With the new year at hand, it’s always on the mind of most to start again, lose weight, try harder, do better, rearrange and organize. These ideas have been marketed to the extent that the only time people are taught to work on these things is only at the beginning of the year, I say if you can’t change something any other time of the year what makes January so special. By happenstance at the end of one year recently the best thing to happen to myself and my husband was the discovery of the greatest, most ignored idea ever. Budgeting, getting out of debt and giving all we want to others. The idea, not so much revolutionary but re-birthed as something made simple with only some self adjusting and discipline. Not too much discipline for myself, because I have not a drop of self discipline, but more for some. However, the plan works and adjusts to anyone willing to give it a try.
In December 2008, my better half came home after meeting with a friend. This friend was reading a book by Dave Ramsey. My husband was very intrigued by what his friend said this book was about, we purchased it shortly after and read it for our self. The Total Money Make Over, seemed simple enough, but as we read, we read ourselves in the book, “been there, done that” was our thoughts as we read. As we read we figured out that we were almost already there. We were just in need of getting out of debt and reconfigure our spending habits. When we looked at where our money needed to go and found out how much we put it where it didn’t need to be, we were astounded. We had been from backgrounds that we had learned our lessons about debts and not having money, so when we found each other we were more careful about our spending and debt, yet we were still not being as responsible for our money as we really should.
The plan told us to take a baby step and put $1000 in the bank where we couldn’t touch it, no problem we thought, we got that. Then, the plan told us to dump all money we had saved for three years into our debt. “what!” We had worked hard to keep that money in savings without spending it. However, trusting in the Lord that he sent us this plan to get ahead, I agreed and with all our savings we got rid 3 or 4 debts. WOW! that felt good, scary but good. I even knew that God was blessing this move when I went to close out a C.D. 2 years early and the bank didn’t charge me a penalty because I was paying off a loan against it at the same time. The whole way so far God has blessed this plan and everything has gone smooth.
It’s been one year and a month and we have barreled through our baby step 2, the debt snowball, with ease. God has totally blessed this plan without having to adjust and change our lifestyle much at all. Still being able to give, but not as much as I’d like, yet enough to be available for the occasional giving as needed.
We, starting out around $70,000 in debt from past bad choices and current choices, we settled old debts, and with our savings got us down to around $23,000 in one year. In two and a half months we will have another debt paid and hopefully by the end of this year(2010) being totally free, as long as God continues to bless us and we keep doing the right thing. I can’t wait, cause I have a slew of giving I’d like to get to.
With this adventure continuing, we have had an amazing time since because we have been put in charge of leading this plan in a class through our church and have had great success. Seemingly, this has been a mission placed on us from the Father as well, I can’t wait to see how the next one ends.
