Remembering priorities...

Abi and I were recently reminded of priorities we shouldn't be neglecting.

A little back story  We found out she was pregnant in March. Then, in May, as I was looking at house listings out of curiosity, I found a property that seemed like a phenomenal find. It was a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, 2100 square foot house on 1.79 acres just inside Des Moines city limits, a good 10 minutes closer to work for me and at least fifteen minutes closer to her family. The best part, it was listed at $121,500, a price I was sure we could handle.

After looking at the place a couple of times and going back and forth with the seller, we settled on $117,000. At this point I thought we'd better find out what our monthly cost was going to be. Turns out we were looking at about $950/month for the mortgage, which is $255/month more than our current rent. Utilities would also go up from our $50ish/month to between $200 and $250/month. So, in frustration, we had to back away from the table.

Our agent e-mailed us on July 4th to let us know that the house was going to short sale on July 5th. Out of curiosity, I looked, but the price had only dropped to $117,500. Not good enough for us. Then we kinda forgot about the house for a few weeks.

I don't fully know why, but I looked at the listing again on August 13th to find that the price had dropped on August 10th to $101,700. Hey now, we could be in business here! I talked it over with Abi, and we got in touch with our agent. We started the ball rolling, borrowing $5,000 from my dad to help with the down payment, getting an idea of how much we could borrow and at what rate, and making an initial offer. Then the waiting began, and finally on October 23rd we heard that the seller's bank had accepted our offer of $96,000. Yay!

We were originally looking at an FHA mortgage, so we were going to wait for the FHA appraisal before getting our own inspection. However, our mortgage banker said we had enough assets available to do a conventional mortgage, which meant the process could be sped up a bit. We signed paperwork on Friday, October 26th for the mortgage to get processed.

Then, the weirdest thing happened. I got an e-mail from our agent saying an agent from another agency had an interested client. Since we had not put down any earnest money, the listing was still active. I decided I should get a check to our agent to rectify the situation and got to her office 5 minutes before closing. The check wouldn't be cashed until Monday, October 29th, but all of our legal bases were covered.

Friday I also needed to get some inspections set up. Abi's uncle, who used to own a concrete business and does foundation inspections in his area, had said he'd be willing to look at houses for us, so we got him down to check out the foundation (he said that it was okay, even though cosmetically it didn't look the prettiest). We also got a friend of ours who does roofing to come out. His thoughts were that the roof would need redoing within 3 years, and at dinner after we'd looked at the house together he said flat out that he wouldn't buy it (coming from a man involved in construction who is doing work on his own house, this was a pretty good indicator as to the course of action we should take). So we e-mailed our agent Sunday night and said we just couldn't see taking the responsibility for such a house--we wouldn't have the time, money, or expertise to fix it ourselves, nor could we afford to pay someone else to do it for us. Since Abi especially wasn't overly thrilled with the layout and several features of the house, it wasn't too difficult to make the decision.

Then I got to thinking about some other things. Like how easily the prospect of owning a house had swayed me from my plan to be debt-free within the next 3 years with the justification that we would only be paying $200-$300/month more in housing costs than what we pay now. Our current debt load is between $50,000 and $52,000, and it's conceivable we'll have it paid off in 26 months (by the end of December 2014). Yet if we bought a house now, we would extend the time it would take to pay our current debts and basically triple overall what we owe. I understand the argument for building equity and how much of a buyer's market it is right now, but I'm not convinced it's the biblical approach to go into debt even for what sounds like such good reasons.

The Bible has a few things to say about debt, and the basic message is don't go into debt and do everything you can to get out if you are in debt. I don't know as this is said anywhere as an explicit command (I will have to look into that and get back to you all if I find anything...feel free to let me know if you know of anything regarding this), but it comes up several times in Proverbs, a book filled with much good advice. Debt is not a good thing (and why people think debt is a good thing for the nation but not for individuals is something I've never been able to figure out). So our plan for a future house purchase, should the Lord tarry so long in His return that such a purchase is even possible, looks quite a bit different from what we've just gone through. We'll be out of debt before we even look to buy a house. On top of that, if it really comes down to taking out a mortgage, we will have 20% saved for a down payment and we'll shoot for a 15-year mortgage instead of the traditional 30.

