In July, I saw a posting on MoneySavingMom about Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover book. I was curious as to what he had to say so I checked the book out from our library. I was instantly inspired! I passed the book on to Rich and we then decided that it was time to get ourselves on a path to financial stability. We didn't want to eventually become a statistic...an American family living paycheck-to-paycheck! Our overall debt situation wasn't terrible but we knew we could be doing a lot better. We knew that with "tightening our belts" a little, that we could eventually be debt-free.
So on August 1st, we cut up our credit cards (and haven't used them since!). We sat down together and went through our bills. We printed out several months of bank statements and analyzed our shopping habits. (Yikes!) Then, we made out our budget--and stuck to it! Here's what we've accomplished:
1)We paid off all of our credit card debt.
2)We paid off our 0% loan on the Fridge we had to buy in July.
3)We paid off our SUV.
(We already had the "emergency fund" in place.)
At this point, we just have our car loan (We just bought it in February) and our house for debt. So for 2009, we've set these goals:
1)Pay off the car by the end of March.
2)Start up and complete our 6 Month Expenses Emergency Fund.
3)Start the kid's college funds back up. (We never canceled our retirement funds. Sorry, Dave Ramsey!)
Why am I sharing this will all of you? Because had it not been for Crystal's posting, we wouldn't have started this journey. Who knows where we'd be finacially. Maybe there's a chance that even one reader is struggling and will also find inspiration in the book or simply to just take a good look at their finances, too.
Here's hoping that 2009 brings all of you to a path to finacial freedom.
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ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago I started the same journey. I read advice from everywhere and was lucky to stumble upon Art Lieberman. I hired him to coach me - and in 6 months I went from being a non-runner to completing a half-marathon. I'd say he was worth every penny. Before I hired him I expected to get to 5K status in 6 months. I was excited to run every other day and looked forward to our weekly phone calls. Art was the NICEST man, not intimidating in any way. Good luck to you! His site is... http://www.marathontraining.com/index.html
The reason I advise hiring him rather than just reading his site is that the personal touch kept me committed - in the NICEST sense of the word - and he helped me when I encountered a few personal obstacles, when I would not have been able to sort out all the information available on the internet. Art was super