Read Family Testimony

My husband and I have been married for 24 years. For all of those years, we struggled financially to make ends meet between being homeowners and raising our family of 3 children. I worked from home as a medical transcriptionist and John worked for small companies in the auto glass and woodworking businesses. My desire from early on was to be able to stay home with my children, which I was so grateful that God allowed me to do this. However, this meant that we didn't have the funds necessary for the kids to be able to explore their talents and find their gifts. Over time, we discovered that our daughter was an artist and our oldest son was an athlete. We discovered that our youngest son was born with developmental disabilities that are to this day undiagnosed. In dealing with all these issues, we amassed credit card debt several times, acquiring loans to pay them off only to amass more credit card debt.

About 10 years ago, God began to work in my heart about going back to school to earn a degree. I always loved school and the timing was right; I could see my children were growing up and would be leaving our home and I would be lost. I had gone to school a few semesters right out of high school but wasn't interested back then and had settled for working. By this time, I had been doing medical transcription for 15 years and was completely burned out. I started going to a local junior college, earning my associates degree. I went on to a local university, earning my bachelors and then went on for a master's degree, finishing in 2004 after 7 years of school. During this time, my family greatly supported me by accepting more responsibility around the house.

In June of 2005 I landed my first job in my field of study in Jefferson County as a land use planner. We moved to St. Louis, selling our home of 16 years in Illinois. We had bought the house for $34,000 in 1989 and we owed approximately $50,000 because of a second mortgage. Because of this, we only realized $8,000 out of the sale and our credit card debt was $50,000. We were making the minimum payments on all the cards and seeing no progress in our debt. God began to impress upon us the importance of being good stewards and working to pay this bad debt off.

We visited Grace and heard about the financial workshop that was going to be held in February of 2006. My daughter and I decided to attend together. She was also starting to amass some credit card debt and we felt we could do this together for accountability. By that time, my husband was working a 2nd job to earn money to pay the debt off. Since February, my daughter has completely paid off her credit cards and her student loan. The only debt she has is her car payment. Since February, we have been able to pay approximately $1,000 a month on the credit card debt and we are now down to $36,000 in credit card debt. Incidentally, we put the $8,000 from our home sale towards our credit card debt.

Towards the end of September, circumstances at my job caused me to look for other work. I began interviewing this month (November) and was offered a job in Florida as a land use planner. The most amazing thing about this job is that there is a signing bonus of $30,000, which will almost completely pay off our credit card debt.