Skip to content How To Become Debt Free Gary Keesee May 4 · 10 min ...more
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Fixing The Money Thing with Gary Keesee will educate and equip you to walk out your God-given purpose and provide insights and solutions on the topics of faith and finances.
550K followers
0:00 Fixing the Money Thing.0:05 Well, thanks for joining us here on Fixing the Money Thing, and the Bible talks about debt in this manner. Proverbs chapter 22 7 says that the borrower is a slave to the lender and the rich0:17 rule over the poor. A slave brings all kinds of pictures to mind and that is basically no options and no life. And quite frankly, that's how many Americans live. Our couple we have0:29 with us today, Steve and Mindy Higgins, found themselves in great debt, despairing of life, family pressure. Well, let's let them tell their story right now. Steve Mindy, great to have you0:40 guys with us today.0:41 I'm great to have you.0:42 So we're gonna talk about your life, talk about what happened back in 2008. Now you were a very successful builder here in Columbus and you had what going on?0:53 We were building homes, I was a builder, Mindy was a realtor and so it was a pretty good combination and the business was growing very quickly and you know we had done everything we thought we were supposed to1:05 do, were saved but we were living in the natural. We were living for ourselves, trying to build more and more wealth, providing for the kids, helping others, but really just got up in ourselves, really.1:18 Nobody really saw it coming, and out of the blue both the things here in Ohio that tended to be pretty good both crashed at the exact same time. The building market, the real estate market, even1:30 our retirement that we had put in mutual funds and things of that nature which seemed like a very conservative well planned strategy all crashed at the exact same1:38 you had what almost a half million dollar save?1:40 That's correct.1:40 And you're on top of the world, you're expanding every year, you're building more buildings, real estate's going well, and then all of a sudden without warning, poop stops. Music stopped, okay.1:52 So Minnie tell me what happened from your perspective. How did it impact you? What was going on in your mind all this time?1:59 Well everything did end it was hopeless. We were on pins and needles. Steve was trying to be provider for our2:11 house he was not able to do that anymore. And here I had a real estate job which was flexible so I could be with the kids and work around their schedule and that was no longer going to be an option.2:23 So I had to go out and get another job which it made a to me in my heart because I wanted him to be the provider so I could be the mom with my kids.2:32 Sure. Well I think a lot of people probably found themselves in that situation but basically both of you lost your income, you lost your savings, and did you lose your house, did you2:44 lose possessions, did you go bankrupt, where were you at that point?2:47 Right, didn't lose the house, it was a very difficult task to close the business, laying off 88 employees, hundreds of subcontractors impacting these families that had really given their lives to our2:59 business, shared in our vision, and were really applying themselves, we're doing great things. That was very difficult in and of itself, but needless to say, wasn't a good market for my skill set or my profession at that3:10 0.70 percent of my peers were going through the same thing, going bankrupt, losing their businesses, and so it was difficult even with a college degree, even with my background to find a job here in the marketplace.3:22 At first it seemed as though we've seen this before we're going to be okay. We'll just weather through this, but very quickly we realized it wasn't going to be okay. It wasn't going to be as3:34 things have happened in the past and so while our marriage seemed happy when we had plenty of money, it's funny how when the money issues start, the cracks start to show up. Let's talk about that.3:46 Let's talk about your marriage now. So your family life, pressure's on. So Mindy, what's happening inside your marriage right now?3:53 Well, when Steve would come home for work, everybody would go to their corners. He would come in and he'd be so upset about how things were going and we'd be so upset about how things were going that we didn't even want4:05 to talk and it puts such a barrier and such a weight on each of us that we were cracking. And there were plenty of times that he put a for sale sign out in front of our yard, just on a threat because we need to get rid4:15 of this house. Everything was all or nothing and it was going to the nothing and we were, he was, he was ready to come in and get rid of everything. And of course we didn't want that. This was the house we've lived in4:25 for 10 years. You know, we raised our kids were our youngest son was like born in this house. It's, we didn't want to get rid of this, this house and everything that we had and we wanted to provide everything for our4:35 kids and it just nothing was coming together and he would come home and he'd in a bad mood and he'd yell about the lights being on and we're getting rid of all the TVs and all the Xboxes and you kids