One of the gospel principles that I have the strongest testimony in is the blessings that come from paying your tithing. I've experienced so many temporal and spiritual blessings from paying a regular tithe that I can not deny the power of it. What I experienced today was another example of such a blessing. Let me explain...
Austin City Limits (ACL) is a music festival that lasts for two 3-day weekends. Both weekends are the exact same lineup and you buy a $225 pass for one whole weekend (or both if you wanted to try and see bands you missed the first weekend). This was one event I was looking forward to when we found out we were moving to Austin. The 2012 lineup was amazing and I was excited to go and be a true Austinite. Well, last year's lineup was a disappointment and I didn't go. This year's lineup was released on Tuesday. The night before, I read a rumour that listed a few bands that were expected to be on the lineup, including my favourite as a teen, Pearl Jam. My desire to go to ACL grew infinitely but so did my stress over how I would pay for a pass.
You see, for the last couple months, our tenant in Canada has been very late in paying rent. That has caused our family a lot of financial stress as we juggle to pay our own rent, the mortgage in Canada (because the tenant wasn't paying rent on time), and extra car payments (Sheldon's old car that was paid for didn't make it to Austin so we had to purchase another one). I spent days creating, adjusting, and re-adjusting a budget that projected every single expense I could think of until the end of the year just to make sure we had enough. But now, where was I to find $450 for passes for Sheldon and I?
On Tuesday morning, I woke up, checked the lineup, and was even more ecstatic; so many good bands to see, including Pearl Jam! I was jumping around the house, so excited about the lineup. Sheldon sleepily said (because it was 6am) I could buy one pass for myself. I was torn! How could he not want to go? I know he's not into music as much as I am, but still! I had no idea where the money would come from but maybe Sheldon was thinking of dipping into our meager emergency savings that we were putting aside to cover the mortgage and then trying to shave in other parts of the budget each month to put back into the savings.
So I did it. I bought the pass.
And now today...
I took the car in for regular maintenance. Based on the maintenance schedule, I knew this was a big one so I put aside the listed $600 for it. When I went to pick up my car and pay for the maintenance, the girl at the cash said, "$394.10."
Ummm...what?
She saw my puzzled look and said Gilbert (my service rep) must have given me a deal. He does that for me sometimes but $200 must be a mistake. Well, Gilbert came and explained that they didn't do the transmission flush that was listed on the work order because the mechanic said we really didn't have to do it until I had 100,000 miles on my car. When they did the km to miles conversion, they realized I only had about 70,000 miles on my car therefore I saved $200!
Think about that for a moment. They could have easily done the transmission flush anyway and collected my $200 but instead, they were honest and saved me enough money to pay for my ACL pass! So big shout out to the folks over at Southpoint Hyundai in Austin!!!
Now if you're thinking that I'm still going to have to fork over that money for a transmission flush at some time, don't worry. I had the foresight to budget $100 for each vehicle maintenance after this big one for the rest of the year. I figure that many of these will only be in the $30 range for oil changes but I budgeted $100 each time just in case; so I'm covered!
I can relax and sleep a little better tonight. Blessings from tithing; that's all I can say. So very blessed and grateful.
NOTE: I usually don't condone buying "fun" things like this without knowing how you were going to pay for it so my plan before today was to find a creative way to raise the money...babysitting, busking on 6th St., something. I couldn't in good conscious dip into our emergency savings.
