25 Years of Debt-Free Living

In 2013, my wife Michelle and I published Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World. Since we’re more than a decade removed from that publishing, and as we are now a quarter of a century into our debt-free journey, we thought it was time to share an update.

Michelle and I were married in January of 1998 and a little over a year later began our journey of living debt free as a calling. Our intention was always to be a witness to the world of the truth of God’s Word on all matters, but especially to be a witness to what God has to say about money and finances.

To briefly recap, after marrying in early 1998, and after Michelle fully grasped just how broke and in debt I was, she became very anxious about our financial situation. Prior to marriage, we had agreed to live on a formal (written) budget (maintained to this day). Before our honeymoon even ended, Michelle had begun to formulate a plan for getting us out of debt. I quickly agreed and we began paying off our debts, using the “snowball” method taught by the late, great Larry Burkett.

At the time of our marriage, Michelle was a full-time employee at the financial ministry Larry founded, Christian Financial Concepts (CFC). Most everything we learned about money, debt, and other biblical financial principles, came via Larry’s teachings at CFC (now Crown Financial Ministries). These sound, biblical financial principles are still at work in our lives today. Sometime in 1999, while living in our one-bedroom apartment, and after getting out of debt (we had a total debt of about $25k), Michelle began encouraging me to build/buy a home without a mortgage—in other words, completely debt free.

I immediately bristled at the notion, thinking there was no such path to that dream. I was a teacher of mathematics (still am to this day) and she was an employee at a Christian ministry. In other words, we were not in high salary jobs. (Throughout our 26+ years of marriage, our total annual income has almost always been between $75k and $100k.) Also, our parents were not wealthy—by American standards—thus, I saw no way we could get into a home within a reasonable amount of time without borrowing money.

Michelle persisted, and then God took it even further. In His “still, small voice,” God revealed to me that, to be a witness to the world, He desired for us to live a completely debt-free lifestyle. In order to get into a home (easily the largest expense for the vast majority of us), our plan was to live in as low rent a situation as possible, save every dime we could, and build on a small approximately one-acre lot that we owned (it was part of the debt we paid off early in our marriage).

After saving around $40k, we broke ground in the spring of 2000. Acting as our own contractors, and with tremendous help from several generous and handy family members, we partially finished our home in the late summer of 2001. We were able to move into our 1,000 square foot basement at that time. Approximately two years later, doing things in stages as we could afford them, we completed the rest of our home.

Our snow-covered North Georgia home from a few years ago.

Michelle continued to work full time at CFC until our first child Caleb was born in the spring of 2002. After Caleb was born, Michelle became a stay-at-home mom. This was always our plan, and our debt-free lifestyle made this a much easier transition. Michelle has remained a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom until this day. She has been able to work part time mostly from home through the years to bring in some income.

As was her desire long before even marrying, Michelle has homeschooled each of our four children throughout their k-12 education. Again, our debt-free status made this much more doable. What’s more, homeschooling has allowed us to take full advantage of the dual-enrollment options our home state of Georgia offers.

Thanks to Michelle’s hard work and diligence in this area, both of our two oldest children (Caleb and Jesse) both finished high school with an associate’s degree. Both are now done with their undergraduate degree. Caleb graduated at 20 with his B.S. in cyber security and Jesse finished at 19 with a B.A. in humanities. Both finished their degrees with zero debt. (We started college savings accounts for each of our children at a young age.)

Our daughter Caroline (child #3) will finish high school this spring and our youngest, Noah, is a high school freshman. Now that Noah is 15, everyone in the house is a driver! With the exception of Noah, who’s yet to have his own car, we’ve been able to help each of our children obtain a vehicle of their own, paying cash each time.

However, every vehicle we have owned was bought used —and with the exception of one, cost $10k or less, with several costing less than $5k. (We’ve never bought a new car. We paid over $10k for a minivan once early in our parenting.) Because we have a car maintenance category in our budget, we do regular maintenance on each automobile and thus are able to help extend the life of each car. Our oldest car is 24 years old, and the newest one is 13 years old.

Along with budgeting for cars, gas, food, insurance, school, and so on, we’ve regularly saved and invested throughout our marriage. Our savings account wouldn’t impress Hunter Biden, but we’ve socked away far more than the average American family. We’ve saved well for retirement, and we’ve even been able to save for weddings!

Our oldest son Caleb married the beautiful, sweet Emma last spring. They were both 21 at the time. To help them get a good start on the expensive American life, Caleb and Emma live in our re-modeled full basement apartment.

Caleb/Emma’s Wedding Day, June 2023. Left to right: Noah (14), Caroline (17), Emma (21), Caleb (21), Michelle, Trevor, Jesse (19).

