MAKING PLANS TO BUILD A DEBT-FREE HOUSE THANKS TO STEEMIT

Things like this can be very difficult.

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At the moment, @mama-pepper and I have an incredibly rare opportunity. It looks like we are going to be able to design our own house to build. I know that many people do get to design their own houses and build them, but I consider this to be rare for two reasons.

First off, we are not, at least by American standards, a wealthy couple. Sure, a lot of "rich people" may get to design interesting houses and build them in the cities of their choice, but this is not a common experience among the common folk.

Secondly, we will be building it debt-free. This is part of what makes it so rare. Some people don't even purchase their gasoline or groceries debt-free these days. However, having a conviction from the Lord that debt bondage is a curse and is not a good thing to choose to get into, we ruled out that option years ago. Whether we can afford to build the house that we are working on designing or not, either way it will be without borrowing money or paying interest.

If that means that we have to eliminate some of the things in our current house plan, then we will eliminate them, at least for the time being.

HOW IN THE WORLD???

Some of you may be wondering, "How in the world can a common man afford to build a house debt-free house?" Honestly, this took a miracle. No matter how many bills and expenses we cut out, and no matter how hard I worked, we could never get ahead much. We were able to keep saving our existing savings and taking care of our expenses, but we weren't really making much progress on adding to our savings.

I would work incredibly hard almost every day, sometimes from before dawn until long after dark. I would even leave my family for days on end to travel for more lucrative jobs, all with the hope of being able to make just a little more money and have a little more to stash away for our future.

In the end, it never really worked out. It is incredibly hard to get ahead in this world, and many can testify to that. However, then something amazing happened. STEEMIT WAS CREATED!

As a complete crypto n00b and internet imbecile (meaning that I never spent any real time online, couldn't upload a photo, never had a facebook account, etc...) I joined steemit and began to try to figure this thing out. Like all of us, I made some mistakes along the way, but the opportunity was too great for me not to at least try.

After working incredibly hard for a very long time on a daily basis, steemit provided the possibility that had escaped me no matter what job I did. I cannot help but marvel at what is possible thanks to this revolutionary platform.

THE STRUGGLE

Many of you may think that it would be a huge blessing to be able to design your own house and be able to build it debt-free, and it certainly is. However, a peculiar struggle arose in the process. You see, marriages generally include two people and these people are not the same person. This may appear to be obvious, but it does bring certain difficulties to the table.

Different people have different ideas, different goals, different preferences, and different viewpoints. @Mama-pepper and I had shopped around for houses for a while before be got a mortgage to "buy" the one we had in Wisconsin. Houses that are already built can be a lot easier to agree on. There are far less variables, and it basically comes down to a "take it or leave it" style of choosing. Either you like the house that is already built or you do not.

When you are designing your own house, it can be much more difficult. This is especially true if you have no real clue what you are doing. Neither of us have ever designed houses or built them before, and, until recently, we never thought too deeply about exactly what our house would look like. Sure, we had a goal of eventually building one, but that was just a goal, and for a long time it was just more of a pipe dream.

THE PROGRESS

Not all that long ago, we found a free online house designer to help give us a general idea of some staring points. After I roughed out some stuff, @mama-pepper took over and added some more of her ideas. Then, something incredible happened.

One of our neighbors, who happens to build houses asked if we would like some help tonight. He then proceeded to copy what we had come up with into his own program, and began to offer insight and advice.

It was such a huge blessing to have someone with experience and understanding there to help walk us through the process. This was the next step forward that we needed to take. The house site is already cleared, we just needed to know what we were building.

For starters, we began with a basic idea of how we would like things to be in an ideal house. No more kitchens that are basically hallways or closets. No more walls where we wouldn't prefer them. Also, we wanted to shoot for making a house that our family would never outgrow, no matter how big it gets, and that would hopefully stand the test of time and be able to be passed on to one of our @little-peppers once we no longer needed it.

We still have some tweaking to do, and then we will have to price it out, but, for now, we are heading in the right direction.

I know that this is an amazing thing, from the beginning to end. I can't believe that things like this are actually becoming my reality. I don't share any of this to brag or boast, but instead to show what can happen to your average person in the world, when they have a goal and faithfully press on towards it. Additionally, I cannot leave out that steemit was the way that this is going to be possible.

I have always felt that this platform was a revolutionary technology with the power to liberate those in need of economic emancipation, and things like this are evidence that testifies to that truth.

Anyways, whatever happens moving forward, we'll keep you posted!

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-finally-getting-some-house-plans-together

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Until next time…

Don’t waste your time online, invest it with steemit.com

GIF provided by @malos10

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