Oxymoron: Financial Peace

On March 2, 2011, John and I began our journey with Dave Ramsey in Financial Peace University.

 

 

We are just over halfway done (13 lessons in all) and have made GREAT progress!! We are learning A TON and it has spurred very healthy and fruitful--and honest--conversation between us.  For the first time in our marriage (maybe our lives, but I won't speak for John), we are living by a budget.  In the past, we put together more of what I call a "recap" of our monthly earnings.  But that didn't really do a whole lot for us besides depress us, and we didn't take every category down to pennies. Our recap was more of a 1,000 foot snapshot of what we "thought" we were spending.  But, there was no hard structure to it, nor was there any consequence if the total at the bottom was negative and the next month looked totally different.  I guess it was more of an exercise in futility.

Also in this class, we have learned the importance of when and how often we talk about the budget.  John has a mind for numbers and with his school and studies right now, he's on the computer all the time... so it's safe to say that he thinks, analyzes and sees the dollar signs much more often than I do.  And that's still okay  and it works for us (and him!)  We have a family budget meeting about once a week to keep a handle on our budget for April since it's the first time we've really had to challenge ourselves to live by it. 

And you know what?  So far, it's working!!  We were even able to go out to dinner (and dessert!) with my whole family last night to celebrate my birthday, and we came in under budget for that outing! That's great!!  It's really makes us think about where our money is going, how far we can stretch that dollar, and ask ourselves, "do we really need this or that?"  Our new and freeing answer: NO.

This morning, after breakfast, we underwent a little plastectomy (a Dave Ramsey term), and it looked something like this:

OUCH!!  Two of those are John's.  The other one--the red one--has been paid off and closed... and yes, it hurt a little.  That pretty red card has been my safety net for almost six years.  Okay, that's disgusting.  We have a new safety net now, and it feels MUCH safer and MUCH better.

When we fulfilled the first Baby Step in the class (set up an Emergency Fund), we went to our nearest credit union and opened a mutual fund.  In doing so, we received a copy of our credit report and scores (ewwww).  John and I have studied our reports, and in the last few days, we have CLOSED 5 credit accounts between us that were either sitting idle or were just paid off.  There are still a few left, but we're working on those with the lesson we learned about the "Debt Snowball."  Again great progress made there.

In the debt lesson, we saw a video of a cheetah chasing a gazelle:



Dave pointed out that in that situation, we are the gazelles and our creditors are the cheetahs.  Or (if you've been through FPU): CHEEEEEEEEEETTAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   And right now, we are killing our cheetahs.  One by one.  And are thrilled about it. 

Now, every time a new credit card offer hits our mailbox, we raise it up in the air and yell "CHEETAH!!!" then quickly drop it in the shred box.    That feels good! Actually, it feels more like this:



See?  No more cheetah!! 

I can't wait to post with the title: WE'RE DEBT FREE!!!  Stay tuned for that momentous day!!