I've been reading most of the PF blogs here on savingadvice for a while now. I think that being able to interact with all of you will contribute to my focus and intensity in getting out of debt.
I always considered myself a pretty frugal person. I don’t buy things I can’t pay cash for using my credit card and I love to bargain hunt. I don’t have a single thing in my house financed and still have furniture from college. Fortunately I do have a really good paying job and a great husband that stays home with our son (make that sons in January!). We thought we were getting ahead because we can afford all of our bills and still have money left over each month for things we’d like to purchase or do.
When we got married 7 years ago, my hubby had just graduated college and I had a year to go. Somehow he began listening to Dave Ramsey, and even read Financial Peace before we got married. We both are really good at budgeting, so I read the book as well and we decided we do a modified envelope system - a carefully tracked electronic envelope system using our debit card. This has worked pretty well for the last 7 years. We even still only give ourselves $20/week of spending money each - same as back in 2001! I guess the bad thing is that the only thing we really internalized from reading that book was the budgeting approach.
Over the last year my husband has been listening to Dave Ramsey on a daily basis. He and our son listen to the show archive each morning over breakfast. When he heard Dave was coming to Atlanta to speak on the Total Money Makeover, he encouraged us to go. We got a sitter and went in September.
Well, since then I’m angry with us! I always considered myself a smart person, but I am not savvy in the ways of investments and certainly not in challenging the cultural norm of debt. We are OVER IT!
Excited to join in!
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