The hooptie!

Well the past few weeks have been completly consumed with our new project! We for sure didn't need a project to add to our busy busy busy lives, but this one is going to put us through school!

I am not sure if everyone is aware, but we are both about to start at new schools. I am going back to SWOSU starting June 3 to get my master's in counseling. I am going to need it to advance at work so I might as well start now! Justin is starting Mid America Christian University on June the 3rd. His original plan was to attend SWOSU since he got paid to go there because of his Regents scholarship, but we really believe God opened doors for MACU. He will be able to work better hours at work (8-5) because he only has class 1 night a week and he will finish almost 8 months sooner than he would at SWOSU. Since he is not a fan of school, this is something that he really wanted to look into. It is a private school so the chance of getting it paid for is gone, but always remember that when God closes a door, he opens another.

We make pretty good money for 'kids' our age. We can easily pay our bills and save each month. But when you are slapped with my school costing us around 4,000 over the next year and his costing 9,000 to finish we had to start making decisions. Yes student loans are always an option, but we are both very financially conscience so we really don't want a debt like that hanging over our head as soon as we finish school. So we made a plan!

I have a 2008 Toyota Corolla. It is a great car because of the gas mileage. It is the car we take out of town when we go or the one we take when we go anywhere together. The reason? Well he has a 2003 Dodge Ram pickup. It has been getting 10 miles to the gallon!!!!!!!! That is crazy! He only drives it to work and back and we are paying more in gas for it a month than we do for the corolla! Well we added it up and between gas and insurance that truck really isn't worth it. So this is what we did!

My dad has a friend who has a farm. He has lots of farm trucks. He has a truck that wasn't working (the timing chain went out). So he sold it to us for 300 bucks!!! The low value worth on KBB was 2300. So it was a steal! We had some money put back for new furniture so we just took that and flipped that vehicle!

Justin got it running mechanically. He put lots of time and work into getting it going. He is very smart with cars and he knew what he was doing. He definetly impressed me!

My job was the interior. He ripped the seat and carpet out and I cleaned. I took the carpet to the carwash to get the inch worth or dry mud off of it. There was dirt in every area of that truck! (by the way it is a chevy s10 pickup) My dad found us a different seat because that one had holes in it and we cleaned it up good and put a seat cover on. By time i got it all windexed and armoralled it looked pretty nice! Everyone has been impressed that saw the beginning and ending product!

So now that we have this paid for truck up and going, we have his pickup for sale. The money we will save on gas, insurance and payment should pay for school and allow us to not have to take out a student loan. Which we think is the smartest thing we can do.

School is not a fun thing to pay for. Most of my school has always been paid for by pell. Grad school doesn't accept pell so that really has been hard. We thought he would receive pell to help with school, but even though we weren't married last year we still have to file pell togther and I supposedly made to much for us to qualify. Which really stinks. Yea, if my whole entire paycheck went only to pay for school and not any bills we may be able to, but come on! Oh well!

Obviously this is something God wanted us to overcome. And we are. Yes we still are praying for a miracle (you know, hitting it big on the lottery....well i guess that would mean we should start playing!) but we know that we are doing everything we can to be as smart as we can with the money God entrusted us with. We have complete faith that God already has eveything under control.

So if you see us pimpin' in the hooptie - make sure you honk real loud because it is a noisy little truck! :)

Until next time,

Justin & Melissa

P.S. - If you know anyone that is looking for a used truck, send them our way!!!