Ideally, though, I'd much rather save the entire amount for a house purchase and pay cash up front, just as much for the shock value of doing something that most people have never heard of doing as for not being in debt to anyone again. Let me crunch a few numbers for you. As I said, we had an accepted purchase price of $96,000, which meant we were going to be financing about $92,000. If we were to pay just the minimum payment every month, we would pay about $147,000 for the house at the end of 30 years. That's a difference of $55,000. We currently pay $695 in rent each month. If we stayed right where we are, it would take us just over 6 1/2 years to pay $55,000 in rent. My current net income is about $2800/month, and that will continue to go up with raises (assuming the VA system doesn't go broke under what I see as an inevitable economic meltdown). Not factoring in what I need to pay on my current debt load, I can safely set aside a minimum of $1500/month, which in 6 1/2 years is $118,500 before interest is added. Also, I'm taking into consideration that all houses require upkeep, and any money that goes towards repairs and improvements is money that can't go towards paying off a mortgage. In our current rental, we are not responsible for repairs or utilities other than electric, and should we move to another rental, having some or all of the repairs and utilities covered by the landlord will be our goal to help us save money.

Is that going to buy us a palace? No. But will it buy us a decent house? I'm quite confident it will as I don't see the housing market rebounding enough in the next 6-10 years to make house prices go up significantly. And since Abi and I would like a little bit of land, and taking into consideration that without other debt payments we could afford to live further from the city and thus deal with lower property taxes, we could end up with a very nice place with such an amount. And that amount doesn't factor in what Abi makes in a year, which currently goes almost entirely to help our debt payoff and could later be applied to saving for a house and would easily cover many unexpected situations.

Would such an approach require sacrifice? Absolutely, depending on what you consider a sacrifice. I haven't had TV service since before we got married, and we do just fine without it. We share a cell phone plan with three of Abi's siblings, so our cost there is lower than when it was just the two of us (and we're getting a bit higher of a package). Abi does a lot of couponing, and while she isn't going to make it on an episode of "Extreme Couponing," her work in this area allows us to generally spend less than $120/month on food, and we still get to treat ourselves more frequently than you would expect. But some luxuries will have to be done without. And of course, waiting to buy a house could very well mean that many houses we could afford and would even like will come and go, though if we're saving for a house and not actively looking, it's not like we'd be totally aware of this. We would, however, see friends and family buying houses and we'd feel the pull to have one of our own.

But will there be a reward? Absolutely! Home-ownership without the debt. A close-knit family from living in tighter quarters. The satisfaction of knowing we did something that most are unwilling to do. And, I firmly believe, the blessing of God for being wise with the money He has given to us in not putting ourselves into debt for something that isn't going to last forever anyway.

Gentlemanly conduct

Some events in recent months involving two people I know have prompted me to write a little about a man's proper conduct when pursuing a woman. I certainly don't claim to have all of the answers, but I felt the following should be said.

Fellas, when it comes to pursuing that young lady who makes your heart beat faster simply by thinking about her, keep in mind that you should always act like a gentleman. I can speak from experience that participating in crazy antics simply to show off will look exactly like you trying to show off and will likely not be impressive. Instead of jumping off of the roof to show that you can do so without hurting yourself, engage in conversation so both of you can get to know each other better. And remember that her friends and/or sisters might hang around, so be willing to engage them in conversation, too. How you interact with her friends and family, especially when you don't know she's watching or listening, will go a long way toward demonstrating what sort of person you are.

Another thing to be careful of is pushing too far and too fast. My wife and I met through eHarmony and exchanged regular e-mails and a couple of phone calls during the first six weeks before we met in person. When we did meet, it was connected with a two-day Home School Alumni gathering at someone's house in Wisconsin, about 45 minutes from where my dad lives. She, two of her sisters, and I met at Pizza Hut before going to the house to have dinner and make the initial meeting away from a bunch of people I wouldn't know. When we got to the house, several of us played games for an hour or two before it got to the point that I needed to get some sleep (I was working the night shift at the time, and out of nervous excitement over the meeting that day, I didn't really sleep at all). I had been told I could sleep at the house where the gathering was being held, but I had already planned to stay at my dad's so I wouldn't make Abi any more uncomfortable. We actually didn't speak much during the entire weekend, not until about the last hour or two Saturday evening before I needed to get back to my dad's to sleep, but during that time we were observing each other (and not in a creepy stalker way).

