Financial Goals Update from May and Our New June Goals

These were our May financial goals.

1. Pay all of our May bills
2. Finish funding our closing cost account (we only need 377 dollars)!
3. Start saving money for all the "EXTRA" things we are going to need when we move into the house (movers, truck, refrigerator, mini-blinds, ceiling fans, and Tyler new bedroom furniture, at the very least a new bed for him). We would like to have saved 1,000 dollar by the end of the month. I know this is a HUGE goal but I believe that we can do it! 

Since my last financial goals post some of our goals have changed. 

We received our written approval for our home loan and that written approval came with conditions. Most home loans now come with conditions (or at least that is what our loan officer has told us). And a few of those conditions effected our financial goals. 

One of our conditions is that we must pay off 3 accounts and close them. One account is an old debt (around 1,000), one is a store account that we opened in order to improve our credit (around 300), and one Visa card that again we opened simply to improve our credit so that we can buy our home (around 400). 

Another condition is that we must pay off our IRS tax debt that we incurred last year and have been making payments on since January. The total debt is around 1,100. 

And then of course we must have our closing money too, which is around 1,800. 

So about half way through the month of May our financial goals for May changed. Here are our new goals:

1.       Pay all of our May bills (DONE)

2.       Pay off old debt (1,000), store credit card (300), and Visa (400). We paid off the store credit card and closed the account

3.       Pay off the IRS (1,100)

4.       Fund our closing cost account (1,800) 

You might look at this and think we did not accomplish very many of our goals and you would be right and wrong. While it is true that we did not physically pay off the debt that we need to, we did actually manage to save quite a bit of money. 

My husband and I decided to wait for the new bills to arrive and pay off the debt once we received a new bill. So we are waiting! We have until July to pay off the debt and we have until August to fund our closing cost account! 

We ended May with 2,300 in our house fund so more than enough to pay off the old debt and the Visa and that will still leave us 900 dollars to go toward the IRS. Which puts us just 200 dollars away from having all of the debt paid off! 

Here are our new goals for June: 

1.       Pay all of our June bills

2.       Pay off old debt (1,000) and Visa (400). Close accounts

3.       Pay off IRS (1,100)

4.       Save at least 500 dollars toward our closing costs 

I am so thankful that we have been saving up money for months now and that we actually have almost all of the money we need to meet our loan conditions. God has been so good to us!

Our Written Approval (Thank the Lord)

Yesterday was a very good day! We received our written loan approval for the house!

It came with 2 pages of conditions! But the conditions all seem very doable! Lots of paperwork to file and lot of copies to make. We have to take a first-time home buyers course (on line) and print out a certificate of completion when we have finished it, that has to be in our file when we go to closing. They are asking that we pay off 4 things

IRS - back taxes that we have been making payments on since January
Department store credit card -used to buy Tyler a computer
Visa - got just so we could rebuild our credit
An old account that I managed to get taken off 2 of our credit reports but not the third so it must be paid off

All total it equals about 3,000 dollar and we have until the beginning of July to have it all paid off. So the money we were working on saving up for closing costs will have to go to paying off these debts and then we can start saving up for our closing costs again. And since we ended April with a little over $1,400 dollars in our house fund we are almost half-way to having the debt paid off! Thank you Jesus!

Now that we have a written approval we should start to see some progress down on the land! We are hoping to have our pre-construction meeting by the end of May so that they can begin working on the house in June! The BEGINNING OF JUNE! We hope! 

Our Home has a Name

I know it's kind of strange, but hey we are kind of a strange family (as if you didn't already know that).

I knew from the minute that we started looking into building a new home that I wanted my home to have a name. You know like Tara or Green Gables. Don't all great houses with great stories have great names?

And so I have thought and prayed about what to "call" our home, I wanted a name with meaning to our family, I wanted a name that would be pretty painted on a sign. But most of all I wanted a name that would tell the world what a blessing and gift from God this home was to our family.

I thought it might be nice to use a Hebrew word but the problem with that is I'm not very good at pronouncing things in a foreign language! I was destroying a beautiful language and I also knew after looking up the words I was thinking of using I was never going to be able to spell it either! Having a name for the house that I could neither spell nor say was just not going to work!

In December of 2014, I determined that 2015 was going to be our family's Year of Jubilee (it's from the Old Testament). Every 50 years, in Jewish culture, is the Year of Jubilee. In this year, debts are forgiven, land and homes are restored to the original owners, and those that have been enslaved are set free.

I began to seriously pray and ask God for restoration, for Jubilee! I begged him to give back to our family all that was taken from us a few years ago. On my list of things that I felt we had lost was our Joy, our Peace, our Faith, and our Home.

And so after many failed attempts at naming our home I think my husband and I have come decided upon one....

Port Jubilee

Port is because the name of our model is the Port Royal and also because I would like to think of our home as a port of safety and comfort from the world. A place that my husband and my children can rest and take shelter. And of course Jubilee because I declared this our Year of Jubilee. And God has honored and answered our prayers and restored to us more than we lost.

So what do you think?

 

We Finally Got Our Anwer (at least a verbal one)

Thanking Jesus for the Miracle!

The last 3 months have been grueling.
Some days I have been so worried and depressed that I had to force myself to get dressed and comb my hair.
There have been days when I have walked down to our "land" 3 and 4 and 5 times, just so I would not give up all hope and bury myself under the covers and refuse to speak or eat or shower.
Seriously, there have been some really hard days in the last few months.
And the reason for my anxiety, a home loan that seemed as if it was not going to happen!

We signed the contract on our house on February 15, 2015. We signed our mortgage application on February 23, 2015. And since then we have waited, and waited, and then we waited some more!

Now while we were waiting, ever so impatiently, I was faxing things over to the mortgage company, and praying, and writing letters of explanation, and praying, and e-mailing, and praying, and calling, and praying, and then praying some more!

Every day seemed longer than the last. And there were some false hope days (those were the worst), days when we thought we would have an answer by Friday and when Friday came, no answer!

There was one point where our loan was suspended, because they could not verify my husband's income and my heart almost broke in half!

Then there was the day that our loan was denied, yep, DENIED! And I was actually happy that day, because NO ONE and I mean NO ONE thought that the "first" lender would ever approve our mortgage but they were pretty confident that the "second" lender would. So when we got the denial, I was relieved in thinking that now the loan would be passed down the line and we would actually have a chance at being approved! Only our loan officer called us back that evening and said that her management team wanted to keep working on getting us approved through the "first" lender! ARE YOU KIDDING? Nope! Not kidding!

And so we went back to waiting! And Praying!

And then yesterday, it happened! We got the call we thought would never come, our loan has been approved by management and is being sent to the underwriters for written approval!

We are beyond excited! And so very thankful to God that he has answered our prayers in BIGGER ways than we ever dreamed. Because you know who approved us.... the "first" mortgage company, the one no one ever thought we could get approved through!