Getting Out of Debt

Well I told you all I would update you on my dave ramsey adventure (www.daveramsey.com). I am half finished with another of his books called More Than Enough and I woudl HIGHLY recommend it. The book deals more with the psychological aspects of life in general and being satisfied with what we have as well as about money so there are MANY lessons to be learned.

If you ever want to listen to his radio show you can go to the above website, click on the top box listen to dave, archives, pick a day, and it will give you streaming audio, I listen to them while doing treatments and it makes the time fly. If you ever want to hear a really cool day then listen to fridays shows because it is all folks who have worked really hard and payed off all their debt and they call in to tell about it and what was hard/worked for them but mostly just to revel in their success. I used to think it was kind of annoying but now that we can envision ourselves making the call it is very inspiring.

I am giving away a little more about our finances than I would like by journaling this but I think it is worht it if I know it was beneficial to just a few and when I journaled about my AI journey I found it did help some others. So let me just say this before revealing our results for the last two monts. We are a middle income household living in a reasonable (read 100,000 range) house. There is nothing special about us.

When I read Dave's Total Money Makeover book I read about some of the couples making massively fast progress and thought "Yeah but...." and filled in all the reasons why our success could nto be that fast. Not only that but when we did the numbers we thought we could do with our budget we would have made very very slow progress. However, as you will read (I hope) once you get 'gazelle intense' you focus all your energy on this budget and scrape away any excess you can, work extra etc etc things start to fall in line and they have for us, so with no further ado.........................................

Started Program Feb 1 As of March 31 (yesterday) we have paid of $7844 in debt and have an emergency savings account of $2650 Total money saved/paid in 2 months = 10494 Note: We put $650 in our small business account so we can quit muddying water in our personal account when we need to buy parts etc. Dave only recommends 1000 in savings account but given my health and volatility of my husbands current position we decided on a bit more. Also to be fair $2000 of that is tax return.

We will not always make this speedy of progress, like I said alot things fell in line for us but they are things that normally would have been diluted by any various number of things such as additional unneeded expenditures etc etc. We anticipate being able to pay off $20,000 by years end but are shooting for a bit more.

PS My #1 favorite way to save money is on groceries, you know those crazy women who pay a fraction of what something costs all the time with a million copuons and rebates and have a mini store via a pantry or basement? I am now one of them and proud of it! Ask me how many coupons I had the last time I went to walgreens? 28!! Its easy. Visit www.thegrocerygame.com to learn how and you can get a 30 day trial for $1 after that it is less than I save in one trip to the store for 8 weeks! If you join PLEASE put my name (I will give you in PM) and I can get money off my subscription. If you have any questions I'll be happy to help.