When I got back to my home and we started e-mailing again, one of the first things Abi told me was that she wasn't sure of her feelings for me. At this point, I could have pressed for a decision and pushed her away in the process, decided that I wanted someone who knew better after a month and a half of communication and ended things myself, or continued communicating in a non-threatening way after letting her know she could have the time she needed to make up her mind. Thankfully, I picked the third option. We had already made plans for me to visit her family three weeks after our initial meeting, and while I would have been willing to give her more time beyond that, seeing how I interacted with her family helped her make the decision that she was willing to pursue something more serious. Eight weeks after that was the next time we were able to see each other, and this was for a week-long trip to Wisconsin to meet some of my friends and family. Eight weeks later we were officially courting, ten weeks more and we were engaged, and after a final four months we were married, about twelve and a half months after our first e-mail exchange. The timing of all that wasn't really pertinent to the point I was making of not pressuring the lady of interest, so please don't look at my relationship with my wife as some sort of timeline your own relationship should follow; some people need more time, some less.

Finally, what if the young lady or a member of her family tells you she isn't interested in a romantic relationship? My advice is to back off. You don't necessarily have to disappear from her life, but don't get your hopes set on something happening. If you were friends with her before you made your thoughts known, you can still be friends, but, as was the case when I expressed interest in a friend of mine, she may need space for a little while. You might need the space, too, in order to clear your mind. This is not the time to try and butter up her friends and family so they will tell her what a great guy you are, but it is the time to demonstrate that you can handle such a rejection gracefully.

However, if the only context you have known this woman has been centered in romanticism, it might be better to simply walk away. About a year before Abi and I started communicating, I met someone else on eHarmony. Looking back, I had little discernment in that relationship, and things were progressing a lot faster than was wise, especially since this woman and I were not on the same page. We were in steady contact for about two months, most of it romantic in nature, before she decided that she didn't see me as anything more than a friend. That was a huge blow to me because I was very emotionally invested, and I had a terrible time letting go. I spent the next two or three months in considerable contact with her, trying to get her to change her mind. This was a bad idea, in large part because I think she liked the attention and didn't do much to push me away. Because we didn't have a friendship in the first place, it would have been wiser for me to have accepted her decision and broken off contact. That is sometimes necessary, so if you are in the position where a woman has told you she isn't interested, be prepared to walk away.

The old saying that when one door closes another one opens is true. But it doesn't always work the way we want it to. If a relationship ends, that doesn't necessarily mean another one is waiting right around the corner. What it does mean is that you've just been given the chance to learn a lesson and you should take advantage of that.

Okay, this post feels like a ramble, but hopefully my thoughts are somewhat clear. There may be more to follow on this topic in the future, so stay tuned! (I know you're just gripping the edge of your seat in anticipation.)

Company

One of the things Abi and I enjoy doing is hosting company in our home. Our living in Des Moines (and being off of the night shift) has helped us have more people over in 7 months than we ever did in our year in Rochester. Being so near the crossroads of Interstate 80 and Interstate 35 also helps.

Yesterday, our friend Joe Matthews stopped for the night on his way from Wisconsin to Ashland, NE. Unfortunately I had to work, and due to staffing shortages wasn't able to get any time off last night. However, I was blessed to be able to spend a couple of hours with Joe this morning. We had some good conversation, shared breakfast, and enjoyed fellowship. Time, distance, and circumstances make it difficult for us to see our Wisconsin friends and family, but we're grateful for every opportunity that comes along.

We have a bigger place here than we did in Rochester, I think almost 200 square feet more, and it's great to have extra space for guests. I am definitely looking forward to owning our own house someday, though. Not only would it be nice to have a larger area to raise a family, but it would be great to be able to host company even more easily. One dream I've had is to buy an acreage and put up either one very large house or a house big enough for my family and cottages/cabins for visiting families, with a kitchen/dining area in the main house big enough for a couple dozen or more people to fit comfortably. Hospitality is one of the gifts/passions it seems Abi and I share.

Now it's almost 11 AM, and even though it feels like a Saturday, it's only Friday, so I probably ought to spend a little time with Abi before getting ready for my last night of work this week.

Have a blessed day!

Been a while since I posted...

As the title of this post and the timestamps of all of my posts indicate, it has been a while since I've added any content here. Being busy has contributed to this, as has being distracted by other things, but it seemed that now would be a good time to add some more. Lucky you!

Tim and I--well, mostly Tim--have finished a draft for the fourth Truth Chronicles book. I believe it will be heading to the editor soon, which is exciting and terrifying all at once. We both know several comments that she's going to make, but that doesn't make it easier. Tim also has ambitious plans to get a draft for the fifth book mostly or totally finished by the end of the month. I know I haven't gotten any writing done for that yet, so unless he has, it'll be an interesting prospect. He has a couple of weeks off, though, which will help. I only have one day off between now and then, and Abi and I will be traveling for a good portion of it, so I don't know how much I'll accomplish. I will just have to press forward with all of the time I can manage and trust that the effort will be enough.

