In 1997, I began listening on the radio to Larry Burkett speak about living debt free. Knowing that we were starting our family (Brett was a baby) and that I wanted to stay at home, a lot of what he said resonated very strongly with me. I knew that if we lived above our means and carried a lot of debt, then at some point I’d have to go back to work.
At the time, we had about $75,000 in school loans, car loans, and personal consumption (new furniture) loans. We also had our home mortgage. Fortunately, we did not have any credit card debt.
We spent the next 3 years putting every penny we could scrape together toward paying off that $75,000. I still can’t tell you how we did it. Jim was making between $32,000 and $35,000 during those years and I was tutoring. But we lived cheaply and we did it.
And then began the mortgage years where we worked hard to pay off our home mortgage.
We made great strides toward decreasing the mortgage. We still didn’t make a lot of money, but we lived way below our means and put all the extra toward reducing the mortgage principal.
In 2008, we began Goat Milk Stuff. By 2009, we had outgrown the house and needed more space. We made the decision to refinance our mortgage to generate the funds to build the soap room and purchase the Hulk. The Hulk is our large vehicle that allowed us to travel to and from soap shows with the whole family.
So we had a temporary setback, but we refocused our efforts to pay down the mortgage. Since we are self-employed, it became even more important that we were living debt free for my peace of mind.
But then Goat Milk Stuff started to outgrow our existing property. So we made a list of what we needed in a new property and God provided it. But we didn’t have the cash to pay for the new property, so we had to take out a new loan.
During all this time, I never truly felt good about going backwards from our original goal of becoming debt free. It made sense to do it. It was easy to justify going back into more debt, but I was always unsettled about it.
Then began the year of fighting to be allowed to build on the Scottsburg property. We finally gained approval, and started to seek financing to begin the large building project.
Hmmm… that meant taking on a huge amount of debt. And it made me really uncomfortable.
So Jim and I took a big step back and spent some time talking about what is truly important to us. And the fact of the matter is that living debt free is very important to us.
We then made a HUGE decision. We scraped together every single penny we had (including emergency funds and the money we had saved for the down payment for building in Scottsburg) and this past week we paid off our mortgage!
I can’t even tell you how amazing it feels. It’s like this weight, that has been on my shoulders since 1997, has been lifted.
So we celebrated – homemade brownie sundaes with good ice cream, real whipped cream, hot fudge and sprinkles. It was awesome.
We still have a loan on the Scottsburg land, but we’re hoping to have that paid off in the next 3 months.
And we will finally be completely debt free. It has taken us 15 years, but we will have done it.
And then we start building at Scottsburg.
For cash. Debt Free.
It may be slower than we wanted. And it may test our patience. But it is the right decision.
I share this information publicly for several reasons. Number one – so you may be encouraged. Because I can tell you that if we can raise eight children on a single (not large) income and pay off our mortgage, then so can you. And you don’t need to start your own business to do it. We would have done it if we’d never started Goat Milk Stuff. In fact, one could argue that we may have done it sooner without Goat Milk Stuff.
Number two – because I want to keep people up to date on our progress with the Scottsburg property. Many of you know that we’re not offering liquid soap til we’re operating out of Scottsburg. I want you to understand why it is taking so long. And I want to ask for your patience and understanding. Because while I want to provide our customers with everything they ask for, I need to balance that with the needs of our family.
And this family needed to finally accomplish our goal and not go backwards any further.
So thank you for your support. By God’s grace, Goat Milk Stuff will continue to grow and we’ll be able to complete the building process. And we’ll still be debt free.
PJ
Update: It was our goal to build out Scottsburg without any debt. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and we have borrowed money to get the construction started.