Saturday, October 11, 2008

Grateful

Dh and I were talking last night about the economy (it's a major topic in our household lately...comes from a politic-minded dh and an economics-minded me...). You know, we were one of them that shouldn't have gotten a mortgage. We had 0% down, and we had declared BK about 4 years earlier. There's no way we should have received a mortgage.

We did, thanks to VA loans and a mortgage broker who really wanted a sale. We looked very closely at interest rates and knew we'd pay more than the average bear, but worked to keep the payment where we could afford, even though it really limited us on what we looked at. We ended up getting a decent deal on our home with a payment that was about 30% of our takehome at the time (takehome pay has since risen, it's about 25% of pay now).

We may complain about our debt, but we are so lucky. Thank God, we can:
  • make our house payment without fear of losing our home every month...
  • keep food on the table - we're in no danger of starving...
  • pay our utilities...the electric is not in danger of being shut off...
  • buy reasonable clothing and keep ourselves covered, decent, and warm.

We can pay all our bills. We are not about to be thrown into the street. I am under contract and my pay will not change until Sept of '09, if then. I am not in danger of being laid off - if teachers start losing their jobs, the country is in worse shape than we've ever seen. We have a budget, even if we blow it more than I'd like to see.

We are blessed.

Even in these weird economic times, keeping things in perspective helps. Yes, I dearly wish our debt load was smaller, but we can pay the min's and work on paying them down. I plan to get working on the ebay stuff again soon, just to get more out of the house, although I'm not sure how great sales are right now with such weirdness going on. We'll see.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are absolutely right! I keep telling myself at least we have food & shelter! Even though we are struggling, we could be worse off and I feel for those going through this tough time right now.

jpkittie said...

what an amazing way to look at things --- I have to say that even int he tough times, we too could be worse.

Keep up the great work!

Caleb Nelson said...

Yeah, it's funny how the media can make us feel so uneasy. It's like mind control!
Congratulations for not losing yours.

Caleb
www.mefinanciallyfree.blogspot.com

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