I have been doing a little bit of writing and prepping for other stories in the last couple of weeks. I'm hoping to get things fleshed out enough that even a few minutes here or there will provide ample progress. My goal is to have two or more stories drafted in the next 6-12 months. Depending on their content, they may or may not be something in which the publisher of The Truth Chronicles would be interested. Who knows...perhaps by this time next year I'll have a couple of solo writing credits to my name. Sounds exciting!

Work has been going well. I am undecided about making a career out of being a Medical Technologist, but for now it feels somewhat like a necessity. Abi and I have been making tremendous strides in paying off the debts I brought into our marriage, so to embark on a new career or a lower-paying career at this point wouldn't be the wisest decision I could make. I get along with my coworkers, which is a blessing, but there are many things I think I could do and make a living that seem like they would be more enjoyable. Some of those ideas involve me staying at home full-time, and as long as we live in an area that actually gets snow and/or ice during the winter, that's a very attractive option.

That seems to be the short of it. Life is generally good here, and Abi and I are still excited about the possibilities presented by us being in Des Moines.

Things are happening...

It's been quite a month, full of ups and downs. Probably the most frustrating was spending nearly two weeks in an emotional funk that distressed Abi and made life pretty miserable. While we think there was definitely a spiritual element to it all, an attempt by the enemy to keep my mind off of God and whatever plans He has for me (and us) here, some of it was also do to my negligence to give each day to God and spend time faithfully in His Word. I'll admit, I'm still not perfect with that, but I think overall it has gotten better. My goal is to be both more consistent with simply reading the Bible regularly, as well as spending more time in it in each session and really thinking about what I'm reading.

I go back and forth with whether or not lab work is really what I want to do with my life. I don't want to be guided primarily by just feelings, but yesterday morning I wasn't able to get my car started. It hadn't been that cold overnight, but after last winter I knew I needed a new battery, but had put it out of my mind until yesterday. I ended up at work two hours later than my regular starting time, but I found I had a lot more fun in those two hours doing a bit of writing while I waited for the auto store to open, then going to the closest store only to find out their store on the other side of town was the only one that had the battery I needed, paying for the battery, stopping at home to pick up my lunch, driving to the other side of town, picking up the new battery, and installing the battery right there in the parking lot. Now, I'm almost certain that auto repair is not the field for me, but I got a great deal more satisfaction out of that little bit of work than I think I got out of the entire week at my actual job.

I'm grateful that Abi has a job that she enjoys and is able to do from home. I'm also a tiny bit jealous. I'm trying to think of things that I could do in a similar fashion. I don't know if I will come up with such a career, but I want to explore my options. Writing is one thing that might possibly work in this capacity, though I will need more than six books with my name on them for that to work. I started writing a story yesterday that I've had somewhat plotted out for at least five years, and I have a few other ideas in mind that might work well as a start. To actually make a living writing, I'd need a lot more than what I've got planned, I'm sure.

Abi had a great idea of a craft we could sell, one that would generate significant profits compared to the expense of materials and the time involved. We're not sure how much income this would actually generate, but as a start, I'd be happy to see even an extra hundred dollars or two each month, just so we could pay that much more down on our debts and keep the interest from piling up so much.

I'm going to be looking at Odesk and other similar sites online to see if I can secure even some occasional jobs. Since I owe my current employer two years of service, I have time to develop a portfolio for whatever I find interesting, and anything extra we can earn during that time will just help us get out of debt more quickly. As it stands, we could very well be out of debt entirely by the end of 2014, earlier depending on how much extra either of us can earn. If we were out of debt by the time my commitment at work was completed, and I had a viable alternative income that I enjoyed earning, then hey, the sky's the limit!

I don't want this to be a total whine-fest, because I am very grateful to have a job, especially in this economy. And it's entirely possible I'll find a niche at work that I really enjoy and am able to fill. I know I'm still struggling with how different it is than working at Mayo and working exclusively in one specific field.

Well, I think with that I am going to call it a morning. Things to do today in preparation of the potential arrival of my sisters-in-law.

The start of a new week...

