Wednesday, August 13, 2014

So I finally pulled the trigger and signed up for......

Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University class.

{insert your opinion here}

JTS is not terribly thrilled that I've done this - but even though he won't go to the class he said he will help me with the steps at home.

I've mentioned before that I missed out on some money management lessons growing up. I never really had an allowance. Stuff never equaled work. Money came and went, rolled and flowed around depending on the parent's 1) flush times vs. broke times or 2) emotions.

It was confusing.

Over the years I've squandered a lot of fiscal opportunities to save, to invest, and to earn. And last week, as I was pretending that having a lot of freelance work meant that I obviously had a lot of money to spend on clothes, something clicked. I realized I don't actually HAVE that money. That all my money is always already spoken for before it hits the ole bank account. Credit card debt, student loan, car payments, etc. etc. etc. all have my money. I'm tired of being jealous of everyone's vacations or homes or what-have-you and then not having a clue how the bank account is at 0 every month. I'm tired of treading water.

So I got this handy little packet in the mail:

Seriously, so much stuff.

What I like about Dave Ramsey is what other people may find annoying. He has these little sayings that he repeats all the time like, "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else." Or paying down debt with "gazelle like intensity." But no matter how ridiculous it all looks I do find myself repeating them to talk myself off the spending ledge. I don't want to be paying off my GD poetry MFA when I'm 50. And speaking of GD, yeah, Dave Ramsey has a slight religious bent. But oh well. I don't see any non-religious classes like these out there so I'm fine with it. And Proverbs is named proverbs for a reason (or vice-versa?)

I'm patting myself on the back right now.  I'm already 25% of the way to achieving Step 1. It's going to be a couple of years of hard labor under the best circumstances before I get myself out of my debt hole and on to some solid savings grounds but first stop is DISNEYWORLD. For me and Lil' D.

And in a similar vein, I really enjoyed this post from Momastery. I've been thinking the same thing for a few days after hearing about the horrible conditions the Yazidis in Iraq are facing. We are simply SO lucky to be able to worry about the things we worry about.

2 comments:

Katherine said...

Ohhhhh I am jealous! I used to listen to his podcasts when I was staining our massive deck in the old house. I always felt inspired. We don't live by Dave Ramsey's rules, but he has a lot of great wisdom to apply to a whole range of situations. I expect regular blog reports on what you learn there...

Daisy said...

I'm so excited! I'll probably post too much about it to keep my momentum going.