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Did Tasha Pay off Her Huge Debt in One Year?

January 29, 2020 by Laura 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

I’m sure you’re all wondering: Did Tasha pay off her huge debt in just one year?! Read Part 1 of this compelling sage here!

Did Tasha Pay Off Her Huge Debt in One Year?

by Tasha Hackett

I had decided that I was not going to be in debt forever and better yet, was going to scramble out of it as quickly as I possibly could.

Could we live on half our income? Our one-salary-teacher’s-pay income?

Could we bust out a large portion of our debt in one year? It seemed drastic. But also super exciting because, as mentioned, I am highly motivated by challenges and numbers and worksheets and goals and if we pretended it was all just one big game maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

At the time, our take-home pay was $3,300 a month (Just under $40K a year). That meant we needed to live on $20,000. I knew it could be done because we had been living on that seven years ago… except we’d only had one kid and a smaller house and only one car and one phone and no internet and we never went out or did anything that cost money and ate potatoes and cabbage and beans and eggs and grape juice was a fancy treat. *Whew*

But I saw in my pencil-in-the-margin scribbles: So you’re saying there’s a chance.

What about the rest of my family?

I have the gift of persuasion. Ask my three siblings. And I know what motivates Ben. (Dreams of vacations to Disney World, sport cars, steak…) He began listening to Dave Ramsey Podcasts in the shower and on the way to work, so he was definitely on board with my crazy plan. We named 2017 “Year of Plenty” to remind us that we really did have plenty and that we were making this choice. On purpose.

I’ll skip to the end: It didn’t work.

We couldn’t do it.

By June of 2017 we had paid off only $3000 of the projected $20,000 goal. We had cars break down. A terrible leak in the basement. One thing after another.

In July I fell to my knees and prayed earnestly for God to pay these debts off. I began praying multiple times a day for this specific request. That’s when I realized my debt-pay-off goal was incredibly self-centered.

God did a number on my attitude about money that year. When I realigned my will with God’s and continued to petition his aid, He delivered. As he does over and over. I am no longer surprised by this, just expectant of his wonderful plans, though it took me 32 years to get there.

By December 31, 2017 we had paid off a total of $29,000.

Whaa!?!? I know. That’s nine thousand more than planned. I can’t even. God does amazing things. I’ll go into detail later on what living on half our income really looked like. For now just rest assured that what is impossible with man is possible with God. I’m not preaching a health and wealth gospel to you.

I’m telling you that I was sick of being where we were and so I asked and let God change our hearts.

I was sick of “being poor” and realized, with a heavenly tap on the shoulder, that I wasn’t poor. I had plenty. More than plenty. I just needed a fire under me to get started. I needed a reason to do this hard thing. I needed to see a light at the end and begin to hope and plan and dream of a different kind of financial life. When a family requests money to fund their mission work in Ecuador I can say, “Absolutely!” and write off a thousand dollar check and not worry about feeding my family. We had one year of plenty which opened our eyes to enjoy a year of generosity, and early 2019, except for our home mortgage, we finished off all debt, including Ben’s MA degree and baby number four medical bills… and…. What are we going to do next? (besides buy that Blentec??)

We’re going to Disneyland!

All six of us, on a plane, to stay in a hotel, to enjoy the beach and frivolous theme park extravaganza. And we’re paying cash for all of it. The freedom we’re experiencing from 2 ½ years of “extreme” consumer sacrifices is TOTALLY WORTH IT.

My seven year old recently asked me, “Mom, are we rich?” I answered without a pause. “Yes! We are rich.” My four year old chimed in, “What is rich?” I answered, “Rich is having enough money to buy all the things you need.”

Someday they’ll grow up and think maybe I lied to them. But I pray they always feel rich, that they can distinguish between need and want, that they learn at an early age how to tell their money what to do, that they will live generously with whatever God will provide.

We have new and challenging and exciting financial goals for 2020 because we now understand, because we have plenty and are so rich, that if we don’t have a set plan for our money it will walk away all by itself.

I can’t wait to share with you all the things I’ve learned and am still learning on this journey.

See ya ‘round,

Tasha

P.S. I know you’re saying, “Wait! This was a why story, what about the how?” I know! This too shall come. In the meantime, drop a note below. Do you have a goal for your money this year? What motivates you to pay off your debt? Are you having trouble finding a motivator? Are you debt-free? How does it feel!?

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Can You Live on Half Your Income to Pay Off Debt?

January 15, 2020 by Laura 5 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Tasha’s back! This time she’s sharing the introduction to her story – how she decided to help get their family out of debt. But wait? Live on half your income? Is it possible on a teacher’s salary?

