May 26, 2025 • 18 mins
Taryn and I share some exciting news. Hopefully, we can encourage you as you pursue the goals the Lord puts on your heart.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Paul, Welcome to Catholic moneytalk, where we talk about all
things money and finance, and wetry to do it through a lens of
being Catholic, where ourultimate goal is to one day be
in Heaven with the Lord. I amyour host. Paul Scarfone, thank
you for being here today.
Welcome back to Catholic moneytalk today, I am joined by my
(00:21):
wife, Taryn. Hi everybody, andwe've got some news to share,
but before we do that, let's saya prayer in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of theHoly Spirit. Amen, Heavenly
Father. We thank you for thisday. We thank you for all the
ways that you love and bless us.
Lord. We know that you have anawesome plan for us. Thank you
(00:41):
for your Holy Spirit. Pleaseallow us to yield to your Holy
Spirit so that we can follow youin all those daily invitations
that you invite us into. Lord,just give us great peace no
matter what situation we mightfind ourselves in, fill us full
of hope and allow us to pursueyou. We ask all this in Jesus
name, amen, name of the Fatherand of the Son and of the Holy
(01:04):
Spirit, Amen. So turn and I havesome news, but before we share
that, I want to just remindeveryone of if you've been with
us here on Catholic money talkfor a while, there's been
something that I bring up everynow and then on different
podcasts, and one of the thingsI'll talk about is goals. And
(01:28):
it's important to have a goalthat you are working towards. A
goal is helpful. It gives youconfidence, it gives you
direction, it gives youmotivation. And your goals
should be reflected in yourbudget, and so Tara and I have
had some goals that we've hadreflected in our budget. One in
(01:48):
particular, it's come a littlesooner than I thought it would
be. But Taryn, what is the goalthat we've been after for Well,
seven years now to pay off ourmortgage. And so why are you
here today? Because we did it.
We did it. We paid off ourmortgage. That's so awesome. So
we did we paid off our mortgage,and I did not think it would
(02:13):
come as early in the year as May2025 but it did, and and we're
going to talk about that just alittle bit today. We're excited,
so we wanted to share it, andthis seemed like a good safe
place to share it, becauseanyone that's been listening to
podcast knows that's somethingwe've been working towards.
(02:34):
We're not gloating. We are notnothing. It's all just so good,
we are so excited. It's thebiggest goal that we've worked
on together and that we'veachieved. And when we bought the
house seven, almost seven, it'snot even seven. Six and a half
years ago, we bought it, thebank told us we could, we could
(02:57):
spend X amount. We chose alesser amount because we wanted
to pay off our mortgage as soonas we could. When we first
bought the house, we thought,oh, let's it'd be great if we
could pay it off by the timeJosh graduated high school, and
I think after the first year, wekind of knew that that wasn't
going to happen. At least thetrajectory. There were some
expenses that came up. We wantto put a fence around the yard
just for safety and differentthings. And those costs, right?
(03:19):
They all take away from we onlyhave a finite amount of money
that comes in every month, sowhen we choose to do other
things with it, it's less we canput towards our goal. So after
the first year, we thought, ohyeah, we're definitely not gonna
be able to do that. Well, maybewe could pay it off by the time
our second oldest child wasgoing to go to, was going to
(03:40):
graduate high school, and that'skind of what we had. We've been
plugging away. And then lastyear, and I remember sharing
this in one of the podcasts atthe end of the year, I had kind
of messed up with taxes a littlebit. We had a bigger refund than
we expected, and we switchedsome business things on my
wife's business. So that gave usalmost like an extra month's
(04:03):
income, because one of ourbusiness partners that we work
with changed their terms onpaying us. Instead of doing 75
days, it was 45 days. That kindof gave us an extra month of
income. So we had some extramoney, and when we put all that
extra towards the mortgage, itgot within striking distance,
and we thought, Whoa, 2025,might be the year we could
(04:24):
probably do it. And that's howwe came into the year. And then
couple weeks ago, or just lastweek, I was talking to a friend
about our goal to pay off ourmortgage, and they said, Really,
you want to do that? Like, how?
