Our Story Part 1

What would your life be like now if you didn't have a house payment or a car payment? Would your budget be easier to manage? You can be there, but not without a plan to do it.

My wife and I were like a lot of young couples, money sometimes created problems for us. I first saw Larry Burkett's "Your Money in Changing Times" in December of 1983 which was a quick look at what the Bible said about money. It was very interesting, but it didn't move me to action. I thought my wife was doing a pretty good job managing our checking account and she was. The problem was our family was getting more bills and other activities so that she was having more difficulty managing it the way she had been. She had been trying to get me to take the check book and manage it. I resisted, but she moved me to action when she came home one day around October of 1985. I don't remember all the conversation we had, but I know the checkbook came at me at a high rate of speed. (Yes, she threw it at me and said "you do it")

I started educating myself on how to setup a budget. I bought Larry Burkett's "Financial Planning Workbook" and filled out Form 1, Income & Expense Sheet, which is based on 1 year of expenses. This was not easy for me, my wife was not ready to talk about money and I needed her to help me put the information together. When I finally got the information together it really opened my eyes. Our spending was in the negative $60.61 a month. Every year we were going in the hole $727.32.

I used Larry BurKett's "Financial Planning Workbook" as a guide to set up our budget (spending plan sounds better). We started cutting everything we could to get our Income & Expense sheet to balance.

Larry Burkett not only taught how to setup your spending plan, but also how to manage it on a weekly basis. This is really were families get in trouble financially, they don't know how much they are spending. It is one thing to determine what your spending plan (budget) should be, but how do you manage the family spending plan to stay within the planned amounts is another.

Larry taught a simple plan that works on the principle of the envelope system. We started working the plan and the plan worked. We developed our first spending plan by January 1986. A big surprise to me was that our bank statement balance began to grow. When we started we had a bank statement balance of about $500. By December 1987 our bank statement balance was 3-4 times and by December 1988 it was 6 times greater than when we started. It took 2 years to pay off everything but our house. Now we have been out of debt for several years.

God's word says in Proverbs 16:9 "A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps." We had been envolved in giving to missions for several years. Now our Father in Heaven was helping us have the wisdom to get out of the financial stress we were in, even though we had been serving the Lord. (That's another story of Christians tricked into worldly problems with money, marriage, kids etc). Our hearts were burdened to do more for missionaries. Our mission giving has kept growing. Now God lets us live on 81% of our gross income better than we use to live on 90%.

I hear many Christians quote I Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all evil:" and they stop there, but the rest or the verse is "which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." I think most Christians live by the last part of the verse "and pierced themselves through with many sorrows" because they have the same problems as the rest of the world.

There has been many other things happen I wish to share and will be sharing on this web site. God is Good and I am thankful that He allows my wife and I to know what really being a steward of His funds is.