We Came. We Climbed. We Conquered.

Herman and I got engaged almost twenty years ago. It seems hard to believe that that much time has flown by, but it has. In so many ways we are very much like the two innocent kids who headed full steam into the future those many years ago, but we have grown so much as well. I remember a conversation I had with Herman a short while after we were engaged. I was terrified, but I had to tell Herman about the debt that I had. I was sure that he would be devastated and not want to marry me when he found out how much debt I was carrying. How much debt was it? I had about $3000 in student loan debt and a credit card with about $1000 on it. I thought that it was this astronomical number and that Herman would not be able to make an eternal commitment with a girl who was so reckless with her finances. Well, suffice it to say, Herman still took me on and married me, so it wasn't a tragic ending to our first potential crisis. All was well.

Debt has always had a part in our married life, though. It hasn't always been horribly overwhelming, but it has always been there in the background, eating into whatever salaries we brought home. Our years have been continuous cycles of amassing debt, then paying it off, then amassing it again, and starting the cycle all over again. We have managed to survive just fine, and we've never gotten to the point where we felt the need to do something drastic like file for bankruptcy, but we've never been able to shake the cycle. Getting out of debt almost got to seem like an impossible dream, something that could happen in the future.

Everything changed at the beginning of 2012. We had been enjoying tremendous success with our business, Quest Education Systems, for several years. Times were great, and we were able to pay down much of our debt and even begin the extremely expensive process of adopting Minsy from China. But something happened along the way, and Quest began struggling. A lot. As an education company we were used to having some times, especially during the summers, when business was a bit lighter, so we were used to just waiting for the good economic times to come back. But they didn't. Ever. In the meantime we were still having to pay a lot of expenses for the company, so the company used business credit cards to pay some of those expenses. A lot of expenses. It was so, so much debt. Also, while the company was struggling Herman and I did not receive any income from the company at all for like 15 months. 15 months! I still don't know how we survived. The short story is that we amassed even more personal debt. A lot. By the time we left Quest and started our  Great Educators company we were drowning in debt. The worst part about all of the business debt run up by Quest was that it was all in our name, so we needed to be personally responsible for paying it off, even though the debt was run up by the others running the company. Bummer!

The debt was so overwhelming that I could not wrap my mind around it at all. I just shut it out. Completely. Out of sight, out of mind, right? I just couldn't even begin to imagine how we would get out of the mess we were in. I just knew that if we lived in Dickensian England, my family would probably be heading to some debtors prison somewhere if we couldn't get things under control.

Well, last August Herman decided that we needed to take control of our financial situation again. Our debt was controlling us, taking away any freedom to do the things we wanted to do in life. We have lots of desire to serve in the Church, but there would be no way in the world that we could all that we wanted to do if we had load of debt hanging over our heads. Somehow we were going to have to find a way to destroy the mountain of debt that stood between us and financial security for our future. The first step was systematically going through all of our debt and listing them in one excel document. Oh how this hurt my heart! I put it off forever because it was so hard to see the real numbers of what we were facing. But I did it. How much debt was it? Well, I won't say because I am sure that it would send some readers into a fit of apoplexy if they knew how much it was. I'll just say that it was WAY more than the cost of our home. Way more. It makes my debt from before I was married look like pocket change. I can't even begin to imagine how banks even think that it would be wise to lend that kind of money out to people. How in the world did they expect us to pay it off? And here is what was really killing us ... some of the debt was sitting at 30% interest. 30%!!!!! That is absolutely insane!

After painfully documenting how high the mountain was that we were going to have to climb, we turned over our problem to our office manager, Emily. Oh how grateful I am for Emily! She is super organized, and she was tasked with coming up with a plan to get us out of debt. We put ourselves on a strict almost bare bones budget. I would be in charge of making sure that we lived within our means and didn't add any more to the debt. Emily would then be in charge of taking any extra available funds from our company and funneling into our debt payoff machine until it was paid off. We put ourselves on a ten year plan to get all the way out of debt. I still couldn't see how it was going to happen, but at least we were working a plan.

Most importantly, we turned our problem completely to the Lord. Completely. We recognized that our problem was way bigger than we could handle. We had the desire to make changes and do whatever was necessary to get to a solution, but we were going to need help. A lot of it. We had faith that the Lord would provide a way for us to pay off our debt ... somehow.

As we were thinking about how to manage all of this debt, Herman kept referring to this passage of scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 104:

78 And again, verily I say unto you, concerning your debts—behold it is my will that you shall pay all your debts.
79 And it is my will that you shall humble yourselves before me, and obtain this blessing by your diligence and humility and the prayer of faith.
80 And inasmuch as you are diligent and humble, and exercise the prayer of faith, behold, I will soften the hearts of those to whom you are in debt, until I shall send means unto you for your deliverance.

 About the time that we set out to get our financial life in order, Herman began to sell some curriculum items over the internet to help schools prepare for standardized tests. They aren't a big deal, so we thought we'd sell a few here and there to supplement our major income which came from the consulting work that Herman was doing with school districts here in Missouri. It turned out that this curriculum stuff was in hot demand. Districts from all over the country were ordering from us. It started slowly and built, little by little, throughout the next several months. Because we had already decided that as a family we were going to live on a strict budget, we decided to dedicate any extra funds that the business earned to paying off the debt. Emily took charge and systematically began paying down the debt, starting with the highest interest debt and moving toward the smaller interest debt.

We expected for this process to take years, but we have been greatly blessed and this week we paid all of our credit cards off. All of them. Hurray! It still boggles my mind to think of what we have managed to accomplish. I am so, so grateful. I can truly see the hand of the Lord in all of this because there is no way we could have done this on our own.

Now we are moving on to phase two of our get-out-of-debt plan. With all of our credit cards paid off, now we are moving to paying off our rental properties quickly. Once those are paid off, barring something catastrophic like Ft. Leonard Wood closing, we would be able to generate enough income to survive on throughout our retirement years. We are now on a ten year payment plan with those, so hopefully by the time we are fifty we will meet this goal ... maybe even sooner. That would be such a blessing for us. We would be free to serve the Lord in any way He sees fit, and we wouldn't be burdened by excessive debt in our older age.

We don't know how long our business will be providing for us in the way that it does right now. After what we endured with Quest, we aren't taking anything for granted. But with our credit cards now cut up, our business running on a lean model, and our family living on a tighter budget, we should be in a position to weather whatever comes our way. I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who has helped us in our time of need as we have tried to do the right thing. Never again. That is our mantra when it comes to the debt mountain that we have just eliminated. Never again.