What's your rate? Like, don'tyou make more in your savings
account? All that was true. WhatI said to them was, I want to
pay off the mortgage. Becausepeople I've met that have paid
(04:48):
off their mortgage are superexcited. I've never met someone
who had a regret about it, andthey're usually more excited
than people that got aphenomenal interest rate on
their savings account or 15.
Percent, or 20, 30% rate ofreturn on the market for a year.
The people that more excited aretypically the ones that paid off
their mortgage. And they'refewer of those people. Those
people are weird. They don'treally exist. But we do. We do
(05:09):
so we paid it off we I came homeand I kind of calculated some
numbers. I said to Taryn Terren,what if we what if we pay off
the mortgage this week, and shelooked at me, are you serious?
And I saw, like, almost a littletear in her eye, and I'm like,
what she's like, are youserious? Like we could, I could
tell she'd be really excited. SoI decided, yes, we have to be
(05:32):
able to do this. So we kind ofpulled money from everywhere,
little ancillary accounts,different places, and it all
came together to be within about100 bucks of having to pay it
off. And so Thursday last week,we have a little chart on our
fridge. It's our floor plan. Wecolor it in every month based on
how much of the house we've paidoff. And we had, I think, half
(05:53):
the living room and the kitchen,I think that still had to be
colored and everything else hadbeen paid off and colored in.
And so our kids come home fromschool, and we're there in the
kitchen. Terrence got hercomputer to make that final
payment, and we've got the floorplan on the island, and we tell
the kids, we're, you know, we'vebeen doing this, we're gonna pay
(06:15):
it off now. Andthey look a little excited,
little not sure what's going on,and we paid off when our one of
our middle kids, she's like,Okay, can we go now? Like, and
I'm just, you know, my otherdaughter's like, You guys are so
much more excited about thisthan we are, and that's true.
And I told them, Well, 1520,years from now, you're gonna
(06:35):
look back and go, wait, wait.
Mom and dad paid their mortgageoff when they were in their mid
40s, in their lower 40s. I'm inmy early 40s, early 40s. I'm in
my mid 40s. So that's what wepaid off our mortgage. So
hopefully that'll be inspirationfor the kids. But we thought it
appropriate to share it here,but also talk about a couple of
(06:58):
the key pieces that we reallywant to highlight and encourage
all of you with and just to alsoreflect on ourselves. So I'll go
first. I had there was threepoints that I thought were key,
(07:19):
three elements that are key intoachieving a goal like this, and
not just paying off a mortgage,but any type of goal that's
going to require you to put timeand effort and attention
towards. And so those threeelements, the first one was just
surrendering it to the Lord. Andwhat do I mean by that? We had
prayed about this. We didn'tjust like, hey, let's just do
this. This seems like it'd becool. I saw, you know, I heard
(07:42):
someone talk about paying offmortgage. It sounds like fun.
Let's do it like we reallyprayed about Lord. What do you
want us to do when we have extradollars that come in? Like,
what's the top priority and wejust surrender it to the Lord,
and He is faithful to us. So wepray about financial decisions.
