God Answers Prayer!

At the beginning of the month I asked God to give me an electronic toothbrush.

Today I got this.

Be encouraged.  God answers prayer!

Graphic Art

I shared in a couple of posts about the process of refinancing our mortgage.  We now pay a lower interest rate, the length of our loan has decreased, and our monthly payment is only $12 more.  Good stuff!

When we closed on our new loan, the agent shared that we would be receiving a check for $1000 and some odd dollars as a refund.  Apparently banks overestimate the closing costs on a loan to make sure that they cover any possible scenario.  She also said that our first payment on this loan would not be due until February.

The temptation was certainly there to spend the money.  We momentarily discussed home improvements, talked about how technically they would be an investment since we'd be adding value to our home.  But in no time at all, our practical natures overrode any further attempts of rationalizing.  We came to the agreement that we would take the refund check plus our current monthly mortgage payment for January and use them to pay down the principal of our new loan.  Any payment that can be made towards the principal of a loan is a bonus because when you pay down the principal, you also automatically eliminate potential interest that would have to be paid.  Looking at the graph below (thanks to my techno-savvy husband), you can see that by putting this money towards the principal, we saved almost half a year in bank payments.

I cannot wait to post this graphic when God performs His miracle with our mortgage!

Guess How Much I Paid for All of This?!

Woo Hoo!  Did I get a wheel of a deal today!

I went to Weis Markets this afternoon to spend what was left on a gift card we received for Christmas.  There was seven dollars and some change left on the card, so I decided to use it to buy lunch meat.

Last week I was at a different Weis Markets and they had a pastrami lunch meat "yellow tag special"*.  I decided to look at this Weis for the same deal.  They didn't have any yellow tag lunch meat, but they did have BOGO lunch meat for $4.99.  At a retail grocery store like Weis, $2.50 for a pound of lunch meat isn't a bad deal--especially since I had a gift card.  I grabbed two hams and two turkey ready to make my way up to the register.  Then I noticed something.  All of the turkey lunch meat packages had a 55 cent "save now" coupon stuck to them.  I feverishly calculated the savings in my head.  'If I buy turkey lunch meat, between the BOGO and the package coupons, I save four bucks!'  Without hesitation I put back the two ham packages and grabbed two turkeys in their place.

At the register, I gave the cashier my Weis card, she scanned the four package coupons, and I used a $1.00 off coupon I'd received during my last trip to Weis for trying a new beverage.  All total I paid only $5.87 for four-one pound packs of lunch meat and a can of Goya beans.  You gotta love it.

  **The phrase yellow tag special is my own creation.  Many of the grocery stores in the area have reduced prices on their meats that will be past the "purchase by" date within the next 1-2days.  I hunt for this yellow tag meat when I am in retail grocery stores like Wal-Mart, Weis, Giant, and Price Rite.  However the discount stores that I shop at, like Sharp Shopper, already have this same meat reduced and frozen for purchase at a cheaper price.  And that's exactly what I do with the yellow tag special meat when I purchase it from--freeze it for later use.

Confession

All right, time to own up to the truth.  There are times when I am prideful about where we stand financially.  Because I am so very aware of this, whenever we counsel individuals on personal finances, I have to remember back to the place where we were before we got to the place where we are today.

Of course God knows my heart and knows where my pride can take me.  So He sees fit every now and again to give me check-ups.  One check-up that I had last week was having a bank card purchase denied at both Sears and Costco.  This happened on a Thursday and, because Ross didn't get paid until the next day, there wasn't enough money in the bank to buy what I had planned.  I could just hear God saying, "Remember who's in charge" or "You ain't all that" (As you can see I've never placed an ethnicity on God :-)

Today I was reading in Ephesians 1:3.  It says,  

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

This verse caused me to realize that financial blessings here on earth amount to nothing.  People want them, but they're not what matters most.  The blessings that we ought to be after are those that last and have divine value.  Amazingly enough, those blessings already belong to we who have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior!  We just don't equate it with value because of our finite minds.

