D is For Dave Ramsey, Debt and Discussion

Six Word Saturday today and I am doing nouns at the A to Z Challenge as well.  Since todays letter is D I am going 3D and giving a person, a place, and a thing.  All for the price of none.

My 6 words:

Person:  Dave.  Place: Debt.  Thing: Discussions.

The Person:  Dave Ramsey

Two years ago, I was the typical husband who was tired of his wife telling him about Dave Ramsey.  But financially things were not going well, and we were on the precipice of some big changes.  So, when his financial peace university program was offered at our new church I signed us up.  

The Place: Debt

I know debt might not seem like a place to you.  But I think it's a place because for a long time we were in it.  Dave Ramsey gave us some serious tools for dissolving debt.

One:  Budget your money.  Make sure that every dollar has a name.  

Two: Use the debt snowball.  Let's say you are 15,000 in debt and owe 5,000 for a car loan, 4000 on a student loan 3,000 on a bank card 2,000 on another card and 1,000 on a store card.  Let's say after making your budget you have 750.00 to pay towards debt.  You make minimum payments on the 4 highest debts and pay the rest on the store card.  Once the store card is paid off then you start putting the additional money on the next highest card until that is paid off.  You continue to do this until all but the car loan is paid off and then put the entire 750.00 towards it.  Once the car loan is paid off you have $750.00 to start putting towards savings.

Three:  Have gazelle-like intensity in paying down your debt.  Gazelle like intensity refers to a gazelle running away from a lion.  You pay off your debt like your life depends on it.  For us, gazelle-like intensity meant stopping homeschooling 2 of  the kids for 1 year while Amy and I both worked full time.  We paid $15,000 of credit card debt in nine months.  Once we were out of debt Amy. was able to take a part-time job in her district, enabling us to begin homeschooling all 3 children again.

The Thing: Discussions

Financial discussions are very helpful.  Sometimes it is easier to hope financial matters resolve themselves, rather than discuss them.  This doesn't work very well.  Discussions are important because goals need to be made, budgets need to be revised, and ideas and feelings need to be discussed.  Amy and I had planned some events for the next few weeks, when we had a financial setback.  We discussed the matter talked about all the possibilities and decided to put off our events rather than dip into savings to pay for them.  We try to have brief discussions before every paycheck to make sure we are on the same page with the implementation of the budget.

Financial discussions are not only between Amy and myself.  Last month I brought an entire paycheck home in cash and illustrated for the kids that every dollar did indeed have a name and showed them how we planned to use that money.

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4-4-2014 A2Z:D is for  Dozen year old Donuts