"act your wage"

"live like no one else now, so later you can live like no else"

- Dave Ramsey 

it's saturday afternoon and Aaron is working on music stuff... and I am looking at our finances. actually i thought it was going to be a lot worse than it is. i've been on family medical leave since april and we just relocated to a different state. not exactly the best circumstances but i shouldn't have worried.  

so far in 2013 we have paid off $7,200 of debt/school loans. 

last year one of my best friends introduced me to Dave Ramsey. i'll admit when she first started reading his book "The Total Money Makeover" i definitely laughed. debt is totally normal {right?}. 20 something year olds don't worry about finances. budgeting and planning for the future is very lame. paying for stuff with cash was unrealistic. and blah blah blah. 

i really don't have {many} opinions. 

well i learned a little more about "financial freedom" and thought it was too simple, too easy, and a whole lot of bogus. but i was serious about wanting to get rid of our current debt/school loans. so we decided to give it shot... even though I was convinced it wouldn't work. 

we put all our credit card debt, student loans, and car loan on paper {eeeek}, created a stupid budget, adopted the sure-to-fail snowball method for paying off debts, took our credit cards out of our wallets, started meal planning, and were more than pleasantly surprised with the results. 

we began experiencing financial peace & freedom.

a year and a half later we have paid off $18,000. i can barely believe it. it's quite unreal. 

we really haven't suffered much. i can't recall any meals that consisted of bread & water. Aaron got an iMac {he just had to wait a little bit so we could pay cash for it} I started graduate school {having the tools gave us peace of mind with me going back to school aka more school loans} and we moved to a different state. 

"a budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went"

we love deciding where and what our money goes to. now i enjoy looking our finances and discussing what we want to do with our money. i can't wait for the day that we are DEBT FREE. knowing that it's not too far off in the future is so exciting! 

it's really stupid and kind of maddening how simple it is. i mean really 7 steps? Aaron and i are working on step 2. the hardest part was getting starting {i'm slightly stubborn} now we can't stop. any extra money goes toward our debt/loans.  

thank goodness some people have common sense... 

so thanks Miss Genai and Mr. Dave Ramsey :)   

click the link for how you can start moving toward financial freedom + financial peace 

Getting Started

the best thing about the Dave Ramsey plan is you can tweak it for your specific needs
here's to eliminating debt... cheers!