If you haven’t already, you should read the intro to the intro here. :)

Once Upon a Time When We Were Broke

by Tasha Hackett

Cue Fairytale Music:

Narrator: Once upon a time in a kingdom near you there lived a little girl named Tasha. Literally, she’s only 5 foot and a hundred pounds. She was the mother of four children. She was married to her King, and she was Queen of her castle and bought herself a Blentec because she had money for it and she wanted it.

Cue Record Scratching

Tasha: Excuse me? Um, no. That’s not at all how it happened. Back up a few years.

Take Two.

Cue Fairytale Music:

Narrator: Once upon a time in a kingdom near you lived a mother of one little prince. She was married to her King and she was the Queen of her castle… and she… had… a blender that worked well enough…

Cue Record Scratching

Tasha: Nope, just stop. I’ll take it from here. Thanks.

Hi, it’s me, Tasha. Can I tell you a story? My working title is…. “The Story of How I Decided to Not be Broke Anymore” or we could paraphrase: “My Journey to the Blendtec” Haha. I kid. This story has nothing to do with blenders. Or does it!?

Seven years ago, Ben and I had one little baby boy. Ben worked afternoons and weekends and went to school full time (at a not-at-all-cheap private college). I worked full time in an office. Baby went from Daddy, to daycare, to me, and round and round.

We were broke.

To be fair, we were broke long before that, we just didn’t understand how much until there was a baby involved and diapers and daycare and medical bills and carseats…

A friend from school worked as a financial advisor. He asked if he could stop by and chat. Sure! Then he tried to educate us on the benefits of investing, and mutual funds, and retirement, and bla bla bla – I heard and understood nothing. He kept asking, “What do you want?” Expecting us to have these big dreams, and big things we wanted to buy or go or do.

As I wasn’t hearing him, I’m not sure he was hearing me.

After a while, I jumped off the couch and rifled in the closet for a minute and brought back our money jar. I brought it in with a flourish. In it contained our savings. A few dollars of change and almost $50 in cash.

I knew I was being dramatic. But I set the jar on the coffee table and told him, “What I want is to go to the grocery store and buy food for my family without my heart racing because everything is too expensive.” Our meeting ended shortly after, we said thanks anyway, parted as friends and went on our merry, happy, broke way.

Fast forward a few years. I’m a stay-at-home mom to two kids. Ben is now a middle school teacher making $35,000. This was SO MUCH MONEY!!! So. much. (By the way, I’m going to bust through that awkward social norm and use real numbers with you.)

He started at $28,000 in Kansas. Now at $35K, we ordered pizza every Friday ($15) and went out for donuts every Saturday ($4). I bought the real whole food ingredients that I needed to make food for my family ($?). I was making some of Laura’s recipes that included the luxury of cream cheese and chocolate chips. We called back our friend and said, “We’re ready now!” We were finally ready and peaceful about investing for retirement.

AND YET!!! Somehow we were still broke. This was three years ago (after investing for a year), and I was now the mother of three children. I had a sad, “oh-poor-me,” moment and whined something like this to our financial guy, “I feel like we’re just barely keeping ahead! Are we going to be poor forever… ? I just… when are we going to be able to take our family on trips, are we ever going to be able to go places and do big things?”

And he said something like this, “… it’s going to take a long time.”

The Breakthrough

I don’t know what it was in those words, but SOMETHING CHANGED in me. The debater and controller and adventurer in my soul said, “Challenge Accepted.” I had found a motivator. I had found a WHY that spurred me. A silly thing in hindsight, of all the reasons, for me it wasn’t the big trips or the future RV or the new clothes from an actual store, but the challenge itself that I was NOT going to let it take a long time.

This was October 2016. I ran the numbers over and over. Scraps of paper littered our house with pencil marks and budget plans scribbled in the margins. I started keeping a detailed track of how much was I really spending on groceries every month. How far could a tank of gas get me? If I cut out this and that could I stretch it this far…? The question I was trying to answer:

Could we live on half our income?

To be continued…

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Gratituesday: What’s it Like Having Matt Home?

March 14, 2011 by Laura 38 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

I’ve been asked questions about our “new lifestyle” quite often and thought I might share with you how the past two and a half months have been going for our family. If you recall, Matt resigned from his restaurant management position in December to work from home full-time. Our desire was for Matt to be able to spend more time with our family and in ministries. We were tired of having regrets.

So, how about I do a little bit of Gratituesday “Matt’s Home” FAQ?

