Okay, now that you have had some time to peruse the website, meet the other families, and pick your favorites (blue team, right?!?), it's time for US to solicit YOUR help...

That's right - A GARAGE SALE at The Paske House!!

What: Mega Clean-out Fresh-start Garage Sale
When: 8-11am, Saturday, March 14, 2009 (yes, THIS Saturday!)
Where: Overlook Drive, Southwood Neighborhood (It is a neighborhood-wide sale - lots of deals to be had!!)

I will be selling everything that is not nailed down (except my children of course). Items up for sale: fabulous queen/king custom bedding, wrought iron patio furniture, brand name children's toys and clothes, ladies clothes and shoes, handbags, dishes, glasses, household items - you name it, we got it!!

We are hoping that the old saying will hold true, "one man's junk is another man's treasure..." You be the judge!!

Please stop by and check out the goods - we would love to visit with ya'll!!

P.S.

There may even be doughnuts and coffee for the first few patrons! :-)

~Linley

Hello all from the Paske crew and welcome to our personal blog. We hope to share our journey with Florida Commerce Credit Union as we embark on the weLiveFIT Challenge. Please join us on the road to financial freedom… we will be blogging our experiences and will hopefully have some great stories to share along the way.

Before we begin the challenge I do have a small favor to ask of my friends and family... STOP READING NOW! Seriously. Listen, we will be so glad to share our accomplishments at the end of the challenge with you (and of course we will be ecstatic if we win the $10,000), but right now we are not so proud of our past financial mistakes and the current state of financial affairs in our household. We really do feel blessed to be a part of this life changing challenge, but we are anxious about putting all of our financial information out there for the world to see (and scrutinize). In a word, it is embarrassing. We are college graduates with good jobs and ample intelligence. We should be in good financial standing with plenty in savings to spare. That, unfortunately, is not the case. How did we get in this situation, you ask? Well first of all, neither of us came from uber-wealthy families. I was lucky enough to have parents that have helped us to the extent that they could, and David has six siblings and no “family money” to speak of. To fully explain our circumstances, I guess I should start with the real estate bust of 2005/06.

Our little family is truly a product of the real estate market in Florida, and our financial situation is not so different from others in the real estate industry. Add to that a baby that was born the same year as the real estate "bust" and you have a recipe for financial turmoil. About the same time I quit my full-time job to be home with our son, David suffered from a major slow down in residential appraisal work. Since then, we have had another baby and have had to drastically adjust our lifestyle to conform to our decreased cash flow and increased expenses. In the mean-time I have gone back to work full-time (at a job that I love thankfully), and David has successfully gone back to doing commercial appraisal. We are slowly but surely getting back on our feet, but it has not come without many sacrifices.

We made a decision that 2009 would be the year that we came back from the hardships that the real estate market had inflicted. We decided that we wanted to improve our financial future and begin to live debt free. Our goal is to pay off all of our debt and start 2010 on a clean slate with some money in the bank. In order to make that happen as quickly as possible we have had to make some major lifestyle changes. Our philosophy is that we will have a little today so THAT we may have a lot tomorrow. Following that philosophy, we have cut back on all of life’s “luxuries”…

MEANING:

• we don’t have cable at home (shocking I know)
• we don’t have a home phone
• we have low budget cell phone plans
• we share a car (okay, it’s a mini-van)
• we don’t eat out (unless it is Waffle House or the dollar menu)
• we have gotten creative with recreation (park visits, bike rides and local fishing trips are free!)
• no more bi-weekly pedicures
• no more Starbucks :-(
• no more golf (I don’t miss that, but David does)

So, you get the picture, we are on the rice and beans diet. Hopefully we will only have to tighten the belt like this for a year and then we can reap the rewards of living debt free. Things like a good credit score, money in the bank, no bills piled up on the kitchen counter. Ahh, I can see it already!! Don’t think that I don’t count my blessings, because I do. I know we can do without these things for a time period and be just fine. We have each other, our health, and oh yeah, our friends and family - who better have quit reading this at the beginning!! :-)