Well, we´ve been on a tight budget ever since my hubby started on his tax advisor´s course. Its basically a once-a-week Friday to Saturday lecture course that commenced last year in Oct. That meant that ever since then, Stephan could only work 4 days a week and I didn´t get a job only until March this year. The decrease in income coupled by the course fees resulted in us having at least 800€ less each month, while having the same monthly fixed costs.
On top of that, we do practise tithing 10% of our gross salary to the church, which made our finances even tighter (considering my 50% tax rate). Most of the time we actually survived on "borrowed income" from the next month. Since I started work in March this year, our finances managed to even out - which meant that we had more breathing space, but we still had to watch our spending. Anyways, two miracles happened on the same day.
Miracle 1) Stephan is a full-time employee who´s supposed to be entitled to 25 days of paid annual leave. Thing is, since he changed his status from "part-time" as a student to "full-time" after he graduated, his company didn´t change his employment status and he wasn´t entitled to any paid leave.
That meant that last year when we went to Singapore for our annual visit, he was on no-pay leave. Somehow it didn´t occur to him that he could ask his boss to simply give him his annual leave. Sometime this year though, he suddenly talked to his boss to ask them why he wasn´t entitled to the annual paid leave, while the rest of his colleagues were. Turns out, he was right! The bosses agreed to pay him his annual leave (in the form of reimbursement for his course fees).
We went a step further to ask if the bosses could pay him for his annual leave that they didn´t pay last year. This would have been difficult, since the company might have written off his leave. It took a bit of explanation but it worked out in the end! All of a sudden, Stephan is entitled to like 50 days of paid leave! That amounts to about 2 whole months of salary!
Miracle 2) Its like the parting of the red sea for us......
We got news on the same day that my mom´s will has been processed and they would require me to sign a letter and send it back to Singapore so that the legal proceedings can be started. What´s the chance of everything happening on the same day? The amount is really mind-blowing and we can´t believe that we can be debt-free! Till-now, Stephan´s student loans still require servicing. We can definitely use this money to pay off the debts and who knows, even pay the down payment of a place of our own - if that´s what God has in store for us!
This is so like God, to bless us so abundantly and overflowingly after we have been really living by faith for the past 1 year! It was tempting sometimes to tithe the nett salary (since we can reason out that the difference btw gross and nett is a BIG amount in Germany), but we both had the conviction that we should tithe the gross amount (offer God the firstfruits of our labour). Many times too, we wondered if it was worth it, since the difference btw gross and nett, or sometimes, just the tithing alone would make the difference between positive and negative amounts in our banks. But I´m so thankful that Stephan is so black-and-white about this and he has been tithing faithfully for the both of us. I believe this verse really came true for us....
"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit," says the LORD Almighty. 12 "Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty." Malachi 3:10-12
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