Core Truths

  This. This is the place where we were led. This is the house we will call home. When we took our quick trip to North Carolina in October, our plan really and truly was only to see the fall foliage and we thought it would be a good time to scope out towns. We wanted to see if there was a town or place or area that felt like a good fit so we could one day hone in on finding our next home. We had a few towns on our radar and had been casually checking houses for sale in these places. But we made a deal that on this trip there would be no realtor and no seeing houses. We wanted to enjoy the scenery and we knew we could always look at houses later. Much later is what we thought. But there was this one house. Since the summer, Brandon and I both had been looking on various realty sites. I mean, not much else to do on a Friday night, right? While Brandon would scope out just about anything that hit the market, I would always ask, “What about the white house with the circle drive? Is it ...

One of my favorite memories from when Brandon and I were dating and engaged was driving around, eating Blizzards from Diary Queen, and dreaming. We would dream out loud with each other for hours and hours. We would say all of the things we want, all of the things we want to do, all of the things we want to be. At some point, we stopped. At some point, it’s like we accepted some reality of our lives and ourselves and we stopped dreaming. Or we at least stopped saying it out loud. When we started looking at North Carolina as a place we want to be some day, all of that changed. It’s like we had new life breathed into us. If we were going to make this major change, we wanted to make sure we ended up with what we wanted, able to do the things we want to do, to become the people we want to be. It seems unbelievable some of the things on our list. I think there was even a time I said something like, “this doesn’t actually exist.” Brandon has always dreamed of owning a historic house. We know ...

If you want to do things you have never done before, you sometimes have to do things you have never done before. This is what was playing over and over again in my head and in my heart less than two months ago. Brandon and I had been talking about how much we hoped to one day relocate to the Smoky Mountain area. While we felt like that decision could be months or years down the road, we were eager to hone in on some places. We knew if we were ever going to find our next hometown, we were going to have to set our eyes on some of the towns we had only driven through or seen in pictures. We also dreamed about seeing this region during the fall. For years we talked about just taking a quick trip there, but that quick trip never worked out. Anytime we would look at our fall calendars, every single weekend was spoken for every single time. There were football commitments and cheer commitments and band commitments. There were days marked out for school and there were days marked out for work...

We shared recently that our family is headed to the mountains of North Carolina. And like any other good story, there’s a backstory... Two-and-a-half years ago, our family visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the first time. When we booked our trip, we had no idea this area would be written on our hearts forever. When we left our mountain cabin at the end of our first trip there, we felt as if a piece of our hearts stayed behind. We knew then that we would eventually end up there, even though we didn’t know when and we didn’t know how. There was no way to know just how things would play out. Since then, we have visited the area four other times and have left feeling more connected with each visit. We have dreamed about property in the mountains that would allow the kids to roam and explore. We have dreamed about hiking and waterfalls and all four seasons. We have dreamed about a forever home close enough to the National Park where we could explore anytime we’d like. Our ...

“The mountains are calling and I must go.” We first saw this phrase four years ago when we visited the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. The phrase didn’t really strike a chord with us personally until two years ago when we read it again, this time when we were visiting the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. It was there, and along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, that we finally started to feel and understand the phrase. Our lives have taken quite a drastic turn since then, but we realize it has been an ongoing small, gentle tug in this direction. We have also come to understand that the voice we have heard isn’t the mountains calling us. We are finally listening and can hear it is God calling our names and we know we must follow! We know that where we are going is the mountains, but we know that is not why we are going. We know that we are being called to live a life differently than what we have been living. We know we are being called to do things differently than what we have bee...

  Well, we have more big news to share about our Unbinded Life! Today, the house we have called home for the past four and a half years officially hit the market. In our quest to simplify our life, we knew there were certain things that were just going to have to go. We have decluttered clothes, closets, and cabinets. We have purged from top to bottom. We have sold a car. We have paid off over $25,000 in debt. We have eliminated things from our day-to-day life that have taken up our time and our money. We have searched our hearts to answer the question about what is really necessary. Turns out there are many things, like this house and the pool we just put in last year, that just didn’t make the cut. Turns out, it was more than we need. Turns out, it wasn’t one of the things we truly desire in life. When we first started sharing our journey eight months ago, we said we didn’t know where all of this was going to lead us, but we were eager to find out. And that is true…we didn’t kn...

  We have some big news! Core Truths is now Unbinded Life! We are very excited to announce this change and are even more excited to share how we came to this point. For the past eight months, this little blog has changed from only Opal sharing to a place where we could both share together. Our audience has grown and so has our vision for this blog. We have been on a journey to simplify our life in every possible way. We have been sharing as much of this as we could along the way. What started out as “just imagine if we ….”is turning into more and more of a reality every day. We are looking forward to continuing down this path we have embarked upon and sharing much more with you as we move forward! Unbinded Life has come to us as a way to express what we are thinking, what we are feeling and what we are now doing…freeing ourselves from the things that keep us held down. We have searched our hearts to find what it is that has been holding us back from living the life we truly want to...