Our debt-free life has been far from easy, and we’ve “missed out” on some of the expensive “pleasures” that going into debt can allow for. However, more than anything else, our 25+ years of debt-free living has brought us peace! The peace that only comes from surrendering to the One who made us and doing things His way instead of our own way.

As we’ve often said, the most important financial principle that the Bible teaches is that of stewardship. Whatever our status with financial debt, the sooner we grasp the fact that God owns it all and that we are merely stewards—managers—of what is and has always been His, the better we will be in every area of our lives. May God richly bless you as only He can!

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2024, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.TrevorGrantThomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
trevorgrantthomas@gmail.com

Why This Middle-Income American Family Doesn’t Need a Wuhan Virus Bailout

As our family of six continues to weather the Wuhan virus and the local, state, and national shutdown that has ensued, and before D.C. politicians spend another trillion or two that this nation doesn’t have on a “bailout,” the Thomas family would like to make something abundantly clear: we don’t need a China-virus check!

This is not because we are wealthy—at least not by American standards. As I’ve often noted, my main source of income comes from the teaching of mathematics at government schools. That’s right, I’m employed by two government schools: a day school where I’m employed full time and an evening charter high school where I’m employed part time. Like many other states, because of an order by Georgia’s governor, we are now doing school from home until at least the end of March.

Both of the schools where I’m employed are participating in school from home. At my day school, this means all teachers are still fully employed. This is likely the case all over the U.S. My evening school is keeping some teachers (all teachers at this type of school are part-time, hourly workers) employed—I’m one of them. Thus, at this time—and I don’t anticipate this changing—I have suffered no loss of income. (Hopefully, both schools will be up and running normally soon!)

Also, as Michelle and I have pointed out on multiple occasions, Michelle is a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom with little to no income. Though this nation-wide shutdown has us quite annoyed, things are running relatively normally at the “Thomas Academy.” In other words, we do not need a “bailout.”

However, we do understand that many across the U.S. are not in our position, and because of this virus and the decisions of those in government, many Americans are suffering financially. This is especially the case with those who own small businesses. We know many such folks in our circle of family and friends. Let any bailout efforts from the government be targeted at those individuals and businesses.

If our wishes here are ignored and we nevertheless receive a China-virus check (or checks), Michelle and I have decided to use that money to help those in our community who own small businesses and are suffering the most during these difficult financial times. For example, we will be intentional about frequenting locally-owned businesses, such as restaurants, our auto mechanic, our karate school, and gun stores—northeast Georgia is blessed with several of these!

For those who offer them, we will purchase gift certificates that we can use later or give away. Also, we plan to employ local contractors for home-projects that we might otherwise put off or do ourselves. We may, for those we know well and can trust, simply write a check. However, most small business owners we know don’t want a handout and want to work for what monies they receive. However, the best thing government can do, and the quickest way out of this financial mess, is simply to get as many people as possible back to work as quickly as possible!

Also, this is perhaps the best time in my adult life to share God’s wisdom when it comes to money and finances. As Michelle and I have pointed out on multiple occasions, because of the wisdom and direction of God, for over two decades now we have lived debt free. This is another reason that we are able to weather these current times better than most, even those who have significantly more income than do we.

This would be the case even if we had a significant loss of income. Because we are indebted to no one for our possessions, we have no fear of foreclosure or repossession, even if my income went to zero. In addition, we have an emergency savings account that could keep us afloat for several months, if needed. Again, I must confess, our debt-free path was not my plan. It took a wise and financially disciplined wife and a wise and almighty God to open my eyes on most things concerning money.

After marriage, our first financial decision was to honor God by always giving a tenth of all that He provides, and also to begin living on a budget. Over 22 years ago, we established a workable budget (based only on my income, even though Michelle was working full time then) that we maintain to this day. Michelle was already tithing and living on a budget, so she simply brought what she was already practicing into our marriage. All I had to do was agree to go along. Whether we are talking about the government, a business, a church, a family, or an individual, a good budget is essential in maintaining a healthy bottom line.

A budget can help keep you from overspending during any particular income period or in any particular area; it can help you plan for non-regular expenses such as car and home repairs; and it can help you plan for your financial future. Establishing a budget can be a lengthy process. It can take as long as a full year for an individual or a family to get a budget working well, but the benefits are well worth the hard work involved.

Our budget has played an essential role in guiding us through various financial times. We are a homeschooling family of six, with our four children growing from little ones into teenagers and before long, young adults. Our budget is in constant flux, but it helps us see the adjustments in spending that we need to make in order to maintain sound financial discipline.

Early in our marriage, after agreeing to tithing and budgeting, I was still completely of the mindset of most when it came to the purchase of big-ticket items—cars, homes, etc. Because she worked for, and was financially discipled by the late, great Larry Burkett, and for various other reasons, very early in our marriage, Michelle was hinting at building our home without a mortgage. I only agreed to this, along with making a life-long commitment to living debt free, after God got my attention.