We seek wisdom from others. Wepray. And so I feel like the the
(08:06):
top thing that is importantsomething like this is to make
Jesus the Lord of your finances,and to seek His will in these
things, and he will help youachieve it. So the first was
just being faithful to the Lord,second is working together. I
think that was key. If, if wedidn't have each other as
(08:27):
accountability, if I would saysomething like, Hey, can I buy
this thing? Or, what if we dothis or that? And Taryn would
say, we're trying to pay off thehouse. So once the house is paid
off, then we can do those otherthings. And so that was a good
reminder. And vice versa, Iprobably said the same thing to
you. And if one of us wasn't onboard with this, it wouldn't
(08:48):
have happened, agreed so beingthe two of us working out
together, and then the thirdpart is just living on less than
we make. And so, you know, it'sreally about creating those
funds. I talk about in otherepisodes, when I talk about our
lifestyle, and trying to avoidlifestyle creeping. When I think
(09:10):
of lifestyle, I think of ourcup, and I'm referencing Psalm
23 where the Lord says, or wherethe psalmist is talking about
the Lord's my shepherd. There'snothing I shall want. You know,
it's my head with oil. My cupoverflows. And so how do you get
overflow? You you have a smallercup, right? And so whatever the
(09:32):
flow is, you know that could beyour income, just God's
blessings. If our needs andwants, our desires, is small,
there's it creates overflow. Soif there's if you have a small
cup, there's overflow. If youhave a swimming pool, you might
always feel empty because you'renever getting full. And so when
you're prayerfully makingdecisions, and you're
(09:52):
prayerfully determined, Whatsize is your cup, your lifestyle
cup, your financial lifestylecup, when it's the appropriate
size, whatever the Lord's.
Blessing you with you createoverflow that you can do other
things with. You can begenerous. Can achieve fun goals,
like paying off your house, andso you only do that through
living on less than you make.
And that's one of the things wetalk about here, just how to
(10:12):
manage your money well so thatyou can achieve those types of
things. That could be goalsetting. It could be having a
budget. Could be working withyour spouse. So for me, those
were the three things,surrendering our finances to the
Lord, working together andliving in less than we make, and
we were able to achieve ourgoals. But when we were talking
about it, you were excited,because you remember a moment
(10:33):
that you felt help propelI agree with all of those
things, but for me, there weretwo, two moments in particular
when we had first starting,started working on our budget,
and we went through a course,and we were listening to some
talks. And there was one storythat really struck me. The
presenter was said that he had afriend who was, he was a wealthy
(10:57):
man, and at one point of time,he spent like $70,000 and he
took his kids, his grandkids, awhole big group of people, on an
all expense paid cruise. And hesaid, like, how wonderful it was
having that family time. Butthen a few months later, he
(11:18):
bought bicycles for inner citykids, to the tune of two tractor
trailers full and $70,000 andhis family went and they handed
out the bicycles to all thesechildren. And part of why I
wanted to pay off our mortgage,because I want to have the
(11:40):
freedom to do things like that,and if we have hundreds of 1000s
of dollars worth of debt, thatis not a possibility for us. I
want to be able to take myfamily on a cruise, and I want
to be able to give awaybicycles. And having those kind
of goals and dreams was just onething that really helped me stay
(12:01):
motivatedand and that story, if you
remember when he was kind ofinterviewing his friend, asking
about that story, he asked hisfriend, he said, of the cruise
or handing out bicycles, whichdid your family enjoy more? And
they said, handing out thebicycles, of course, of course.
So yes, paint, having goals,getting rid of debt, whether it
(12:26):
be, you know, good debt or baddebt, whether it be a mortgage,
like we just did, it just freesup money. And we've, you know,
our mortgage was $2,000 a month,and we had been paying probably
an extra 2000 or more a month,if you figure out just the
averages. So literally, thatopens up almost $4,000 a month.
(12:51):
And there I'm giving realnumbers like I'm not not
impressed or embarrassed by it,but that's just the truth of it.
So when think of your ownsituation, could you imagine if
your mortgage that you're payingwas gone, right? Yes, it would
take some extra money everymonth. If you squeezed and
carved that out and put that onyour your your regular mortgage
payment, how quickly would yourmortgage be gone? And then what
(13:13):
happens when it's gone? Well,all that money that you've been
paying paying is now freed up inyour budget to do whatever you
feel Lord's calling you to do.
So cool and Taran, you hadanother story too. What was your
other story?
The other thing that reallypropelled me towards this goal
was Paul and I went on amarriage retreat, that's right,
(13:38):
a Catholic marriage retreat.
Catholic marriage retreat. Atthis point, it was about seven
years ago, our fifth, fifthchild was a baby. He was an
infant, and he was with us onthe retreat, but one this was
when we had decided that wewanted to move we wanted to move
closer to our children's school.
