Our Financial Journey ~ The seven year struggle

If you missed the previous post, start here.

He was fine. He had some abrasions from the air bag and some soreness, but thankfully, he was fine. He didn’t even go to the hospital or come home from work, just called to let me know he’d been in an accident.

His paid for truck, however, was totaled.

I joke with him now that maybe he wasn’t fine. Maybe he had a head injury from the accident that lasted for 7 years. And I’d much rather joke about what happened next than to think too deeply about it, because the truth is, I feel deep regret and still get angry over the waste of those seven years.

But let me explain.

He had a nice, used Ford truck that was just a few months paid for when the accident happened. With the insurance money he was able to buy a used truck that cost a little bit more than the check we’d gotten. We financed the rest and began making payments.

I can’t explain why and neither can he, but over the next 7 years he traded trucks on average of about one a year. Seven trucks in seven years, ending with the one he has now.

We never missed a payment, never were strapped financially during this time, but we were living paycheck to paycheck with little savings and I knew that it was sinking us deeper into a never ending cycle of debt to keep trading these vehicles and never paying them off.

I cried, I yelled, I begged and I hoped he would come to his senses, but nothing I said seemed to make any difference.

Then, I met Dave Ramsey. Not personally, but in his book, The Total Money Makeover. I got so excited reading the book. Everything I’d been trying to pound into my husband’s head was spelled out right here in a book by someone else who was saying it a lot better than I ever did.

He let me read it out loud to him on one of our trips in 2007. It felt like it was sinking in. I thought we were finally getting somewhere and reaching a turning point. It all sounded so good.

Once we got home, I shared the book with family members. I stayed on a “money-makeover high” for a while and we talked about making a budget and talked about paying off vehicles, but it turned out to be all just a bunch of talk.

In 2008, my husband came home with the most expensive truck he’d ever bought. Once again, it felt like we were right back at square one. I didn’t know what else to do. So I gave up.

A few months later, I read another book, Marsha put on Facebook:

“Submission is knowing how to duck so God can hit your husband.”

Dr. Tony Evans.

I think that’s what God was waiting on me to do: get out of the way. When I stopped trying to control everything, some really neat things started to happen.