A Year of Cash

Coming up in the next few days will mark our official one year anniversary of living here in Canton and Trey serving as Student Minister at FBC. So many wonderful things have happened since our move here, and I am amazed at how much the Lord has poured out His blessings on our family. I have to share about one cool thing we've tried this year. When we transferred our accounts to the local bank here, we made the decision to go "all cash" and not even have debit cards. It was just an experiment to see what would happen to our finances. Well, I'm here to testify that, a year later, that was one of the best decisions we've made in our married life.

We followed the principles laid out by Crown Financial Ministries, including the envelope system for our weekly and monthly cash. Operating on the cash basis allowed us to live only on Trey's income and use my income toward paying down debt. Making this change allowed us to pay off my 4Runner in a little over a year (we bought it in Aug 09 and paid it off in full by Nov 10, I believe). We are now almost finished paying off Trey's student loan. Only a few months to go, hopefully! Then we will begin to knock out my student loan and be free of these debts. Another great thing about just living on Trey's income is that when the decision was made for me to not work for a while, we did not have major financial crisis. As a matter of fact, our standard of living didn't have to change at all.

I just wanted to share this with anyone who might be considering trying something new to get their financial world in order. I also highly recommend Crown because they offer so many wise and helpful principles for money management, and it is all based on Scripture. The goal of Crown isn't to help people become debt free, but to honor God with your money. Being debt free obviously results from glorifying God. Plus, Crown has a lot of helpful budgeting and spending tips that are free on their website.