We needed a bit more space forour family, so we were starting
(14:01):
to look at houses and thinkabout listing our house, and
the bank told us we could affordx, and we had decided we should
probably spend less, becausewe'd like to be able to pay off
our house. And that was allreinforced when you saw,
yeah, I was on the retreat andjust in the bathroom, was a sign
(14:24):
that said, live simply, so thatothers may simply live. And I
really found that so that wasreally just a sign from the
Lord, for me personally, that weshould not max out our budget
for this house, that we neededto still have space in our
budget to be able to tithe andbe generous. And what
(14:44):
happened was, when we werelooking for a home, it was hard
to find one. The price range wehad, I think, was 400 to 550 for
the house we were looking for,and most of the things that we
found were flips that we justdidn't like. And. And I remember
talking to Taryn saying, Hey, weprobably need to increase our
price range to find something.
And Taryn said, Well, we couldlook a little lower. And we
(15:07):
looked in a town that we hadn'treally looked in much, mostly
because we didn't understand thebussing reimbursement situation.
That's a whole nother topic, butin New Jersey, they're in
certain towns, if there'sbussing for your kids to get to
school and you go to privateschool, you can apply to the
(15:27):
town for transportation, andthey will say, No, we are not
getting you to and from yourschool, but we will give you
some money for you to figure outyour own transportation. And so
we were looking in towns wheremaybe we could get some bussing
money. That's what we call it,bussing money. And we didn't
know much about this town. Wedidn't know anyone that lived in
it, and all of a sudden, Tarynsays, Hey, there's a house for I
(15:49):
think it was 390 and she sent mea listing, and the front of the
picture just looked ugly,because it like, clearly there
were some additions and like thestreet, the curb appeal wasn't
great, nice landscaping, butthat just a house. And I said,
All right, well, we'll go lookat it. We drive down the street.
It's the last house on a deadend street. Now we're coming off
a busy, double yellow roadacross from a hospital, so
(16:11):
driving down the quiet dead endstreet, I was like, We'll take
it. I think our realtor waslike, well, let's go look inside
the house first. And we walkedin, and there was, we love this
room in the back that you couldjust it's surrounded by windows,
and it's just beautiful. We'relike, we'll take it and and we
bought it, and that's the house,and we've been here. It was
(16:32):
seven years in August, and inless than seven years, we paid
off the house. So who needs a 30year? Who needs a 15 year? We
had a six and a half yearmortgage? So really cool. Thank
you, Taryn, for coming to joinme today, and again, we're
sharing this. We're excited. Youcould probably tell, maybe even
(16:53):
a little emotional. You couldprobably tell, but mostly to
just say they this is possiblefor you, but you need to work
together. You need to pray andask the Lord to like clearly
show you what your goals andprayers need to be. You need to
work together. You need to havegreat unity, and then you'll get
there. You live on less than youmake. Have a plan for managing
(17:16):
the money, figure out thebehaviors that you need to have
hold each other accountable, andyou will get there. So you can
pray for us as we try todetermine what's the next goal
in front of us. Taryn mentionedto me that the other day. She's
like, I feel an emptiness. I'mlike, because we don't have a
mortgage. She's like, No,because we don't have this big
goal that we've had, right? Sowe've got to pick the next big
(17:38):
goal. So, yeah, think of us.
Pray for us as as you pray.
We're trying to figure it out,but we will go through I have
some podcast episodes on goalsetting, so we're going to go
through those and be, you know,open to that process, to see
what the Lord puts on our heartnext. So thank you for joining
(17:58):
me today. Taryn, thank you forlistening to us today. Hopefully
we've been able to inspire andencourage you to get a clear
goal and go after it. I hope theLord, I hope you can hear the
Lord speak clearly to you as youtry to define some goals. Thank
you for joining us today. Godbless Thank you for listening to
(18:26):
Catholic money talk. I hope youjoin us again next time, please
click Subscribe in your podcastapp to get notified of new
episodes. God bless you and havea great day. You. I'm.
