In June of 2016, I felt a strong spiritual conviction that we would pay off over $60,000 in debt by September 1, 2016.
Call it God (we did), the Universe, Spirit guides, or just supernatural intuition, it was unlike anything I had experienced before
Our Story
Early in 2009, my wife Jenna and I were debt free. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t owe anything. Then Jenna’s father, Chuck Coker, a charismatic entrepreneur and leader among men, was diagnosed with stage 4 abdominal, lung, and brain cancer and given 3 short months to live.
Jenna & Chuck at our Wedding in NYC
We immediately began charging trips to see him on our credit cards, endeavoring to help wherever we could but accumulating debt in the process. As a thank you to us, he sent us to Europe for a 10-day vacation. 4 days into our trip Chuck was moved into hospice care and given days to live. We immediately flew back, spending thousands of dollars for our one-way, last minute tickets. He held on for another week and every minute with him was a privilege.
It would be an understatement to say that the following years were a financial roller coaster. In the process of building a business, I unexpectedly had to take drastic pay cuts shortly after we bought a condo in LA. We squeaked out the mortgage each month for 2 years, but had to charge groceries and other necessities along the way. Then, our amazingly precocious & beautiful little girl Presley arrived! This knocked Jenna’s working ability down quite a bit, especially with me being out of town over 6 months of the year.
Jenna & Baby Presley
With a 3-month-old to take care of and debt looming and getting worse, we realized we could no longer afford our home, and we sold it in 2013, using the profit to pay off half our credit card debt.
After that we downsized 3 more times (in 3 years) in an effort to more responsibly deal with our finances. We sold things, continued to cut our budget, took any gig we could, even living with Jenna’s mother (Thank you, Harriet!) for January, February and August of 2016.
Nevertheless, on June 7th we had an embarrassing
$56,008 in debt
Then, I felt a profound spiritual voice/presence communicate that we would be debt free by September 1st.
We called it God.
For those of you tempted to tune out now, let me tell you what I think the voice of God is.
🗣️ It’s that voice that tells you that the job you just interviewed for is yours, before you get the phone call.
🗣️ It’s the voice that says a relative that passed on that was close to you sees you and is proud of you. It’s the voice that says maybe you should spend some time on your marriage before it’s too late.
🗣️ It’s the voice of Love.
🗣️ Sometimes it comes through other people, like a close friend.
That summer ended up being one of the most rich, scary, yet incredibly exhilarating times of our life.
We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago. For three months Presley had her own room, while Jenna and I slept on a couch in the living room.
💔 The IRS demanded another $5000 (immediately) from us at the end of June, so it’s fair to say we had a $60,000+ problem.
💔 We had our car towed from a legal loading zone, which cost us $220 in CASH.
💔 We were turned down for a car loan, after we thought we should maybe sell our car and downgrade to smaller car, using the profit to go toward the debt.
💔 We had the state of California notify us of an extra $900 tax debt
💔 We had to find and pay deposits/fees on an apartment that we needed to begin 9/01
💔 We had a hotel I was staying at on a business trip drain our bank account to 0$ after charging a massive fee saying that I smoked and trashed the room (I did neither.)
🩵 We received a $10,000 inheritance check out of the blue
🩵 Jenna received an email from a past employer saying there was an outstanding check she hadn’t cashed (we always deposit checks right away so this seemed impossible.)
🩵 We paid off our car.
🩵 The IRS notified us that they were resolving some back taxes we owed and instead of nearly $40,000, we only had to pay $7,028. We are now even with the government.
🩵 I received a bonus from work that never should have happened. Our company had just invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into projects that we were hoping would return revenue in the future, so for our business partner to cut us a check was insane. But it happened.
🩵 A week out from September 1st we had received everything we needed to be completely debt free. Then we realized we needed to get all our belongings to our new home of Chicago from Los Angeles. The cost was an extra $2500 that we had no idea how to get.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my spiritual practices as a lifelong spiritual seeker, former youth pastor, and simple believer that a staggering amount of truth lies beyond our five senses, it’s that God, the Universe, Mother Earth, the Light (call her/him/them what you will) does nothing without love being at the center of the agenda. And Love doesn’t exist in solitude.
So, with a week to go, we felt compelled to share our journey and ask our community for the last bit of this incredible financial miracle.
We made a plea on a crowdfunding website and asked for help. Further, we pledged that If, by another miracle, we raised more than the $2500 goal by our due date, every dollar would be split 50/50 between our local church and the needs we identified from emails we had received from others experiencing similar challenges.
Within 24 hours, we had met and far surpassed our goal. 😭 We paid all our debt, including the last minute moving costs, and on top of that we were able to help many others in need: paying utility bills, grocery bills, and much more.