aren't doing this.4:46 He was always yelling because he was so stressed out and so then I had to jump in the middle. This is how I felt. I'd jump in the middle and I'd be the in between and the 1 who was the barrier so the kids didn't get4:58 yelled at. I would be the 1 to say No, it was me. It just caused a lot of friction between us and the kids started to become afraid and it was it was not a good thing.5:09 Not a good thing. How long did this, now you were Christians, you were still something on the inside and how long were you angry Steve until you finally realized5:21 that you needed help or how did you find a crack through that? What happened?5:26 Sure, well we talked about the business closing, I had to find a job. You know a lot of times people just sit around and they don't do anything but we didn't have an option, we weren't going to go backwards so I just5:37 started looking for jobs and I took what I could find. I wasn't waiting around for upper management position, said we've got bills to pay. So I found myself with a college degree5:49 and after going through sequences, hundreds of resumes out, every contact that I had available to try to find something for me, and I found myself in a retail mall for 7.4 dollars an hour in a cell phone6:00 store. When you put in 60 hours retail in that type of environment it starts playing with your mind and you start getting very frustrated. I did get to move from that into a banking job which paid6:12 more. In fact what many people would consider well you know very well paid the problem was it was still a third of what we needed to pay our bills every month so we continued to sink and sink. I was struggling trying to6:23 keep up with some of the younger guys that maybe had better skill sets with computers and challenged with that and so the stress each day I would come home like she described. Was just both hands kind of barely on the6:33 wheel just trying to survive and I intercepted an email 1 time from her that said to a friend that said here he is again bursting through the door, veins popping out of his head, I just want to run and6:44 hide. That's hurtful when that's your wife and the whole reason you're getting up in the morning is to go to these jobs that you don't really like but to provide that that's their perception of me. Like we said6:56 we were saved but I refer to it as I had my fire insurance policy since I was in the third grade. I was saved. I went to a Christian school, grew up in a Christian home but it was very much a religious experience.7:08 Not necessarily because my pastors didn't do something right, but because I didn't do something right. I didn't apply the Word of God. I didn't have ears to hear in this process and so I wasn't leading a godly run7:19 household. I wasn't running a religious household. Basically once we got to the end of the marriage, she didn't want to be with me any longer which I understand based on the7:30 circumstances we described. I was at such the end of my rope I really didn't feel much like I wanted to be with her any longer either. It was all but over as far as our marriage was concerned.7:43 Know we actually would wake up in the morning wishing that we were dead believing that if we were dead it would be better for the other person, well I don't know that we were really concerned about the other person, but7:52 we were concerned about the kids at that point.7:54 Well we did actually have an argument once about who it was that was going to kill themselves and it was just so bizarre that I'm like no you need to stay because the kids need you. No they need you because you're their8:03 mom. Mean it was it's bizarre.8:05 And so really while we say there was really no love there was obviously love there8:09 or else we would8:10 have been concerned about that. But that's where we found ourselves and so you know we had gone to marriage counseling and the first marriage counselor was a secular counselor that really didn't have quite the right8:23 direction for us. He actually suggested drinking. That maybe drinking might And we thought okay this isn't the right person. So we sought a marriage counselor that had a little8:35 bit more of our background in terms of our religious beliefs and spiritual beliefs at that point. So she met with us for a while and she basically could really quickly identify this was a debt related issue and this8:46 was our circumstances we were in. She said if you didn't love each other 1 of you would have already been gone. She said you can keep coming here if you want and she goes I love taking 150 dollars an hour. She8:58 says but what you really need is to get plugged into a local church. So we thought well that's interesting.9:06 Steve may have to hold that just for a second. I want to hear the story and I'm sure you do too, how this all plays out. When we come back in just a moment, we're going hear more from Steve and Mindy about how the9:15 Kingdom of God changed their lives completely. Hi. I'm Gary Kasey, and you will never fulfill your destiny until you fix your money thing. Visit GaryKasey dot com, and don't forget9:27 to hit the subscribe button below for more amazing weekly videos on fixing your money thing. And thanks for watching.
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