I Live With My Parents.

Hello, my name is Jessie, I'm 28 (ish) years old, I've been married for almost 7 years, have two kids... and I live with my parents. 

Changing the way we do things requires alot of change. 

Since the beginning of our marriage, A and I always wanted to be "debt free"... isn't that everyone's goal? Many people have done Dave Ramsey's class or read his book, taken on his principles, budgeted and started to pay down debt. Kudos to you. A and I always knew what we should be doing and for many years we'd pay something off only to have something else rear it's ugly head and we'd tack on another monthly payment to our budget. Truth is, we weren't getting anywhere. If you go back and really see Dave Ramsey's principles, they work... but they require sacrifice and some tough decisions. 

A and I have had a dream (for at least 5 years) of building our own house. While we could have long ago, we didn't want to be house poor. So we put it off... and off... and off. We continued to live on our land (on which we were going to build) in the little itty bitty trailer o' fun. A 14 ft wide, 76 ft long beast. It was home, it was where we began a family, it was where we became the Purcell(S), and it is also where the Lord yanked my pride out from under my feet. 

After we bought it, A and I worked hard in making it our own and making it livable until we were ready to build our home.

 Jump ahead four years and two kids later, we had made some progress, but we still weren't getting anywhere fast.

It was time to change the way we did money. 

So, we put our land on the market. 

And all those motorcycles in the garage that we just.had.to.have. went up for sale too.

That furniture we didn't need? Gone.

In 6 1/2 months our place sold. We started to look for a place to rent... and that didn't make any sense if we ultimately wanted to settle all of our debts and start living debt free. So we accepted the invitation of moving in with my parents. 

When I tell people that we made the choice to live with my parents, I see some surprised looks, some looks of horror but others of sheer support, did I mention we have some awesome people in our lives? It is temporary, my parents are in the process of building their third (and FINAL) log home, so they will be moving out later this year and we'll continue on renting the house from them. 

We still have one motorcycle to sell and one final payment to get rid of, but because of our "radical" choices, we went from "not even close" to "debt free" in less than a year. 

Our dream is to still build a house and that dream is very alive, but A and I will be damned if we return to the place where debt has a grip on us. We're spending the next few year(s)? or however long it takes, to make sure we can build a house we can afford. In the meantime, we budget, we save and we only buy things if we have the cash for them.

We have less stuff, but honestly, we have so much more.
Peaceful mind and a hopeful future.