From this lesson, I am going to purpose to remind the believers who I counsel of how rich they already are in Him.  Now is the time to accept and celebrate our spiritual blessings!

To Market To Market to Empty the Pig

With yesterday being the last day of Christmas Break, I took the kids to the bank to empty their pigs.

Allow me to explain.

Whenever they receive money, the first thing that they do is set aside their tithe from what they've received.  Then they divide the remaining money in half between two categories: spend and save.  The spend money they can use to buy things for themselves or for others.  The save gets put away until their piggy banks are stuffed.  Having had a generous Christmas season along with several allowances under their belts, their little piggies were ready to go to the bank!

The teller at the bank was kind enough to indulge their competitive side asking who thought that they had the most money in coins.  Blaise looked him right in the eye and told him he already knew he had the most (turns out Morgan did :-)  Often times the kids will balk at having to put half of their money into savings.  There is so much that they lay their eyes upon and have to have.  After it was all said and done, Morgan and Hunter both had more than $100 each to put into their bank accounts and Blaise had over $40.  It was a blessing to see their excitement over saving rather than spending.

As challenging as it can be to hear the complaints about putting money away, I'm thankful for this discipline that they've grown accustomed to since they were small.  And one day, sooner than they realize, they'll be thankful for it as well.

Running on Empty

Last night we visited some friends of our family, just to hang out and celebrate Christmas with them.  While we were there they gave us back some empty canning jars that were previously filled with jam and applesauce.

Today I went downstairs to put the empty cans back into their storage bin.  Looking inside the bin I thought,  'Wow.  This bin was nearly empty at the end of fall.'  But now it is filling back up with jars enjoyed by either our family or other families.  The empty jars make me anticipate the season in which I can fill them up all over again.

Getting back the empty jars reminded me of the gift of giving to others.  Yes, it takes away from what we have, but still we live in anticipation of emptying ourselves of ourselves so that we can give again.  Why?  Because God provides joy with giving!  We look forward to seeing a need met, a wish fulfilled, and a burden lifted because He has done the very same for us.  What a blessing it is to live this life running on empty!

The Second Time Around

On Tuesday we signed paperwork to refinance our mortgage loan with a different bank.  By doing this, we are paying only $12 more each month and the term of our loan is only 15 years as opposed to 30 years.

The reason that we were able to do this with so little effect on our monthly payment is because of interest rates being so low.  Our new loan has an interest rate of 3%.

This is actually our second time refinancing.  The first time we refinanced it was from a standard mortgage to a line of credit (LOC).  We did this because, at that time, rates for LOCs were low.  I remember sitting in the bank office and not understanding much about anything that was being said, the paperwork that we were signing, or the fact that our interest rate may vary.  We were in debt, and trying to save some extra money each month.  My understanding was that doing this would help us and that was all I needed to know.

This time around, I was at the kitchen table with Ross.  The representative went through our paperwork, similarly to how the other one did with our LOC, but this time I felt in control because I understood the terms that she was using.  Ross and I had gone through the school of hard knocks to get out of debt.  As graduates, we were no longer intimidated by money money matters--and boy did it feel good!

When I shared with a friend that we were going to refinance our home, she asked a question that made me think.  "Why are you refinancing when God's going to pay off your mortgage in 5 years?"  Her question arrested me.  Even to hear her say 'God's going to pay off your mortgage in 5 years' stunned me because it made me feel like she believes it more than I do.  There are two things that God showed me as I was pondering her question:

1. I need to believe that He will do what He says He will do
2. Refinancing makes sense because it saves us money while we wait

At the end of our time with the bank representative, she shared that what we were doing was smart because it cuts the term of our loan down to 15 years and will save us a lot of money.  I let her know that yes, we were thankful for the shorter term, but that I am trusting God to pay off our home in five (now four) years.