Does your wife know about this?

As many of you know, my husband has had some health issues that have caused us to incur some debt. We have worked very hard to whittle away at the bills, but it just seems overwhelming at times. We have transferred most of our debt onto our credit cards and have three medical bills that we've been paying on.

The other day, Jason came to me to see about the possibility of getting a home equity loan to pay off all the debt. Thinking this would be a good idea we called our mortgage company to see. Turns out, since we live in Texas, we have to have our mortgage and home value be at least 80% different. Ours was 84% so we didn't qualify. Darn. Oh well, I thought, we'll just keep paying things off.

Then last night, Jason couldn't sleep. He's got a lot on his mind and that's how he internalizes things ... he just can't sleep because his mind is racing trying to figure out a solution. So, this morning I can tell he has something on his mind. He comes in with his computer and says this, "What if we trade in my car and use the equity in it to pay off our bills." Basically, we'd trade in his Camry and whatever we have left after paying off his car (we had about a year and a half left) we would pay off our credit card and medical debt. Sounded like a good idea, if it would work. It has been my experience with car dealers that they never give you what you think your car is worth. After agreeing that this might be a viable option, we started looking online. Jason found a car that he had been thinking about and played with the numbers. After deciding on what his course of action would be, he got dressed and headed to the dealership (Dodge City of McKinney). I knew right away that he was serious about this because he did not flinch when I said that he would have to go by himself because his mom was coming over to help me finish painting.

During the course of the morning the phone rang with Jason on the other end asking questions that he needed for the salesman. I'm trying to be as helpful as possible without divulging any information simply because his mom was there and I didn't think she needed to know right then what we were doing. Finally Jason called one last time saying that the deal was going to work but he needed a few things from me since I was going to be the primary loan person (better credit). So when we were done painting, I piled the kids into the car and off we went to McKinney to seal the deal. And what a deal it was. This is what Jason settled on... a 2009 Dodge Charger. Jack LOVES it, and Caroline's okay with it. She's not sure about the color.

Of course, the last time I talked with Jason he said, "I wish you'd hurry up and get up here. They keep asking me if you knew I was going to get this." Yes, I knew he was going to look at them and if the deal worked get one. We'd talked about it, we're married. I didn't get my hopes up because I didn't think it would work. There were too many variables: car payment, amount back, ability to pay off bills, insurance rates, etc. But it did work out. The car payment is a little more than what we were paying (not much), the amount back will help us get debt free (as much as possible), and the insurance went up $5.