Enjoy the Little Things ~ The Little Blue Cabin Story -Part 3

Part 3 of our cabin story.  You can find part 1 here, and part 2 here

 May

We both are crazy! We have just met with the salesman and pretty much committed to a cabin. Crazy! That is what we keep telling each other.  We have a teenager who is going to college soon, and someone has to pay that bill!

Dino and I now have a few weeks after that meeting to go over the details on where the cabin will go, and how the cabin will be designed, size, windows, doors, etc… before signing the papers.  We have decided to get a small loan to pay for the cabin and not use our savings.  Luckily, Dino also received a nice check from his former company for vacation days he had accumulated.  That and the loan would cover it.  We have no mortgage, no car payments, and just a little debt on our credit card, we were sure to get approved for the loan.

We did not.

As it turns out, Dino applied for the loan in between jobs, he had about a week off before his new job started, the rejected loan application said it was because he was unemployed at the time of processing.  That really got us thinking.  We both try to live simply, this cabin seemed like such an extravagance. Do we really need it?

Dino would have been fine with our little brick house.  I felt so selfish.  I prayed a lot.  Am I being selfish? Help me find my way. What should we do? Lord, please give me some direction.  When I think back about this time, the only feeling I can remember is that I was falling into a weird little pit of sadness.  I think Dino felt it too. Maybe this was a mid-life crisis.  If I stumble and fall, He is there to help me through my weakness. That was what my heart was telling me.  I felt that we should not be getting a loan but still needed to hang on to this cabin dream. Not just for me, but for both of us.  When Lydia moves on with her life, this was something for us to do together. We both needed this.

Flashback to when I was 21 and working as a receptionist at a life insurance company (can you believe I have a picture?) I remember little from that job (very little haha!), but I do remember the good people that worked there and the clients that came in. They always seemed to be getting whole life policies.  Of course I made Dino and me each get a small one, just enough to cover our needs at the time.  I am not a money person and did not completely understand the difference between whole life and term life like I do now, I just felt it was something that we should do.

Now back to the present time, we are still making payments on those two little policies. We kind of forgot about them honestly.  We called the insurance company and found out that we had enough cash value in those policies to pay for the cabin.  I was so surprised. Less than a week later, we were signing papers.  We just bought a cabin!

It’s a funny thing when you look back on your life, you see more of the plan, and how much the little things really do matter.