Paul, Welcome to Catholic moneytalk, where we talk about all
things money and finance, and wetry to do it through a lens of
being Catholic, where ourultimate goal is to one day be
in Heaven with the Lord. I amyour host. Paul Scarfone, thank
you for being here today.
Welcome back to Catholic moneytalk today, I am joined by my
(00:21):
wife, Taryn. Hi everybody, andwe've got some news to share,
but before we do that, let's saya prayer in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of theHoly Spirit. Amen, Heavenly
Father. We thank you for thisday. We thank you for all the
ways that you love and bless us.
Lord. We know that you have anawesome plan for us. Thank you
(00:41):
for your Holy Spirit. Pleaseallow us to yield to your Holy
Spirit so that we can follow youin all those daily invitations
that you invite us into. Lord,just give us great peace no
matter what situation we mightfind ourselves in, fill us full
of hope and allow us to pursueyou. We ask all this in Jesus
name, amen, name of the Fatherand of the Son and of the Holy
(01:04):
Spirit, Amen. So turn and I havesome news, but before we share
that, I want to just remindeveryone of if you've been with
us here on Catholic money talkfor a while, there's been
something that I bring up everynow and then on different
podcasts, and one of the thingsI'll talk about is goals. And
(01:28):
it's important to have a goalthat you are working towards. A
goal is helpful. It gives youconfidence, it gives you
direction, it gives youmotivation. And your goals
should be reflected in yourbudget, and so Tara and I have
had some goals that we've hadreflected in our budget. One in
(01:48):
particular, it's come a littlesooner than I thought it would
be. But Taryn, what is the goalthat we've been after for Well,
seven years now to pay off ourmortgage. And so why are you
here today? Because we did it.
We did it. We paid off ourmortgage. That's so awesome. So
we did we paid off our mortgage,and I did not think it would
(02:13):
come as early in the year as May2025 but it did, and and we're
going to talk about that just alittle bit today. We're excited,
so we wanted to share it, andthis seemed like a good safe
place to share it, becauseanyone that's been listening to
podcast knows that's somethingwe've been working towards.
(02:34):
We're not gloating. We are notnothing. It's all just so good,
we are so excited. It's thebiggest goal that we've worked
on together and that we'veachieved. And when we bought the
house seven, almost seven, it'snot even seven. Six and a half
years ago, we bought it, thebank told us we could, we could
(02:57):
spend X amount. We chose alesser amount because we wanted
to pay off our mortgage as soonas we could. When we first
bought the house, we thought,oh, let's it'd be great if we
could pay it off by the timeJosh graduated high school, and
I think after the first year, wekind of knew that that wasn't
going to happen. At least thetrajectory. There were some
expenses that came up. We wantto put a fence around the yard
just for safety and differentthings. And those costs, right?
(03:19):
They all take away from we onlyhave a finite amount of money
that comes in every month, sowhen we choose to do other
things with it, it's less we canput towards our goal. So after
the first year, we thought, ohyeah, we're definitely not gonna
be able to do that. Well, maybewe could pay it off by the time
our second oldest child wasgoing to go to, was going to
(03:40):
graduate high school, and that'skind of what we had. We've been
plugging away. And then lastyear, and I remember sharing
this in one of the podcasts atthe end of the year, I had kind
of messed up with taxes a littlebit. We had a bigger refund than
we expected, and we switchedsome business things on my
wife's business. So that gave usalmost like an extra month's
(04:03):
income, because one of ourbusiness partners that we work
with changed their terms onpaying us. Instead of doing 75
days, it was 45 days. That kindof gave us an extra month of
income. So we had some extramoney, and when we put all that
extra towards the mortgage, itgot within striking distance,
and we thought, Whoa, 2025,might be the year we could
(04:24):
probably do it. And that's howwe came into the year. And then
couple weeks ago, or just lastweek, I was talking to a friend
about our goal to pay off ourmortgage, and they said, Really,
you want to do that? Like, how?
