How to Finance Your Dream

Gregg Mucerino loves playing baseball! He also enjoys being a role model for young men. As a high school coach in Coral Springs, Florida, he can do both.

“I played since I was a little guy,” he says. “Played all through high school, then through college. Then had the opportunity to play with the San Diego Padres in the minor league system.”

He was working as a firefighter when a coaching position came open at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He wanted to take the job to get his foot in the coaching door. But the low salary meant he had to support his wife and daughter on $20,000 a year -- much less than he was currently making. His wife Yvette didn’t mind.

“My reaction was: go for it. It’s a great opportunity,” Yvette shares, “knowing in the future that would eventually open doors for him to have his dream -- to be a head coach, a college coach, and maybe even the major leagues.”

Gregg thought their finances were in good shape. Then he heard a lesson about money on The 700 Club and decided that they needed to tithe consistently and give offerings to CBN. When he told Yvette, he got a shocking reply. His pay cut had sliced so deeply into the monthly budget that she had been using credit cards to make ends meet.

She recalls, “Charging everything from groceries to toilet paper. Before you know it, you are using one to pay off the other one. It snowballs; it’s out of control.”

The Mucerinos’ credit card debt was the equivalent to Gregg’s entire annual salary.

“I was upset,” Gregg says. “You don’t know what to think. How are we going to get out of this? I know we were $20,000, and there are people who are $90,000, $100,000, but to us, it was like $100,000.”

Yvette apologized to her husband.

“We prayed so hard over it. He said that we had to tithe 10 percent. I resisted, because I knew that we might not have enough. But I knew I had to be a faithful servant, and I started giving 10 percent off the top,” she says.

And what about the credit cards?

“We cut up, pay them off and get rid of them. Don’t ever use them again. That was our game plan.”

The Mucerinos began chipping away at the debt and continued to tithe and give offerings. As they stayed faithful over the next three years, Gregg advanced up the coaching ladder with two better paying jobs. Then the day came when Yvette presented Gregg with the credit card statements.

Yvette says, “I put them in a box [and] gave it to him. [He said], ‘What is this?’ Paid, paid, paid, zero balance.”

“A burden was lifted,” Gregg says. “Debt is a heavy load. When we knew that was gone and free and clear, we could feel good again.”

Gregg says he is so grateful for such a valuable lesson about money.

“God is faithful. He wants to bless His children,” he says. “If you are diligent enough to operate in biblical fashion in the way He has commanded us to do, He will give you the desires of your heart.”