continued from yesterday, you must read Part 1 before you read this post, Part 2:

My husband’s franchise is flexible and since Nesting Place has grown he’s been able to take advantage of the flexibility. He works one day at our church during the week and then on Sunday so that means that slowly over the past year he’s taken one and then eased into two or three days home with us on the days the boys are home.  And he’s the patient one with the Master’s Degree in Education who used to teach high school so he’s been the one helping them on their homeschool days. Then one homeschool day last month he came in my office, closed the door and said that sometimes he wished he could just homeschool the boys himself without sending them to school.

And I got a huge goofy grin on my face.

Because we are ‘this-close’ to being debt free and because for some reason people like you come here and read these words and don’t mind coming back again the next day, and because we’ve thrown money at our debt like crazy for the past five years, we are able to make a choice that we never thought would be an option.

My husband is homeschooling our boys.  Starting two weeks ago.

This is the first “freedom decision” we’ve made.  Because two years ago, we needed that income too badly to consider him taking any time away from one of his jobs to be the boys teacher.  And even though he has a graduate degree in education, teaching wasn’t where the money was at to be able to pay off our debt.  And even though he’s always been a sought out teacher at any church we’ve attended, he hasn’t really had the time to do anything extra outside of his jobs because he’s been working so hard.

But now we have a choice.

And he’ll be working less at his jobs, but he’s been easing into that for the past year, plus, their school wasn’t free.  So now we don’t have that expense.

Sidenote:  I know some people think it’s insane for people in debt to pay to send their children to a private school.  (Ok, “some people” was totally me–it KILLED me to pay for school when I knew I could send them to public school or homeschool them for so much less money.) Maybe Dave Ramsey would have advised against it.  But we really wanted a certain style of teaching for a couple of our boys, and one, HAD to have a certain type of school. So the option was homeschool or pay for school.  For me to homeschool full-time, I wouldn’t have been able to spend the time growing Nesting Place. For argument’s sake yes, I could have saved $1 to not put them in school, but putting them in school and paying that allowed me to make $7.  (Totally not the right math, not the right percentage, but for argument’s sake you get the idea.)  So for our family we choose to put them in a great school we loved and me build my business that was already showing promising signs of growth.  Because Nesting Place was already making money, putting them in private school wasn’t a huge gamble like it would have been if I was starting a business.  Yep, we’ve learned that kind of thing the hard way.

 my husband & my dad

And I get to keep writing here. And doing something I love, and I’ll actually have real time to spend working instead of doing everything in the cracks.  Why do I always feel like I only work in the cracks?  Oh yeah, because I do.  I do most of my work before 7am.  And then it’s cracks after that.

And the best news, our boys get to have their dad as a teacher!  They are so lucky.

I am so excited for all of us!

So, small side note but remember how I had that sofa in our foyer because we got a new sofa?  Once I knew we were pulling the boys out of school and they’d be doing more reading books at home I figured it was time to trade out the old homework table for a more cozy option. I pulled that coffee table down from the playroom so they could still have a much-needed surface for working and computing and Lego-ing and puzzle-ing.

But knowing they were gonna be home more led to a different purpose for our family room and ultimately an odd change.  We took the kitchen table out of our family room and brought in a secondary sofa.  Is there such a thing as too many sofas?   I hope not.

Anyway, we are all so excited about this new adventure and I couldn’t wait to share it with you.  Thanks for being a part of it.

I’d love to hear about any “freedom decisions” that your family has been able to make or is hoping to make once your debt is paid off.  Share in the comments?