“Do as I say and not as I do.” How many times have we said this to our kids? Sometimes they listen, and sometimes they don’t. For as long as I live, I will remember the feeling I had when I realized, he listened. As I sat in the driver seat of our car, watching the taillights of his car drive away, with singular tears making their way down my cheek, I knew, he had listened. As Brandon and I talked on the way home about the choices our son made and what those choices mean for his future, we knew his life would be forever the better. This particular night really dates back to our son’s freshman year of high school when he needed a new phone. We have a deal with our kids that we will buy their first cell phone for them at an age that it is convenient for us that they have one. For our oldest son, it was in fifth grade when he was staying after school for extra-curricular activities and was going to basketball practice in the evenings. By the time our son was a freshman in high school, he ...

In this three-part blog series, we have shared how we learned to have a good budget meeting and how we create our monthly budgets. In this third and final post, we are excited to share what has probably been our favorite part…reducing expenses! In the past, when we have thought about reducing expenses, we think of going without something and choosing things to give up. While that can be a part of it, there’s more to it than just that. The downside is that reducing your monthly expenses can take up quite a bit of time. Shopping around for better savings and actually making the switch can take months to finalize, but don’t let that stop you from giving it a try. Once we got started, it was almost like a game or a new challenge to see how low we could go on some of our recurring expenses. Our first bit of advice on this one is to go after one thing at a time. This is important when you are looking at expenses like wireless service, internet providers, and home and auto insurance coverage....

  In part one of a three-part blog series, we shared how to have a good budget meeting. We mentioned some of the things we have learned, such as schedule the meeting, meet offsite or away from all distractions, use budgeting tools to help you budget, come up with your plan, and execute. And of course, be ready for the unexpected. In this post, we want to share some of the budgeting tools and how-tos that have worked well for us. Most of what we have found to work comes right out of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University teachings. One key to good budgeting is creating a zero-based budget, meaning you budget and account for every single dollar that comes in and goes back out. What this means is after you have accounted for all your expenses, whatever is remaining is used towards debt, thus your bottom line is zero. Sounds great, right? It is, except this requires you to predict how much money is going to be spent before your budget month or week has even started! For me, the Ever...

  There’s no better way to get control of your finances than creating and sticking to a budget.   Sounds easy enough, right? In this three-part blog series, we will share with you the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to how we started having good budget meetings, how we actually create our budget using budgeting tools, and ways we were able to reduce spending to have more money to put towards our student loan debt.   So first things first, we had to learn to talk to each other about money…and not just when we would run out of it! I don’t know about you, but it turns out, Brandon and I had very different viewpoints when it came to how we should budget our money. Turns out, we also had very different viewpoints when it came to how we should pay off debt. If there was one viewpoint we did share in common, it was that we wanted to pay off those student loans. Turns out, the only way to do that was to find a way to face these differences and to come up with a plan tog...

It’s time for me to share the toughest budgeting lesson I’ve learned...time to share my cold hard truth. Budgeting is a two-person job! I will be honest, I’m the one who held budgeting hostage. I was the one who was in charge of the bills, budgeting, reconciling, etc. If things were good, we kept moving along. If things were bad, I tried hard to keep things moving along anyway. I mean, who wants to be the bearer of bad news? Unfortunately, when there’s more month than money, you eventually have to talk about it. Unfortunately, that means the only time we really talked about money/budgeting was when things were bad. Unfortunately, for all these years I equated money talks with bad news. And that’s a hard habit to break! But, we’re doing it. It took Brandon setting bimonthly budget meetings. We first started meeting offsite for our meetings. This made it feel more like a meeting we couldn’t cancel, and it got us away from the distractions at home. The more meetings we’ve had, the easier ...

  There’s nothing like taking on some big project, something that at first might seem impossible, and then little by little you see it come together.   A couple of months ago we started to redo our kitchen by painting our kitchen cabinets (I know, now you feel bad for us). We knew it was a lot to take on, we knew it was going to take a while to complete, and we knew that anyone who has ever painted their kitchen cabinets will quickly say that is a project they would never do again. We knew all of this and we started the project anyway. Yes, it is now two months later and we are still working on it, but I have figured out, I don’t hate painting kitchen cabinets. I actually kind of enjoy it. It’s not bad…you simply put on a coat of paint, show a little patience, wait a couple of hours, then put on another coat of paint. No big deal.   But there has been a part of this project I have hated. Hated so much I thought at one point we were going to give up. It’s not the painting…...