Lastly, the most important financial principle that I have learned is the biblical principle of stewardship. Tithing, living on a budget, and becoming debt free all hinged on our understanding our roles as stewards. A steward is a manager of someone else’s property. Scripture reveals that God owns everything. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”

Thus, from a biblical perspective, none of us really “owns” anything. We are merely managers of what God has given us. Whether material resources, or our talents and abilities, a proper biblical perspective means that we understand that everything we have comes from the One who made us. Until we come to grips with our role as stewards, we will never truly understand money and wealth and how to deal with financial blessings or difficulties.

I take almost no credit for where we are financially. Michelle has always been more financially disciplined than me. Early in our marriage, through her efforts and the ministry founded by Larry Burkett, Christian Financial Concepts (now Crown Financial Ministries), I embraced the simple, wise truths put forth in Scripture concerning money and debt. In other words, we are where we are financially by the grace and wisdom of God.

Our situation was and is a unique one (detailed in Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World). I would not necessarily recommend that anyone do things exactly as we did them. Our path was literally “a calling.” However, I do believe that there are tried and true, simple financial principles that we applied and are still living by that would benefit most anyone—especially in times like these.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Our Book in WORLD Magazine!

We've been subscribers to the Christian news publication WORLD magazine for years now. WORLD's mission is "To report, interpret, and illustrate the news in a timely, accurate, enjoyable, and arresting fashion from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God."

We used to subscribe to the kids version of WORLD, God's World News, as well. However, our children have recently started to prefer the regular edition. This is especially the case with our two oldest children, Caleb (13 years-old), and Jesse (11 years-old). They have been reading the regular version of World for a couple of years now. They love it.

My wife Michelle and I both enjoy WORLD as well. Before going to bed a few nights ago, I read Marvin Olasky's--WORLD's editor-in-chief--piece on Christian education. Given our involvement in education, before I left for work the next morning, I asked Caleb to make sure that he showed Michelle the column.

However, though we've had the September edition of WORLD for several days now, and though several of us have flipped through the magazine many times, it seems that we all missed something significant (at least from our perspective).

WORLD has a recurring section called "Notable Books" where, usually, several books are featured and reviewed. Our book Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World was reviewed in the "Notable Books" section in the September edition of WORLD.

Here is the review (click on the image to make it larger):

Additionally, prior to reviewing our book and six others, the "Notable Books" section began,

"During the past year, WORLD received more than 100 self-published books for possible review. This past May we had our 14 students at the 2015 World Journalism Institute each choose the books that most appealed to them—and from those to choose one to review. For the WJI students, that’s useful experience for future work in publishing or book reviewing. For the authors who sent their books, thank you. Although some of you will be disappointed not to find your book reviewed here, you have helped in the training of these budding journalists."

We had no idea this had happened. Thank you WORLD! And thank you to our friend Christy Mihalick for alerting us to this!

Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.

www.trevorgrantthomas.com

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

“Drive-By” Default: Lee Siegel’s Financial Advice Should Come as No Surprise

Chalk this one up to yet another New York Times liberal who wants others to pay his bills. (Paul Krugman must be proud.) On the 71st anniversary of what some considered the most important day of the twentieth century, a day where thousands of men, for the sake of others, paid with all that they had, the opinion pages of The New York Times ran the “brave” piece, “Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans.” (I suppose the author will receive the Bruce Jenner award for courage.)

The piece is by Lee Siegel. On what I’m sure is his well-guarded Wikipedia page, Mr. Siegel is described as writer and “cultural critic.” He is lauded as “one of the most eloquent and acid-tongued critics in the country” and hailed by The New York Times Book Review for his “drive-by brilliance.”

In describing his financial delinquency, Siegel begins by not remembering the institution which four-decades prior, seemingly lured him and his mother into signing away his life. Siegel began his college career at a “small private liberal arts college,” which, by the end of his sophomore year, required him to take out a second loan. After his father’s bankruptcy and his parents’ divorce, Siegel had to transfer to a state college in New Jersey. Ashamed that his academic career had taken such a turn and because he thought he “deserved better,” Siegel dropped out of the state school and went to work selling shoes.

To pursue his dream of being a writer, Siegel later entered Columbia University. Though not mentioned specifically in the piece, Wikipedia notes that in addition to his undergraduate degree from the Columbia University School of General Studies, Siegel obtained his master’s degree and Master of Philosophy from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. That’s three different colleges or universities and three degrees from a very expensive private university.

Also noticeably absent from The Times piece is any mention of income-producing work in the midst of his academic studies. In the significant fallout that was the result of what even the liberals at Vox called a “terrible idea,” Siegel said that though his debt was from the time he spent at all three schools he attended, his tuition at Columbia was paid for. Presumably then, the debt he incurred while at Columbia was to pay for living expenses.

