A day 3 yrs, 9 months and 6 days in the making.

I am a challenged blogger. I have a hard time blogging about the mundane things in life, making the ordinary into the extraordinary. But today I have something that is extraordinary to blog about. Drum roll please……………………………… We paid off our house today!!!!!!!!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!I am so excited, can you tell. I have been looking forward to this day for about a year now. Let me give you some details.

Picture it Valentines Day 2005 …………………a little white house comes in to focus. We live in a very small town (maybe a mile from one side of town to the other) of about 2,000 people. I was driving around our fair city looking for house with for sale signs, something we had been doing for a couple of weeks. I saw this cute little white house that looked empty. I took a picture of it with my cell phone and wrote down the address. Later that evening I asked a friend if he knew who owned this house (that’s the great thing about small towns everybody knows everybody). The next day I looked the owner up in the phone book and called her to see if the house was for sale. Of course it was and we made an appointment to go and see it.
From the moment I saw the inside I was in love. I could not believe that the asking price was only $20,000; yes you read that right $20,000. It is nothing spectacular but it was a 1000 times better than the house we had been renting for the past 2 yrs at $400 a month. We went to the bank and started the loan process. We were promptly turned down because of not enough credit (which I think is a good thing because we pay cash for things instead of charging them, but the bank was not impressed).
My husband really wanted this house. I on the other hand did not want to kick down a door if God was closing it. My husband decided he would ask our friend (the know-it-all from earlier) if he would co-sign. I was very against this because that is a huge favor to ask anyone. We went to talk to our friend, we let me know that the bank had turned us down. Before my husband could even ask, he offered to co-sign. What a wonderful friend. We talked it over with him several times to make sure he was sure. He never had any doubts about helping us. So on April 7, 2005 (my husband birthday) we closed on our first house. And today on January 13, 2009 we paid it off!

How we paid it off in 46 months
House payment was $360.54 for 60 months
Paid $400.00 4/05-12/07 (since we were already paying $400 in rent)
Started paying $600.00 after car was paid off in 12/07

We are now DEBT-FREE!!!!!! Thank you Lord for giving us so much!