Changed plans after reading an article!!
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| Fri, 03-18-2005 - 12:23pm |
My DH and I are doing really well with our debt reduction plan. We are doing so well that we decided it would be okay to use some of our savings to put in a patio - nothing fancy or expensive, just something we could enjoy in the backyard while grilling.
Then last night I read an article in Family Circle (I think that's the magazine). It was about this woman who decided she needed to leave her husband because he decided to take the family out in the middle of no where and live in a shack with no electricity, running water, etc. They had three young children all under the age of 6. When she left, she had no money, no job, and no idea what to do. She ended up finding a job as a waitress but couldn't afford the first and last month's rent on an apartment.
She and her children ended up having to live out of their car for three months while she saved money. The restuarant owner let her park her car in the parking lot at night while she worked so the kids could be close to her. The cooks kept an eye on the car while she waitressed. When it was really hot, the restaurant owner let the kids sleep in a spare room in back of the restaurant. She gave the kids showers at a local truck stop and did what she could to provide meals for them. The kids never seemed to even care that they lived in a car, they only asked her every now and then how come they kept sleeping in the car.
That article made me completely change my thinking. My DH and I are both well educated with good jobs that pay a very good salary. Even though we have an enormous amount of debt we are able to pay way more than the minimun each month. But you never know what could happen in life. I don't ever want to be in the situation where my son has to live out of a car!!! After reading the article I told my DH that I don't want the patio anymore - I would rather put the money toward paying off a bigger chunk of our debt this month.

I read the same article, and it touched me as well. I can't even imagine how hard that must have been for her to go through. I was so happy at the end of the article where it said she found a nice husband, and their kids all get along as one big happy family. I was even more relieved to find out that the kids don't seem to remember much about those years living out of their car.
Dh and I are also taking steps to secure our future. He's had stock options through his company for a long time, but we never had the funds to buy any of them. They are set to expire in 2010, so we are now planning to take half of the money we normally put to our target debt and put it toward buying these options, little by little. We figure it will likely take us three years to exercise all of them...but at the current stock price, we would make $14K if we had to sell them for any reason, once bought.
Pat