After a relaxing weekend, the week has begun in earnest. It was a good day at work, though. After my funk last week, being able to have a good day no matter what's happening is such a blessing! I stayed fairly busy until lunch, and found a few things to occupy my afternoon. I'm in the hematology department right now, historically my least favorite area of the lab, but I'm making the best of it. The worst part is making blood smear slides--I don't have the technique fully mastered yet.

Yesterday at church one of the young men, Joshua, gave the message. As I understand it, he is 19 years old. He did a really good job, speaking on Psalm 22. I am impressed that the church, though not having many in attendance, is seeking to develop the talents of the young men there. I don't know yet why God brought us to Des Moines, but I wonder if being involved at Bethany might not be part of the plan.

Friday morning I started looking at one chapter in Psalms each morning as I eat breakfast. It has been an uplifting experience, and something I wish I'd been keeping a priority more consistently. Abi and I usually will read a few chapters each evening, but getting some time in the Word before going to work is also important. What I'm trying to do is take some notes on the chapter and then read the corresponding section out of Spurgeon's The Treasury of David.

It's already 5 PM. We had an early supper a little bit ago as I was hungry and Abi hadn't eaten lunch. I'm tired, but it's too early to go to bed. There's some reading to be done, and then we'll see where the evening takes us.

I hope you all had a wonderful day, and I will catch you later!

Settling in...

For those of you who don't know, Abi and I moved to Des Moines, IA, on October 3rd, 2011. I have taken a job as a Medical Technologist at the VA Hospital here in Des Moines, and things are starting to get settled for us. We've upgraded housing a bit, going from a two-bedroom apartment of roughly 850 square feet to a two-bedroom townhouse at just over 1000 square feet. It's a very nice place, one major advantage being a utility room with laundry hookups, of which we took advantage within a week or so of moving to town. The first night here my dad and sister-in-law Susanna stayed with us to help rearrange things on our second day, and within a couple of weeks we hosted a friend of Abi's for a night as she was moving from Illinois to Idaho and we were pretty much on the way.

For about a week and a half, ending this past Thursday, I was under a very dark cloud, being quite grouchy and looking for everything about our situation that I could dislike. My attitude was very hurtful to Abi, especially since I was very closed off about the whole thing, but thankfully we were able to talk as we lay in bed Thursday night and a ray of light broke through. Yes, there are things about our situation that I find less than desirable, the commute to work being near the top of the list (it's hard to adjust to a 20-25 minute drive after living only 5 minutes from work). But there are a lot of good things about where we're at now, and the way we got to Des Moines was so undoubtedly God's leading that there must be some reason we're here. I still don't know exactly what that reason may be, but there's plenty of work to be done for His Kingdom, and my moping about doesn't do anything to further that cause.

We've attended Bethany Baptist Church here in town for the past three Sundays, and will be heading there again this morning. It is a smaller congregation, but the people are friendly, the preaching comes out of the Bible, the singing and music is wonderful, and it's very possible we've found our church home.

And with that, it's definitely time I got up, shaved, and got dressed. I've already been through my morning Bible reading and my daily perusal of the comics, and I've had a bite to eat, so I really have little left to do for the morning routine.

May you be blessed today as you serve the Lord!

Welcome

Hi there, and welcome to the new Joe Westbrook Experience.

I kinda lost my purpose with the old blog, and so I decided to start fresh. That, and I wanted to change the e-mail address tied to my blog (how's that for a reason?). It was such a little thing, but it was frustrating to be logged in to the blog and have to either log out or run a different browser to log in to different Google functions with my main e-mail address. So now, here I am.

My previous blog ended up being basically just posts about my exercise activities. While I will likely be posting those things again for those who are interested, I don't want that to be my main focus. What I want to be in the habit of is sharing things related to Christianity and encouraging anyone reading this to examine their lives from a standpoint of faith -- if you're already a Christian, I hope what I have to say will be a blessing to you and will lead you to a closer walk with God, and if you're not a Christian, I hope you will consider what I say and begin to think on Jesus Christ as someone more than a man out of history.

I will do my best to answer comments and questions, but you have to realize that working a job that keeps me out of my house for 9 1/2 hours every day and needing to spend time with my wife, Abi, will prevent me at times from getting online. Also, as a courtesy, I ask that even if you think I'm totally off my rocker in anything I say, you keep your comments clean -- not just toward me, but toward anyone else who has commented. I will not tolerate profanity and any such comments will be deleted the second I am aware of them.

With that, I hope you have a blessed day, and enjoy the experience!