What's your rate? Like, don'tyou make more in your savings
account? All that was true. WhatI said to them was, I want to
pay off the mortgage. Becausepeople I've met that have paid
(04:48):
off their mortgage are superexcited. I've never met someone
who had a regret about it, andthey're usually more excited
than people that got aphenomenal interest rate on
their savings account or 15.
Percent, or 20, 30% rate ofreturn on the market for a year.
The people that more excited aretypically the ones that paid off
their mortgage. And they'refewer of those people. Those
people are weird. They don'treally exist. But we do. We do
(05:09):
so we paid it off we I came homeand I kind of calculated some
numbers. I said to Taryn Terren,what if we what if we pay off
the mortgage this week, and shelooked at me, are you serious?
And I saw, like, almost a littletear in her eye, and I'm like,
what she's like, are youserious? Like we could, I could
tell she'd be really excited. SoI decided, yes, we have to be
(05:32):
able to do this. So we kind ofpulled money from everywhere,
little ancillary accounts,different places, and it all
came together to be within about100 bucks of having to pay it
off. And so Thursday last week,we have a little chart on our
fridge. It's our floor plan. Wecolor it in every month based on
how much of the house we've paidoff. And we had, I think, half
(05:53):
the living room and the kitchen,I think that still had to be
colored and everything else hadbeen paid off and colored in.
And so our kids come home fromschool, and we're there in the
kitchen. Terrence got hercomputer to make that final
payment, and we've got the floorplan on the island, and we tell
the kids, we're, you know, we'vebeen doing this, we're gonna pay
(06:15):
it off now. Andthey look a little excited,
little not sure what's going on,and we paid off when our one of
our middle kids, she's like,Okay, can we go now? Like, and
I'm just, you know, my otherdaughter's like, You guys are so
much more excited about thisthan we are, and that's true.
And I told them, Well, 1520,years from now, you're gonna
(06:35):
look back and go, wait, wait.
Mom and dad paid their mortgageoff when they were in their mid
40s, in their lower 40s. I'm inmy early 40s, early 40s. I'm in
my mid 40s. So that's what wepaid off our mortgage. So
hopefully that'll be inspirationfor the kids. But we thought it
appropriate to share it here,but also talk about a couple of
(06:58):
the key pieces that we reallywant to highlight and encourage
all of you with and just to alsoreflect on ourselves. So I'll go
first. I had there was threepoints that I thought were key,
(07:19):
three elements that are key intoachieving a goal like this, and
not just paying off a mortgage,but any type of goal that's
going to require you to put timeand effort and attention
towards. And so those threeelements, the first one was just
surrendering it to the Lord. Andwhat do I mean by that? We had
prayed about this. We didn'tjust like, hey, let's just do
this. This seems like it'd becool. I saw, you know, I heard
(07:42):
someone talk about paying offmortgage. It sounds like fun.
Let's do it like we reallyprayed about Lord. What do you
want us to do when we have extradollars that come in? Like,
what's the top priority and wejust surrender it to the Lord,
and He is faithful to us. So wepray about financial decisions.
We seek wisdom from others. Wepray. And so I feel like the the
(08:06):
top thing that is importantsomething like this is to make
Jesus the Lord of your finances,and to seek His will in these
things, and he will help youachieve it. So the first was
just being faithful to the Lord,second is working together. I
think that was key. If, if wedidn't have each other as
(08:27):
accountability, if I would saysomething like, Hey, can I buy
this thing? Or, what if we dothis or that? And Taryn would
say, we're trying to pay off thehouse. So once the house is paid
off, then we can do those otherthings. And so that was a good
reminder. And vice versa, Iprobably said the same thing to
you. And if one of us wasn't onboard with this, it wouldn't
(08:48):
have happened, agreed so beingthe two of us working out
together, and then the thirdpart is just living on less than
we make. And so, you know, it'sreally about creating those
funds. I talk about in otherepisodes, when I talk about our
lifestyle, and trying to avoidlifestyle creeping. When I think
(09:10):
of lifestyle, I think of ourcup, and I'm referencing Psalm
23 where the Lord says, or wherethe psalmist is talking about
the Lord's my shepherd. There'snothing I shall want. You know,
it's my head with oil. My cupoverflows. And so how do you get
overflow? You you have a smallercup, right? And so whatever the
(09:32):
flow is, you know that could beyour income, just God's
blessings. If our needs andwants, our desires, is small,
there's it creates overflow. Soif there's if you have a small
cup, there's overflow. If youhave a swimming pool, you might
always feel empty because you'renever getting full. And so when
you're prayerfully makingdecisions, and you're
(09:52):
prayerfully determined, Whatsize is your cup, your lifestyle
cup, your financial lifestylecup, when it's the appropriate
size, whatever the Lord's.
