100th post!

Random Things:
1) TrendFort
Travis and his business associate Luke started a business a few months ago. They have been working on getting the website for it completed over the summer. It's been a busy summer for both of them, so they weren't able to work on it as much as they would have liked, but they got it done! They have had several meetings and I am really excited for them. The Website looks great, and now they just have to bring in the clients! www.trendfort.com

2) Weekend
We had a good weekend. We got a lot of errands done, now that we finally had a little time at home! Friday night we had dinner and a movie with Rachelle and Derrick. We had chicken enchilada's using Rachelle's recipe. They are creamy and SO yummy! We watched The Black Dahlia which was a good mystery about the Black Dahlia killer. Saturday we slept in and then went to run all our errands. We got air filters and license plate lights for our cars, got some new filters and insulation for our gas furnace, and got our blinds cut to the size of our window. It was nice getting some things around the house taken care of. That evening we watched a movie, dyed our hair, and relaxed. Sunday we did our regular chores and stained our fence. We have more to stain, but we ran out of the stain our neighbors gave us! The Holcomb's stopped by for a few minutes to say hello.

3)Life
I've had some time to think about life lately, and how glad I am to be able to enjoy my time spent with Trav. Sometimes I get caught up in what I want for the future and I lose sight of how great our lives are right now. I know I've said this many many times, but I need to enjoy the now. Trav and I worked very hard to pay off our debt. When we got married we made it one of our first goals. Trav had some credit card debt right off the bat, and we decided to put our honeymoon on a credit card. So, our marriage started with Trav working part time, going to school full time, me working full time, and $6k in credit card debt. Also, along with Travis came some debt of his parents. He has put some of thier debt on his credit cards during some of thier hard times, and they made the minimum payments each month, but the $10k in credit was in his name.
We owned a small, 1 bedroom house that luckily had a small mortgage payment. But of course we wanted to change all this. We wanted to pay off our debt, get Trav graduated and into a full time job, and get a bigger house.
It was a lot to tackle at the beginning of a marriage. We sent up a plan though, and jumped one hurdle at a time.
In March the company Trav worked for closed, leaving him jobless and in his final and hardest term of school. We decided to wait until he was done with school before he started looking for a new job. That way it could be in his career field. It was a rough couple months financially, but such a relief when he graduated!
Trav ran into an old client from his last job right after he graduated. He happened to be the owner of the local Big Town Hero, and told Trav he could work there anytime if he needed some extra money. Trav took him up on the offer while he was applying for jobs in graphic design so he could bring in some money. It didn't take him long to rake in the interviews and land a full time job at the Democrat Herald as thier Web Developer. It was a great job! Shortly after starting there we were able to pay off our credit card and we decided to start saving for our next house.
We were able to save a nice chunk of change with Trav making a nice salary and working full time!
We sold our house in March and moved into our new one in April. We were able to put 10% down from the sale of our old house, so we got an 80-10-10 loan, with plans to pay off the other 10% in the first year, leaving the 80% loan only. We wanted to do this because we wanted our mortgage payment to be as close to $1000.00 as possible.
So a year later, we finished paying off the 10, and our $5k home depot card that we used for home repairs and updates! It was a great year.
Phase 1 complete. Now on to phase 2- build the savings up! Of course there are many other things we’d rather do with the money, but right now we are working very hard to build our savings up to a comfortable level.
Looking back I am very proud of us. It was a lot of hard work to pay off all that debt, and it’s still hard work building the savings. I am glad to be on phase 2 though! We’ve been through a lot, and we’ve come a long way. It’s great that Trav and I have the same goals in life, and we’re starting to see some progress!
I am so blessed to have Travis in my life. He is a gift from God and I thank God for him everyday. He takes care of me, he wants to keep our house nice and clean, he strives for excellence at home and at work, I never have a doubt in my mind that he loves me. We are blessed in so many ways. I try not to lose sight of that, but sometimes all my “wants” get in the way. I get so focused on the future that I forget to enjoy the now!
Here’s to enjoying the now!