Back in March, our church offered a 9 week Financial Peace University class. I was a little hesitant about it at first, but after talking it over with Shaun, and some friends that have done it in the past, I became convinced.
Dave talks about money and giving from a biblical perspective. He is a really good speaker with lots of humor and real life stories thrown into his lessons.
At the beginning, he talked about how each family has a "nerd" and a "free-spirit" when it comes to the finances. It was funny to see how I can be a nerd at so many areas of my life, but when it comes to spending and saving, I was definitely the free-spirit! Shaun loves creating spreadsheets and crunching numbers each month. However, we weren't always sticking to our budget.
Dave's favorite quote, which he used in every lesson, was "live like no one else now, so that later you can live and give like no one else." Much easier said than done!
Our main goal right now is to work at paying off our debt, from the smallest to the largest, and build up our savings. In order to do that we have been trying to stick to a monthly budget in which we use Dave's envelope system. Paying cash for most of your expenses so that you can easily see where your money is going and what your spending it on. For example, once we've spent "X" amount on eating out for the month, we don't eat out anymore. What?!? That's no fun! It was so easy for me to just swipe that debit card and not think of my purchases. I wasn't always writing them down or checking the bank online. So far, I have felt more conscious of my spending, but I have to be honest-- it has been hard! Especially in the "miscellaneous" section of the budget. I could spend my limit in just days! Shaun said he wanted to rename that the "Target" section.
It is especially important now with our two kids to work at building up savings for things like college, retirement, and a 3-6 month emergency savings fund ( in case God-forbid one of us lose a job). We want to take the girls to Disney World in a couple of years. We'd love to have the majority, if not all, paid for by the time we take the trip. Other big things we'd like to save for include weddings (yikes!), and our dream home. We'd like to not take on any more debt, but we also know that life happens and catastrophes big and small creep up. Hopefully we will have kept our savings fun stable so that we can pull from that instead of building up more debt on a credit card.
This won't happen over night, or maybe even in a few years! We realize that it will be a lifestyle change, and it won't always be easy. We are not perfect and I know there will be slip-ups...but hopefully we can stay on track for the most part.
At the beginning of the course, we totaled up everyone's debt together and wrote it on the board. Last week, we totaled it again and subtracted the difference. In 9 weeks, we had eliminated a little over 10% of our debt as a whole! Not too bad! Baby steps, baby steps.
Sorry for the long-winded post! I just want to document this to look back on...especially on the days I feel like cursing Dave Ramsey, haha!