Blessing you with you createoverflow that you can do other
things with. You can begenerous. Can achieve fun goals,
like paying off your house, andso you only do that through
living on less than you make.
And that's one of the things wetalk about here, just how to
(10:12):
manage your money well so thatyou can achieve those types of
things. That could be goalsetting. It could be having a
budget. Could be working withyour spouse. So for me, those
were the three things,surrendering our finances to the
Lord, working together andliving in less than we make, and
we were able to achieve ourgoals. But when we were talking
about it, you were excited,because you remember a moment
(10:33):
that you felt help propelI agree with all of those
things, but for me, there weretwo, two moments in particular
when we had first starting,started working on our budget,
and we went through a course,and we were listening to some
talks. And there was one storythat really struck me. The
presenter was said that he had afriend who was, he was a wealthy
(10:57):
man, and at one point of time,he spent like $70,000 and he
took his kids, his grandkids, awhole big group of people, on an
all expense paid cruise. And hesaid, like, how wonderful it was
having that family time. Butthen a few months later, he
(11:18):
bought bicycles for inner citykids, to the tune of two tractor
trailers full and $70,000 andhis family went and they handed
out the bicycles to all thesechildren. And part of why I
wanted to pay off our mortgage,because I want to have the
(11:40):
freedom to do things like that,and if we have hundreds of 1000s
of dollars worth of debt, thatis not a possibility for us. I
want to be able to take myfamily on a cruise, and I want
to be able to give awaybicycles. And having those kind
of goals and dreams was just onething that really helped me stay
(12:01):
motivatedand and that story, if you
remember when he was kind ofinterviewing his friend, asking
about that story, he asked hisfriend, he said, of the cruise
or handing out bicycles, whichdid your family enjoy more? And
they said, handing out thebicycles, of course, of course.
So yes, paint, having goals,getting rid of debt, whether it
(12:26):
be, you know, good debt or baddebt, whether it be a mortgage,
like we just did, it just freesup money. And we've, you know,
our mortgage was $2,000 a month,and we had been paying probably
an extra 2000 or more a month,if you figure out just the
averages. So literally, thatopens up almost $4,000 a month.
(12:51):
And there I'm giving realnumbers like I'm not not
impressed or embarrassed by it,but that's just the truth of it.
So when think of your ownsituation, could you imagine if
your mortgage that you're payingwas gone, right? Yes, it would
take some extra money everymonth. If you squeezed and
carved that out and put that onyour your your regular mortgage
payment, how quickly would yourmortgage be gone? And then what
(13:13):
happens when it's gone? Well,all that money that you've been
paying paying is now freed up inyour budget to do whatever you
feel Lord's calling you to do.
So cool and Taran, you hadanother story too. What was your
other story?
The other thing that reallypropelled me towards this goal
was Paul and I went on amarriage retreat, that's right,
(13:38):
a Catholic marriage retreat.
Catholic marriage retreat. Atthis point, it was about seven
years ago, our fifth, fifthchild was a baby. He was an
infant, and he was with us onthe retreat, but one this was
when we had decided that wewanted to move we wanted to move
closer to our children's school.
