Say, do you know...

On April 12th, I went to our local library for some free tax help from the AARP. After gently chiding me for waiting so long file, Mary quickly filled out all the forms and our taxes were done. A funny thing happened about half way through the process, she looked over at me and said "If I said the name 'Dave Ramsey' would you know who I was talking about?" I told her I knew him better than I deserved. She laughed and kept on working. I asked her what made her ask me that question and she said that something in our paper work just screamed Dave Ramsey at her. She commented the paperwork was in good order (wow, if ours was in good order, I bet she's had a rough few weeks!). I told her that all of the stock sale info she just slogged through was part of what helped us to pay off or last debt this year: our mortgage. She was very happy for us. She was a graduate of Financial Peace University and was also at the Dave Ramsey Live event in Dallas back in March. She said that after FPU she realized for the first time that she could afford to buy a house, so she did.

This was my first experience being called out as a Dave Ramsey fan by a stranger and it was a great feeling. It is very encourgaing to meet others who have been motivated and had their lives change for the better through Dave's ministry.

Total Money Makeover—in action!

One of the neat things we’ve found about the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover plan is that it keeps working, even after the ‘plan’ is complete. Here’s our recent events that made me so thankful that we have been careful with our money.

We had to dip into our emergency fund last weekend…On Friday, we took the van in to the shop…We’ve known we’d need new tires for my van soon--they were looking really bad and it probably would not have passed inspection. Since they are run flat tires they are expensive, to the tune of $400 per tire… we had saved up in our car fund about $1200 for this purpose. Which was good, worked just how it was supposed to, we’d saved $125 per month for the last year or so. But then at Honda they mentioned the van was running really rough, so we had them do the 105k mile service (we are at 102k) and that ended up costing another $1300 (replaced timing belt, water pump etc). So that money had to come out of our family emergency fund. I suppose we should have known a service was coming due and could have saved for it, but the tires and the service at once was a real budget killer.

So it was an expensive few days, I am SO thankful that we had this in the emergency fund (and car fund) to cover it all. These are the sorts of things that could totally ruin a budget or force a person to use credit. It hurt that we had to use the emergency fund, but I am so happy it was there. It is a VERY good feeling to be financially prepared.

Our NEW Budget

What excitement and fanfare and well, fizzle... after all of our work in 2009 to kill our last debt--our mortgage--we kind of feel, um, bored. Not that we don't totally enjoy not having any payments anymore, that is great, it is more that we spent the last year frantically slaying this huge beast and now that it is dead we are kind of lost on what to do next. Hubby is a very goal oriented person, and I am to some extent. Having a shared plan of attack on the mortgage was great for us. Now we are both kind of coasting along without a clear target, and when we don't have a clear target... we tend to get distracted.

We sort of know what to do next: we want to buy land, start a business, invest, give more, travel, have fun... but there is no direct path or plan to get there. Our new budget has been on my mind, I hope that defining that will give us some excitement again to our finances.

Perhaps I like catchy silly slogans, it helps me keep focus, but here is what popped into my head for our new budget (drum roll please): Live, Give, Save... (now sad slide whistle noise...) is that it? Yep, that simple, and probably copied directly from Dave Ramsey.

LIVE--taxes, pay utilities, allowances, insurance, all the normal stuff.
GIVE-- 10% goes to our church for tithes, I'd also like to have a give budget for fun, additional stuff
SAVE--for land, business, etc...

So these simple little buckets are my way of trying to understand our new financial life. I have not looked at any numbers yet, but I wonder if it is possible to have an even split, 30/30/30... or even if we want to. Unless I"m totally not thinking of something important, that seems to be the main things you can do with money. Perhaps our 'live' bucket will be much heavier than I'm aware of, even without debts thrown in.

I'm not sure where our 401k/Roth IRA investing and college savings falls in these categories. I know it is technically 'save' since we are saving the money, but it is also just part of the normal bills we pay and not really something we have to think about or work toward, it just happens each month. I also have a really hard time as seeing this money as real. Yes, I get a statement each quarter showing growth, but since I've never seen nor touched that money, it all seems make believe to me--hopefully my 55 year old me won't have this same thought!

So here is my target, my goal, my new financial score card. Over the next years of our life, this may swing one direction or another, or maybe it will stay constant, but I hope it will help me keep focus on finances in a good way.


What is WONDERFULLY absent is the debt bucket.