What Are You Getting Into?

It’s Okay to Talk About Your Mortgage – Part 1

When I reached this topic in my outline, I asked myself what in the world could I possibly say about a mortgage. Here it is between Pamela and I, we have had three mortgages and have yet to payoff one.  Boy, it’s going to be a great day to have a mortgage burning party!  Nonetheless, this series of blog posts is about creating a Family Plan and so if you (we) have a mortgage then it needs to be included in our planning.  While I’d love to highlight our successes, in many cases we’re not there yet and that’s why we have a Family Plan and suggest you put one together as well.  How could you have your mortgage paid off by the time your child begins college?  That’s the question that started our planning with regards to our mortgage.  What plans can you set and work towards?  Maybe you need one, already have one, or are about to lose one (a mortgage that is).  Regardless of your circumstances, everything works better when you have a plan of action.

Let me say this upfront, I am not a fan of owing anyone anything, especially money.  I hate loans and borrowing money, but this wasn’t always the case.  Hence the reason, we have debts, like most, that must be paid and our mortgage is one of them.  We have a mortgage because we wanted a home and didn’t have the money to pay for one.  Let me tell you our story and hopefully convince you more about planning and secondly, demonstrate how planning will alter your course for a direction you desire.

Know What You’re Getting Into
Allow me to go back several years, roughly ten. Pamela and I had just begun a relationship.  She had her own home and I had a home that was being dissolved in a divorce settlement. (Today is not the day for me to get into that, but I will later.) Together, we had two mortgages.  Her mortgage on one hand began to eat her (then us) alive.  It was one of those crazy balloon deals where the mortgage after a couple years would increase and a few years later increase even more.  Well as “not having a plan” would have it, this increase was more than we could handle with everything else we both had going on financially.  We had very few options, so, as we made a very early habit of doing, we prayed about it and that’s when the planning emerged.

Here’s what came from planning.  We had to 1) get out of the mortgage we were in and 2) find a new place to live.  So with Pamela, trusting me and what came from prayer, we put our new mortgage plan into action.  She began looking for new places for us to live while I worked on getting us out of the current mortgage.  But this time, we went at it with the plan of knowing what we were getting into.  We studied and made progress daily and weekly towards our new goal.  However with our plan we knew exactly what we wished to accomplish.  You see we knew we needed to pay a whole lot less than what we had been paying.  We then had to make some decisions on new locations.  Lastly, we knew we didn’t want to get into the same situation we’d experienced before.  So instead of going in blindly as most people do and as we’d done before, we had a plan and knew if we worked our plan, we might miss it a little, but that’s okay as long we didn’t miss it a lot. That’s the beauty of having a plan.

Determine Your Step #1
Step one was to find a new home and that’s exactly what we did.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t make the purchase since we already had 2 mortgages.  This taught us to know what our limitations were and might be.  So we decided that we should lease one.  The reason this decision was so simple to make was because the plan we had put together was to get out of the mortgages we were in altogether.  Getting out means getting out by any means necessary.  If that sounds crazy, you’re right and that’s exactly what you must be willing to do to see to it that your plans come to past. #CrazyAboutYourPlan.  I wish I could say the story stops there along with planning, but that’s not true.  That was just the beginning and a lesson we’re taking with us throughout the course of our lives.

One Plan Leads to the Next
The amazing thing about a plan is that one plan leads to the next.  The plan is just a road map and your life is a long journey that will take you to many awesome destinations.

After we began, leasing our new home, we knew that wasn’t the end, but just a stepping stone.  It was just one stop on the way to where we’re headed.  This is what we learned early on about planning.  We agreed we’d rather pay towards something we will own than pay rent for something we would never own.  Our first plan to get out of a mortgage that had us in over our head seemed to be taking us away from that into renting.  So we needed a new plan. How can we turn what seemed like a backward move into forward progress?

You only go in the wrong direction when you’re not willing to consult others, and for us we consulted God.  He led us down a path that would later propel us miles ahead.  Please don’t hear what I’m not saying.  I’m not saying that renting is the wrong move for you.  Just because you rent doesn’t mean you owe anyone.  We didn’t and in fact, we were paying our rent in advance because we wanted to get out of owing people and have them owe us for a change.  If renting fits into your plan then rent.  It’s the plan that gets you to the destination you wish to reach, nothing else!

Today is Friday!
I thought we had to have all the answers, but that’s not true.  All we needed was just a part of the answer that could get us to the next stepping stone on the pathway to reaching our destination.  What have you not considered just because you haven’t weighed it against your plan?

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