We needed a bit more space forour family, so we were starting
(14:01):
to look at houses and thinkabout listing our house, and
the bank told us we could affordx, and we had decided we should
probably spend less, becausewe'd like to be able to pay off
our house. And that was allreinforced when you saw,
yeah, I was on the retreat andjust in the bathroom, was a sign
(14:24):
that said, live simply, so thatothers may simply live. And I
really found that so that wasreally just a sign from the
Lord, for me personally, that weshould not max out our budget
for this house, that we neededto still have space in our
budget to be able to tithe andbe generous. And what
(14:44):
happened was, when we werelooking for a home, it was hard
to find one. The price range wehad, I think, was 400 to 550 for
the house we were looking for,and most of the things that we
found were flips that we justdidn't like. And. And I remember
talking to Taryn saying, Hey, weprobably need to increase our
price range to find something.
And Taryn said, Well, we couldlook a little lower. And we
(15:07):
looked in a town that we hadn'treally looked in much, mostly
because we didn't understand thebussing reimbursement situation.
That's a whole nother topic, butin New Jersey, they're in
certain towns, if there'sbussing for your kids to get to
school and you go to privateschool, you can apply to the
(15:27):
town for transportation, andthey will say, No, we are not
getting you to and from yourschool, but we will give you
some money for you to figure outyour own transportation. And so
we were looking in towns wheremaybe we could get some bussing
money. That's what we call it,bussing money. And we didn't
know much about this town. Wedidn't know anyone that lived in
it, and all of a sudden, Tarynsays, Hey, there's a house for I
(15:49):
think it was 390 and she sent mea listing, and the front of the
picture just looked ugly,because it like, clearly there
were some additions and like thestreet, the curb appeal wasn't
great, nice landscaping, butthat just a house. And I said,
All right, well, we'll go lookat it. We drive down the street.
It's the last house on a deadend street. Now we're coming off
a busy, double yellow roadacross from a hospital, so
(16:11):
driving down the quiet dead endstreet, I was like, We'll take
it. I think our realtor waslike, well, let's go look inside
the house first. And we walkedin, and there was, we love this
room in the back that you couldjust it's surrounded by windows,
and it's just beautiful. We'relike, we'll take it and and we
bought it, and that's the house,and we've been here. It was
(16:32):
seven years in August, and inless than seven years, we paid
off the house. So who needs a 30year? Who needs a 15 year? We
had a six and a half yearmortgage? So really cool. Thank
you, Taryn, for coming to joinme today, and again, we're
sharing this. We're excited. Youcould probably tell, maybe even
(16:53):
a little emotional. You couldprobably tell, but mostly to
just say they this is possiblefor you, but you need to work
together. You need to pray andask the Lord to like clearly
show you what your goals andprayers need to be. You need to
work together. You need to havegreat unity, and then you'll get
there. You live on less than youmake. Have a plan for managing
(17:16):
the money, figure out thebehaviors that you need to have
hold each other accountable, andyou will get there. So you can
pray for us as we try todetermine what's the next goal
in front of us. Taryn mentionedto me that the other day. She's
like, I feel an emptiness. I'mlike, because we don't have a
mortgage. She's like, No,because we don't have this big
goal that we've had, right? Sowe've got to pick the next big
(17:38):
goal. So, yeah, think of us.
Pray for us as as you pray.
We're trying to figure it out,but we will go through I have
some podcast episodes on goalsetting, so we're going to go
through those and be, you know,open to that process, to see
what the Lord puts on our heartnext. So thank you for joining
(17:58):
me today. Taryn, thank you forlistening to us today. Hopefully
we've been able to inspire andencourage you to get a clear
goal and go after it. I hope theLord, I hope you can hear the
Lord speak clearly to you as youtry to define some goals. Thank
you for joining us today. Godbless Thank you for listening to
(18:26):
Catholic money talk. I hope youjoin us again next time, please
click Subscribe in your podcastapp to get notified of new
episodes. God bless you and havea great day. You. I'm.
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