If your husband quit his job, how do you have an income?

Our answer to this question has been, “We may not have jobs…but we have work and we have income.” We are self-employed, doing a variety of work that provides income for our family. We’re working very hard…and we get to do most of it side by side. We feel that for us, it has been wise not to “put all of our eggs in one basket”. We have income from several different sources…all of which adds up to enough to meet our family’s needs. We own and rent out storage units; the Heavenly Homemakers site provides income; Matt has a snow-removal business; Matt does odd jobs for people in the community. There isn’t a job, but trust me…God has provided plenty of work. Our needs are always met.

What are your days like?

Each night we discuss what needs to be done the next day. We make lists, we prioritize and we continue to dream and set goals.

Every day is very different depending on what the needs are for the moment. I’m generally home most of the time, just like I was before. If it snows, Matt is gone a good part of the day spending quality time with his snow-blower, or if someone calls on him to help out with something, he heads out to help. If he can, he takes all the boys over to help him with a job someone has called on him to do. Otherwise, he is usually home working on whatever needs to be worked on. We are tag-team teaching the boys, depending on what needs to be done and who is available. Sometimes I have work I need to get done for Heavenly Homemakers, so I go “hide in the office” while Matt jumps in and helps the boys with their work. He loves that he now has the opportunity to take a more active role in their schooling.

Matt is working on getting his Real Estate License (which is another income source he’ll be able to operate mostly from home), so recently he’s been studying and taking tests online. He’s also been working on marketing our Learn your Letters, Learn to Serve pre-school curriculum and other Heavenly Homemakers resources.

Do you get tired of having your husband home all day every day?

Abso-stinkin’-lutely not!!! God has blessed us during this season while we raise our boys to BOTH be home to parent and train and work. I know not everyone might feel this way or work as smoothly as a couple…but for us, this situation is working very well. Matt makes my life and my days easier, not harder. My stress level has gone down a great amount since he’s been home. He’s a huge help, a wonderful encouragement, and a solid provider. We love being together. God has made us into a great team and are so thankful that we get to work daily as teammates.

I’m constantly thankful and do not take this blessing for granted. When I run into him in the kitchen or office at 10:56 in the morning or 2:23 in the afternoon, I can’t help but smile and give a shout out to God that my husband is home. (And I usually steal a kiss, because well…he is just right there and I can’t really help myself.) ;)

What does your future hold?

We really have no idea. We know that God gave us this gift of time together with our family at least for now. Because our schedules are flexible we are able to be open to ministry opportunities God puts on our hearts. We’re really just trying to remain open to whatever it is that God has called us to do right now, and we look forward prayerfully to what God has in mind for our future. There is much to be done for the Kingdom. We’re so grateful that we get to work at it…together.

What are you thankful for this Gratituesday? Write about it on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for!

If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!
Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

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How to Find Legitimate Work From Home Opportunities

January 5, 2011 by Laura 34 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

This post is written by Craig Ford, writer at Money Help for Christians.

As part of your 2011 New Years resolutions, many of you are looking for legitimate ways to increase your income by working at home. For some of you, an extra few hundred dollars a month will give your budget some much needed breathing room. Others of you might want to supplement several thousand dollars a month by working from home. The extra income might be needed to help you get out of credit card debt. Regardless, this post focuses on offering specific suggestions for mothers who have decided to earn some extra income in 2011.

But this post is not just for ordinary mothers. It is for those who want to have their cake and eat it, too (without gaining any weight). Since kids come first, you need a job that will fit around your schedule, not a job that is going to compete with your family. The jobs I’ll suggest in this post will allow you to:

Work from home.
Have a flexible schedule.

Red Flags When Looking For Extra Income

Avoid using Google as a starting place. Yes, of course, you will eventually need to do some research online to get information about a work opportunity, but I highly recommend starting with personal contacts and people you already trust online. A lot of people get online and type “how to make money at home” or “make money online”. The problem is that there is no Google quality police. Generally speaking, she with the most links to her website gets the top position in Google. If I have a product that is a scam, I can easily work for links or buy links and get a top ranking in Google.
Avoid anything that requires you to put money down or buy a ‘secret’ starter pack. Yes, many legitimate home business will require you to purchase inventory. However, if you are being forced to buy more than you want ($500 minimum start up package), or you’re not sure what you get for your money, avoid that business “opportunity”.
Avoid pyramid schemes. A pyramid or multi-level marketing business is one where others make money by teaching you how to make money. There is a lot of hype around these type of businesses because in many ways the hype is the business. Many of these businesses offer little of actual value, but instead there is only a smoke screen of actual business transactions. As long as people are referring others the business makes a profit, not necessarily when they are actually selling the product.

