Our Home Is Paid Off! Thank You, Jesus!

The Lord blessed us to pay off our home this past June of this year, 2014.  We were getting close to having enough to do it with but we decided to go ahead on faith and begin putting everything we could into one 'pot'...namely, our checking account...this was Hubby's advice.  We'd been praying and asking God's help to get our home paid off for a good while.  So...we took money out of savings, 401k (Hubby is over 59 and 1/2, so no 10% to have to pay back for being under that age, just the usual taxes, which were withheld from our 401k account to cover the amount we withdrew)...Let me take a minute here to say something about withdrawing money from the 401k...I know that a lot of people, from what I've researched online, would disagree with our tampering with retirement savings, even to help pay off our home, but I am one of those who believes that having a mortgage-free home during retirement (thus no monthly mortgage payment to pay with social security income) is of far greater value than the money taken from the 401k to help pay the home off...I could go on and on concerning this but will refrain at this time...so, to make a long story short, we gathered together all our eggs into one basket, including Hubby's 3-week's vacation pay and what I had in my pocketbook, too.  Also, admittedly, we took out a few small loans to help gather together into our checking account the amount needed to become MORTGAGE FREE!  -(Yes, it feels good to be mortgage-free!)  Finally, thank the Lord, and only by His help, the pay-off was accomplished.  Our home was paid off in full.  To those wondering about the few small loans we took out, they are diminishing and should be paid off next year.  In the mean while, we've worked on rebuilding a small liquid savings. 

Our next goal is to become completely debt-free with loans.  We still are paying on our two vehicles, as well as other loans.  Hubby has announced that he wants to retire within 2 years (actually October 2016).  So, we are working on that together.  He said he won't retire until we are debt-free with loans.  Then, Lord willing, we'll only have the usual items to pay out monthly such as electric, water, food, gas, etc.

I've finally decided to discontinue my cellphone monthly service.  I've had it going since 2007 when I got my first iphone, the original one they came out with, I think.  I did upgrade later to an iphone 4, which I've had a long time and am still currently using, to be discontinued later this week, as I have now purchased on sale a Tracfone smartphone, reduced from $80 to $30 and it has triple minutes for calls, data, and text with each minutes card I purchase.  So I purchased the basic 60 minutes Tracfone card and now have 180 minutes for each of the three features.  I just got it activated today and I think it is going to work out fine.  We will enjoy not paying $60 a month for cellphone service to AT&T.  The Tracfone minutes are good for 90 days, so I figure to save over $600 a year this way.  Hubby also has a Tracfone, also, that he's had for a while.  We have magic jack (about $32 annually) for our home phone, which is connected through our $15/month internet.  So there will be no monthly payment going out for phones, so to speak.  What I'm considering now is getting rid of cable-tv monthly bill and using an antennas on our two tv's for local channels (neighbor has it and says they get 8 or 9 clear channels, which include local channels) and watching dvd's and videos on tv.  Waiting for Hubby to get on board before implementing that strategy.

I must not forget to say that Hubby wants us to change our dining room, which is mostly a 'for-looks' room, into a free-standing wood-burning heater room, being in the middle of our home and open to the kitchen, the living room, the hall and a bathroom nearby.  He says that way if the electric goes out in the winter (doesn't happen often here in the south, but has years ago...and we do get ice storms sometimes), we will have a way to heat and be warm without electricity.  Although we currently have a gas-logs fireplace in the living room, which doesn't put out a lot of heat, we are strongly leaning toward this new idea.  We have both used wood to heat with in our pasts and although at the time I was not fond of it, because it was a lot of manual labor involved, as well as at that time it was difficult to obtain wood to burn, Hubby seems fairly confident that he can get the wood needed to keep the heater going in the winters.  Btw, it would save us a lot on our monthly electric bill if we used it in conjunction with our current main source of heat, the electric furnace, which wouldn't have to come on as often to heat our home with the wood heater doing its thing.  So, we are considering a cast iron free-standing wood heater with two 'eyes' on top that allows plenty of room to cook on top of the heater, which I've cooked on one before and had no problems with. 

So this is our current update.  I would have updated much sooner, but I lost my user name and password and could not remember it to sign in to this account and I finally got help and was able to access it.  Hope you are having a blessed day.