Now, if I look around at my life I'm pretty blessed. I don't know a lot of 24 year olds who are married and have a nice car, and a nice house filled with pretty nice furniture. However, to get there we have dug ourselves into a little bit of debt. Since I'm trying to get into a program to become an x-ray tech that will pretty much leave me working only a few hours a week, we have decided to buckle down and get out of debt to lower our monthly expenses. Dave Ramsey's plan is what's helping us get there!
His plan involves saving $1000.00 emergency fund first. Then you create a budget using his only program and stick with it. When you budget you use the envelope system. For instance, if you give yourself $200 for groceries a month, then you put $200 cash into an envelope marked groceries and when the money is gone you are done. You can't put anymore money in or take from other envelopes. This helps you stay on track and paying with cash as much as possible instead of a debit card helps you realize how much you are actually spending. Then there is the snowball effect. When you start paying on your debt you start with the smallest item first. Then once it's paid off you put however much you were paying on that card and pay that much more on the second card. All while just paying minimums on everything else. He has this little debt calculator online that shows you exactly what to pay first and it shows you if you stick with the plan what month you will become debt free! So far Adam and I have paid off 4 cards and we have 5 more items to go.... including my car, and we have only been on this plan for a little over a month.The debt calculator says that if we stick with it we could be debt free by December of next year! I'm so stoked! Adam and I have never been more excited to do finances and doing them together is new for us since it used to be only me! It's a great feeling knowing that you have a plan and we push each other to do even more.
Since we are now on a budget we each only get $50 a month to spend on whatever we want and that includes, drinks, going out to eat, clothes, music stuff etc. So don't be surprised when I say that I can't go out with you because I'm probably just broke. I will be watching more movies at home and buying my wine at the liquor store instead of at a cool bar where I have to tip and pay $7-12 a glass. So feel free to invite yourself over to my house and if you know of any cool free stuff to do in Nashville let me know!! And if you would like to start The Dave Ramsey plan yourself let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to talk about it with you or check out his website!
