13 Ways to Work Toward an Impossible Financial Goal

Please welcome Kendra Stamy as she shares how she and her husband are pursuing a huge financial goal, even though at times, it seems pretty impossible. I guarantee you’ll be inspired to chase after your own dreams after reading this!

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible ~ Walt Disney

Married at 22 and 21, we did the “normal” thing and rented our first home. But we had a dream: a home of our own in the country.

With our small income, that dream was far out of reach, but we took the first step. A year after getting married, we qualified for a $0 down loan and purchased a small home in town.

Now we are working and saving hard with the goal to completely pay off our Mortgage within 10 years time.

Time to Start Setting and Achieving Impossible Goals

Goal: Pay off Mortgage in 10 years time

The following paragraphs will give you a glimpse of what we’ve done so far, and where we are in our 10 year goal.

A year after our initial purchase, interest rates were so low that we opted to refinance our home. We refinanced from a 30 year loan to a 15 year loan, adding a total of $200 a month extra to our mortgage payments. Not bad really. :)

For the first four years after refinancing, we always made at least one extra payment a year, and put half of our tax refunds towards the mortgage. In four years we paid off six years of our mortgage.

We are now in the 5th year of our 10 year goal and have 9 years left on our mortgage. Our impossible goal for this year is to make double payments each month. This will pay off 2.4 years in one year.

If we achieve our impossible goal for this year, we will then have 6.6 years to pay down in the 5 remaining years of our original 10 year goal.

I hope to quit my job and become a stay at home mom by the middle of next year which means the rate at which we pay off the rest will be much slower. But paying an extra 1.6 years over a 5 year span doesn’t seem too hard.

Why do I call this year’s goal of double payments impossible?

Our budget doesn’t have room for an extra house payment. By the time I add up budgeted income and subtract budgeted expenses we are $50 short of another payment and I don’t have monthly allotments in the budget for things like clothing, house repairs, vehicle maintenance, etc.

I honestly don’t know if we can do this or not. But we have one thing going for us. I budget bills high, and income low. I also do not count cash bonuses. So it could happen, but we have to work for it.

13 Ways to Work Toward an Impossible Financial Goal

1. We do not have car payments. Choosing instead to buy a 3rd vehicle with cash in order to make the truck last longer.

2. We skipped college. No, we don’t make a whole lot, even with both of us working, but we aren’t paying off student loans either.

3. No credit card bills. We use a credit card almost exclusively, but I’ve set it up as a bank card in our money managing program and pay it off twice a month. (no interest expenses)

4. Currently my son wears 90% hand-me-downs from the little boy I nanny which is a true blessing.

5. We switched cell phone providers, saving us nearly $100 each month.

6. No TV, or movie subscriptions. Our lives are so busy right now we don’t have time for movies.

7. No more eating out. We have a couple gift cards we are saving for special occasions.

8. I massively cut my grocery budget after taking Shannon’s savings course. Read more about my experience and how it helped me here.

9. We buy our meat from farmers. This allows us to eat high quality, grass fed beef, free range chickens and non-gmo fed pork for prices that are often far less than the grocery store.

10. We garden. It’s small and we cannot grow as much as we really need, but every little bit helps.

11. I preserve what we grow and extra that I buy at Farmer’s Markets. If you want to learn more about food preservation, I just published an e-book on that very subject. (affiliate)

12. We are a cloth household. We still use toilet paper 100% of the time, but diapers, wipes, kleenex, menstrual pads, and paper towels are all cloth 75% of the time.

13. We chose a Christian Sharing Plan instead of a traditional health insurance after we were no longer able to get insurance through work.

When it comes to setting and achieving impossible goals, sometimes they really are impossible. No matter how much we sacrifice and save, we may not be able to make our goal.

But! Setting impossible long term goals is a very good thing. Even if we are unable to totally pay off our mortgage in 10 years time, we will certainly have paid it off much quicker than if we just settled for a 30 year loan.

Back to this quote of Walt Disney’s “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible”

Our goal looks impossible. It really does. And yet, we are going to pursue it with all our might. The purchasing of our dream home will be made that much sweeter, if it is done by achieving the impossible.

What is an impossible goal that you would like to achieve? Share yours in the comments!

See how this family is paying off their whole mortgage in just 10 years, plus 13 ways to work toward an impossible financial goal, so you can do it too!

 

Kendra grew up as the oldest of 6 kids in a red country farmhouse. Her passions are homemaking on a budget while feeding her family real foods, faith, marriage and motherhood.
Her desire is to encourage and uplift Christian wives and mothers as they care for their homes, and raise their families.

shannon Clark, LIFE & FINANCIAL Coach

As a mom, I know what it's like to feel exhausted, overwhelmed by life, and inadequate to meet my children's needs. But I also know you don't have to stay there.

As an author and coach, I've had the joy of encouraging more than 9.1 million moms to find forward motion with their faith, family, and finances — without the frenzy.

Will you be next?

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