. Any questions?