One thing that Siegel does make clear in his op-ed is that after finding himself in the career that he wanted (a writer), which “opened a new life to me beyond my modest origins,” he is confronted with the fact that such a life was not going to allow him easily to get out from under the “crippling debt” he had amassed. Siegel bemoans the fact that “the education system was now going to call in its chits and prevent me from pursuing that new life, simply because I had the misfortune of coming from modest origins.”

Of course, as the title of Siegel’s piece makes clear, his solution to his “crippling debt” is simply not to repay it. He justifies his default by concluding that, though the “social arrangement” that is the current student loan industry might be legal, it is “not moral.”

I love it when liberals make an appeal to morality to justify their desires or behaviors. Not because I derive some perverse pleasure from their misguided arguments, but as we live our lives—going to school, going to work, attending church, entering into relationships, marrying, raising children, starting businesses, voting, making law, (participating in all of this, none of it, or somewhere in-between), and so on—the morality that directs such a life is profoundly important. And thus, I wonder, and get to ask: Upon what moral code is Siegel relying as he makes his arguments against the current student loan industry?

Is it the same moral code that tells him it’s okay to kill children in the womb, and that homosexual behavior is normal and healthy? Is it the same moral code that reveals that same-sex “marriage” is a right that any two (or three or more) consenting adults should have? Is it the same moral code that says that mankind is warming the planet and that governments across the world must decisively act to save us from climate devastation? Of course it is, and thus no one should be surprised at Siegel’s inane monetary moralizing.

This is especially the case for his liberal cohorts, as Siegel’s financial advice is right in line with the rest of liberal ideology. In fact, through one means or another, for decades across America, liberals have essentially preached the same financial message as Siegel: pay little attention to how much you borrow; pursue your “dreams” at all costs; look to the government to provide you with as much sustenance for life as possible; when that isn’t enough, demand that someone else be taxed so that you can have more. (Siegel, of course, advocates for a “universal education tax that would make higher education affordable” and longs for the government to “guarantee a college education.”)

My wife and I are both over 10 years younger than Mr. Siegel, and between us we have five college degrees. We both worked as we attended college and graduated with very little debt. In fact, as I’ve noted before, through applying the Christian principles of money management (as taught by the late-great Larry Burkett), Michelle and I have lived the last 16 years of our lives completely debt free.

This includes owning our home (never having a mortgage), always paying cash for vehicles (though always buying used), educating our four children in a private homeschool academy (in addition to piano lessons, karate, and the like), and so on. For the most part, all of this is done on a teacher’s salary. We budget, we save, we invest, we give, we coupon, and so on. Most of all, we realize that all we have is the result of what was given to us by our Creator, and we are simply trying to be good stewards.

Like Mr. Siegel (shockingly, he’s writing a memoir about money), we’ve (mostly Michelle) written a book detailing our financial story, which includes a great deal about debt (though we recommend you always repay what you borrow), and the three-and-a-half-year process of building of our home debt free. (See a couple of videos on our financial story here.) Our book is on my site, Amazon, and other online retailers.

As we discuss debt in our book, we make special note of student loan debt, and how so many Americans have become far too comfortable with large amounts of debt early in their lives. No doubt that there needs to be reform, financial and otherwise, in America’s system of higher education. In many cases, college in the U.S. is far too expensive, and far too much deception exists about what a college education can do for an individual. However, most of this corruption is due to the efforts of big government liberals.

Thanks in large part to liberal policies in financing education, in recent decades we’ve seen massive increases in the cost of higher education. As Mona Charen noted last year, “For decades, politicians have bought votes with promises to make college ‘more affordable.’ They passed legislation with names such as ‘The College Cost Reduction and Access Act’ (link is mine) and the ‘Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act’ (link is mine). There are Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, and much more besides.”

Unsurprisingly, as Charen also notes, such subsidizing has led to an enormous rise in the tuition and fees charged by colleges and universities. According to Anya Kamenetz in $1 Trillion and Rising, “Since 1978, the cost of college tuition has increased faster than the consumer price index in every single year. That’s not true for any other item in the basket of consumer goods.”

And as I noted in 2012, “The cost of tuition and fees has increased faster than healthcare costs. According to the Department of Education, if these trends continue, by 2016 the cost of a public college will have more than doubled in just 15 years. University of Tennessee law professor, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, in his book The Higher Education Bubble, reports that, with the easy availability of federal funds, tuition and fees have gone up over 440% in the last 30 years.”

We hear almost nothing from liberals today, whether politicians, or pundits like Siegel, that would stem the tide of such increases. In other words, just as is the case with campus sexual assault, when it comes to the cost of college, Siegel is bemoaning what his politics have helped to create.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com