Dave Ramsey Journey - Part I

Disclaimer:  This post has been sitting in my draft box for quite awhile.  This experience is a big reason I started She Lives on Less, and why I am bound and determined to be debt free.  I'll be breaking it up into a series over the month of October.  Come back and check it out!


I drank the Dave Ramsey Kool-Aid.

It was informative, inspiring and humbling with a splash of fruity flavor.

We are coming up on our one-year-anniversary of beginning Financial Peace University.  We were extremely blessed by some close friends who gifted us the class.  They saw the impact it made on their own finances and their marriage.  FPU forced my husband and I to band together in a new way.  It's hard to put in words just what is has meant for us and our family tree. I'll share our story as we journey towards our future of "financial peace".

The Beginning
Matt and I had been stumbling (rather happily and quite oblivious) through our first several years of marriage.  We acquired new debts and got additional degrees.  We did not live an extravagant lifestyle, but we failed to plan for our wants.  We thought we were normal.

But, something just kept gnawing at our heals.  Truth.

The truth was we were buried under student loans and other small consumer debts.  So much so, that we couldn't get a handle on the whole budget thing.  We tried, but couldn't make traction against interest fees and just, well, life.

The A-HA Moment
I knew as soon as I was pregnant with our daughter, that I wanted to stay home.  Sure, I danced around the idea, but I knew what my decision would be.  I also knew my husband wanted that as well.  We crunched the numbers and my teacher salary would basically be paying for quality daycare and the expenses that go along with that choice.

As my belly got bigger, we started socking money away.  Simultaneously, my husband's loans came out of deferment and we tried to pay those down the best we could.  We made spreadsheet after spreadsheet, but nothing ever seemed to stick.  Either our math was wrong, or our lifestyle was.  I believe it was a bit of both.

When Amelia arrived, we felt pretty decently about our finances.  We wanted to be doing better, but were so overwhelmed with her arrival, many things fell to the wayside.  Not anything unique for new parents!

In October of 2010 we started FPU at a friend's church.  Immediately, we were smacked in the face with a big dose of healthy reality.  The way we viewed and managed money would never be the same.  I credit the birth of our daughter for maturing us in a way that I hadn't thought possible before.

Next time I'll talk about the process we went through with FPU and Dave Ramsey.  The bones of a budget and how to unite the nerd and free spirit in your household!