(Laura’s Note!! Several of you have pointed out that not all multi-level marketing businesses are schemes. You are absolutely right!! I was involved in selling Stampin’ Up! products for several years when my kids were babies and that certainly wasn’t a scheme…and it falls right into this category. Please accept my apologies for any frustration the above paragraph may have caused. The point is to avoid SCHEMES…not to avoid all businesses of this nature.)

Tips for Finding the Right Side Business

Personally, I’m a big fan of teaching people to turn a hobby into a side business. The reason is quite simple – you’ll do a better job and feel better when you make money doing something you love. Besides, what if you figure out how to make a lot of money doing something you hate to do? That doesn’t sound like any fun, does it?

A successful business will do one of the three things:

Sell a product or a service that is better than what is currently being offered.
Sell a product or a service that is cheaper than what is currently being offered.
Sell a product or a service that is currently not available.

A List of 15 Legitimate Work From Home Jobs

In this list you’ll notice I favor online businesses. The reason? You usually have 100% control over your schedule. If your little baby is sick you can work late after the child is in bed. Furthermore, I believe most small business growth involves a hefty component of online business.

Blogging. You can make money blogging as long as you select the right topic and are willing to work hard. Here’s my 7,500+ word free guide on how to make money blogging.
Virtual Assistant – With the explosion of web based businesses and online entrepreneurs, there is a huge market right now for qualified virtual assistants. What is a virtual assistant (VA)? A VA is a person who does secretarial type work from home. You get an email of tasks and you complete them for a boss you may never meet. You can advertise your services on either Odesk or Elance.
Baking – Sell cake, cookies, or any other goodies from home.
Freelance Writing – I believe this is a great time to be a writer. Many online blogs and businesses are looking for good quality content. Guess how they get that content? They pay someone to write for them. I’ve spent some time over the last few years doing some freelance writing in my field (personal finance). My first paid writing offer was for $5 per article. On average (depending on the niche), you can make $20 per article to write online. Learn more about how to make money writing.
Tax Filing Business from Home – For anyone who has tax experience and the proper licensing, you can set up your own home based business and generate clients whom you will never meet in person.
Selling items on eBay – This style of business has been around for a long time, but it can still be profitable if you make wise purchasing decisions. Basically, you buy items at highly discounted prices and then sell them on eBay. You can either purchase products wholesale or just stock up on inventory when your favorite store has their next 85% off clearance sale.
Tutoring – If you can fit tutoring into your schedule, you might be able to spend part of an evening helping a struggling student.
Teach a Skill – Do you know how to play the piano? Do you know how to do a craft? Teaching people how to do the skills you already know is a great way to earn a few extra dollars.
Mystery shopping – Yes, get paid to shop. You too can learn how to be a mystery shopper.
Sell eBooks – If you have an online audience, you can produce your own products and earn some extra income selling eBooks. Of course, you would first need to build up an online audience through a blog or a similar medium.
Sell Photos – Amateur photographers can start selling their pictures online. All you need to do is to go to a popular site that sells photos and get an idea of what type of pictures sell well. Use the popular pictures as a standard to help direct your own freelance photography business. Check out Shutterstock.com as an example of one of many websites that allow you to sell your photos online.
Social Media Consultant – You mean, get paid to use Facebook and Twitter? Exactly. In November last year, one of the largest personal finance blogs, WiseBread, was looking to hire a social media consultant. Once again, Odesk and Elance would be a good place to start advertising your services.
Web graphics and logos designing – If you are artistic, you might want to invest in a Photoshop program that will allow you to do graphic designing for blogs and websites.
Learn how to do something you normally pay for. – OK, this isn’t a specific idea, but if you pay for something, don’t you think others would too? At the very least, when you learn how to do something new, you don’t have to pay for that service any more. But then you can also build up a client list and provide that service for others.
Sell plasma. You’ll never find me doing this to make an extra buck, but my mother-in-law thinks this is the best way to earn some extra cash. As for me and my household, we’ll pursue other methods to supplement our income.

Alright, you’re officially equipped to start chasing your dreams. Find an opportunity that interests you and fits your scheduling limitations. Chase it with your full energy and passion, then go, go, go.

What other suggestions do you have that can help someone else make an extra few dollars by working from home?

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Be sure to visit Money Help for Christians where Craig promotes a frugal, simple, debt-free, and generous lifestyle so Christians can faithfully maximize their resources by putting them at the disposal of God’s Kingdom.

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