Tax man arrives with hope for resuming house construction

The tax man has cometh. Most people want to hide from him, but Jim and I have been waiting expectantly for his arrival. I've alluded before to a plan we were following to resume house construction. For the past several years we'd been looking at something significant with the power to impact our financial health, but did not count on anything until it happened. Now with the tax man's arrival, it has, and I can share.

Roofing is a tough industry in New England because it's a three-season job. It's difficult for a family to live on a roofer's income when he's just the worker and has no income in the winter, 4-5 months of the year, so these past fifteen years have been very tight financially. It's why we're living in a tiny mobile home and could not afford a normal mortgage or rent or car payments. (Not that we want them anyway...) But we knew there was hope on the horizon because my dad talked of giving Jim the business.

This past year was the first year Jim and Dad were business partners. We had no idea what our finances would look like until the tax man arrived, and we kept things strung tight the entire year not knowing how the winter would be without unemployment or income and still having to pay quarterly taxes. It looks like we've done OK and will continue to as long as we mind our budget.

We are now be able to pay ourselves a small mortgage to put into building supplies, so work should resume this year. I can't tell you how happy and relieved this makes me. When you sit in tiny hole year round looking at your unfinished house untouched for the second year in a row, it gets depressing, especially when you can't see a way to change things.

I'm grateful to God for supplying our needs through good old fashioned hard work, and for helping us hang on and be faithful to roofing when God asked us to even before talk of ownership began. That's the toughest part of faith--following what God asks when you can't see any logical reason for it. It borders on lunacy, and would be if not orchestrated by God. (All the more reason to know God to discern His direction.)

So we'll keep budgeting and start building up house funds, and hopefully we'll be back in that house pounding nails soon. Yippee!

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