Financial Freedom

I write this post only hours after our first formal marital budget meeting. Tonight has been such an eye opener that I have to share my initial thoughts.

The church we go to offers free financial counseling by members of the church who volunteer their time to help other less finance-savvy people like us set a budget, get out of debt and/or work through other various financial blunders or needs. For us, we felt God calling us to set up a meeting with someone to have them help us set a general budget. We went into the meeting not entirely sure what this meant, but we were essentially looking to get more information on how much expendable money we actually have every month, what to do with that money and also discuss things like buying a home and having children (the financial aspects).

Initially, the meeting went relatively as predicted. We looked at our financials (bank statements, student loan information, car payments, etc.) and were able to see first how much God is currently entrusting us with monthly, and second, a written report of where our money is going each month, along with how much we have remaining after expenses (a good sign!). All of this information goes into a really exciting Excel spreadsheet (wait..."exciting Excel spreadsheet"...what?!) that we can modify as our income/expenses change. It feels so liberating to now have the tools to keep track of our money. The ball is definitely in our court.

About an hour in the conversation took a turn! It took me a while to catch on to what was being discussed, but once I caught wind I quickly realized we were discussing that Jesus wants us to be debt free. This is not something I have ever considered before. When we arrived at their house, one of the first things the husband posed to us was how great it would be if we didn't owe anybody anything and could be free to use our money however God was calling us to use it. This was now starting to sink in. But how can we be debt free, start a family and buy a house in the next couple years with all of our student loans and expenses?

To be honest, we went into this meeting having no direction on how we were spending our money. I am interested in sharing this exciting, and hopefully inspiring, new journey we're heading on so I will loosely share a bit of where we currently stand. Prior to today, we have been paying the minimums on all of our bills (car and student loans) and saving the rest. I guess we have essentially been "saving" for a house, which was really just because we didn't know what we should be doing with our leftover money each month. This option sounded the most "fun". We also didn't have any budgets formally set like personal allowances, food, clothing, gas, etc. We learned tonight that this doesn't allow for accountability or goal setting.

The most exciting news of tonight was learning that we should be using our leftover money not to be saving for a house but to be pursing financial freedom and becoming debt free. We would have never imagined that it was even possible to have our car and heaping pile of student loans paid off within about a year an a half. Praise Jesus for financial wisdom! Obviously this can all be affected at anytime by a loss of job, pregnancy, job replacement, income increase, etc., but the great news is that we now have the tools and basic wisdom to handle these possible circumstances in a biblical way.

Scattered thoughts for now, but we look forward to sharing our journey as it unfolds and as we learn more about managing our money so we can, God willing, start a family someday soon.

** By no means are we downplaying the value of our educations when I talk about becoming debt free from our student loans. This is a good debt that we now are tasked with figuring out how to get out of as quickly as possible.

Guest Post: Rachel Z. on Eating Locally While on a Teacher's Budget

We’re not trendy West Seattle-ites like the Kings, but us Zupkes do know a thing or two about living the good life.  I’m Rachel and my self-assigned job in our 2 person, 2 cat, and 1 dog family is to plan delicious meals, source the ingredients as locally as possible, and do it on a budget.  My husband, Ben, and I moved to Everett this past summer, purchasing our first home, a 1910 built Craftsman with original hardwoods, hearth, and crown molding.  My sustainably focused husband went right to work figuring out how to make our house more energy efficient.  I, on the other hand, found the nearest farmer's market, researched CSA's, and kept right on meal planning like we always had.

Long story short, we’ve always lived on a budget.  Since getting married in August 2008, we have lived on as little as $1800/month.  The occasional parent-funded trip to Costco has also help keep us afloat.  That means that our meal planning has had to be spot on or we were going to have enough $ for next month’s rent, utilities, you get the picture.  Basically, we (me with Ben’s input) sat down on Saturday with a few issues of Everyday Food and a cookbook to determine what we were going to eat each night for the next week.  Then we’d go grocery shopping Sunday after church, careful to only purchase the ingredients needed for our week’s worth of meals.  We ate oatmeal or cereal for breakfast and the previous night’s dinner leftovers for lunches to keep our costs even lower.  Having meals planned also meant that when we got home from long days of teaching science to [unruly and disrespectful] teenagers, we didn’t have to have that awful “What are we going to have for dinner?” discussion.

When we followed God’s leading to buy our house in Everett, we knew we’d have to stay tight on the budget to continue to be good stewards of the public school teaching salaries He blesses us with.  They may seem like conflicting goals – eat well, stay on budget – but then we added in eating locally and might as well have given up on the whole saving money thing.  We had to reevaluate what was most important and decided we could ease up on our food budget to eat well and choose local over corporate whenever possible.

Required reading for this endeavor included In Defense of Food and Plenty, both very well written nonfiction books that both inspired and intimidated me.  Instead of being discouraged by this, we charged forward, going by the following guidelines: buy local; if we can’t do that, buy from small companies versus corporations; and buy organic if you can’t do the first two.  We’re big into being a part of our community, including attending a church within walking distance and praying for jobs in the Everett School District.  Buying local seemed like the next most obvious task.

The first thing we did was become members of the Sno-Isle Foods Co-op, only 1.2 miles from our house.  Maya (our newly rescued Siberian Husky) loves walking there with us, even if she has to pull the wagon of groceries, because they always have treats for her as she does her job of honorary greeter while we shop.  Shopping at the co-op made it much easier to purchase locally, including milk from Skagit County, yogurt from Nooksack Valley, lettuce from Whidbey Island, and eggs from Sultan, just down Hwy 2 from us. We wanted to join a CSA so after much research, we signed on with Klesick Family Farm and got a Northwest Box (delivered to our doorstep!) every other week.  The Northwest Box delivers produce grown at Klesick or other Washington farms.  There was a very steep learning curve of what to do with some of the vegetables that I had never seen or heard of before.  Like any good descendent of Midwestern stock, I knew my starchy vegetables very well but not my chards, kales, or other not-so-run-of-the-mill veggies. The first thing I made was a Chipotle Veggie Stew.  My carnivore husband declared that he felt satisfied after the meatless meal.  This was huge because normally Ben says, “This would have been so much better with [insert your meat of choice here].”

After a few weeks, we fell into the pattern of forming new habits and cutting corners elsewhere in our budget.  It was well worth it to bake with Stone-Buhr Shepherd's Mill Flour.  This flour especially excited me because you can type the “Best Buy” date into the Find The Farmer website, see where your wheat came from, and watch a video/read a bio of your farmer!  If you know me at all, you know that baking is one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen.  That, along with canning my own Orondo peaches in every August and hopefully some of the produce we get out of our newly planted garden this year, puts me next in line for Miss Suzie Homemaker of the Year.  Saving the harvest for later, along with batch cooking and freezing, helps us take advantage of what is in season while not blowing our paychecks.

What have we been learning over the past year?  That the following equation is true: meal planning + choosing local whenever possible + doing prep work like canning and batch cooking = less stress at the end of long workdays, staying within budget, eating better than we ever have, and supporting the local economy of the region God has lead us to live and serve in.  We are really excited for all that He has for us here in Everett and that He can use us to be examples of frugal, healthy, and sustainable eating.