Dave Ramsey

Let me start by saying I have probably at some point in life made fun of my mom for liking Dave Ramsey. In the next breath, I drank the Kool-Aid. I recently came to the conclusion that it is time for my family to "grow up" when it comes to money. My last post talked about a 31 day spending freeze my family was doing and we are still doing that. However, we also started reading Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. I'm about halfway through his book and we have already put into place many of the things he talks about.

His first baby step is setting up an emergency fund. Yesterday for the first time in my adult life I set up a savings account and put half of our emergency fund in it. The other half will follow next month and after that we will start on baby step two which is paying off your debt snowball. I am done putting my head in the sand and ignoring how horrible we really are with money.

I know this is a very uncomfortable topic for 99% of the people I know. It is for me. However, if it is never discussed the issues we face will never go away. Ben and I have enrolled in Financial Peace University starting May 5th. I am excited to embark on that journey and see where it leads us. In the meantime I learned of Dave Ramsey's online budgeting tool at www.everydollar.com and have put in our budget for the month of April. If you don't currently budget I encourage you to go to this website (I get nothing if you do but peace of mind that I have shared a valuable tool with you) and start your budget. Be honest and realistic. As Dave would say, "You have to tell your money where to go".

Our family is done trying to "keep up with the Joneses". After all, the Joneses are probably in debt and we aren't going to be in debt forever.