Our Journey to become Debt Free with Dave Ramsey

It started with a new truck.

The hubby was watching the rust build up on the bottom of his Chevy Silverado. It was about 8 years old and he started eyeballing new ones. I mean, I didn’t care. If it was “time” for a new truck, let’s get one. I’ve also found that eyeballing for my hubby = purchase.

And he did. The truck was nice. And about a month after he bought it, he came home and said, “I shouldn’t have bought that truck.”

He was talking to a friend who’s brother started the Dave Ramsey program. So the hubs googled Dave Ramsey and listened to several of his podcasts on the way home from a trip. If you’re not familiar with Dave Ramsey, he helps people get out of debt with his “baby steps”. Each step helps you save, get out of debt, build wealth and eventually be able to give generously.

And financing a new truck is not part of any of that.

He didn’t need to convince me. I’m one of the most frugal people I know. I’m a saver and my hubby is the spender. But I’m also the person in our family that is in charge of the shopping. So being the frugal one, it’s challenging.

We signed up for Financial Peace University, which is Dave Ramsey’s program to get you started to get out of debt. We signed up to go to a couple’s house every Wednesday night Fall 2018. We really enjoyed the conversation, the ideas and the goal setting.

Our debt? Let’s break it down:

$27,000 on our mini van

$33,000 on our home equity line (on a rental property)

$37,000 on the new truck

With Dave Ramsey’s program, non-mortgage debt is the debt you count first. We do have a mortgage on our current house and a house in Cedar Rapids, Iowa which we are renting out right now.

We crossed Baby Step #1 off the list right away. $1,000 in our emergency fund.

Baby Step #2 is the challenge. Pay off all non-mortgage debt. That’s where the van, home equity line & truck come into play. That’s $97K to pay off. That number seemed stifling. Using his “debt snowball” method, we paid the van off first. Then the home equity line. Then…this last April…THE TRUCK!

How did we do this? A budget. Like a for-real-get-down-to-business budget. We used his Every Dollar App which guided us on our purchases, limiting what we could spend in each category set.

Right now, we’re on Baby Step #3 which is saving 3 to 6 months of expenses. We’re about 1/2 way through that right now and we hope to have that one crossed off the list by early Fall.

I wanted to share our journey to become debt free for a reason. It has nothing to do with wedding invitations obviously. But it does have to do with my business and setting our family up for financial success. And my husband and I also realized, if we would have done this right after we got married, our lives would look a lot different right now. We wish we had.

And that’s why this fall we’re leading a Financial Peace University class in Elkhorn. We are working with our church and hosting it there and we’d love to have couples who are going to get married or recently married to help them get off on the right financial foot in their marriage.

You can sign up for our class here. It begins September 9 at Bethany Lutheran Church in Elkhorn starting at 6 p.m. And this isn’t just for newly or to-be married people. It’s open to anyone! If you have questions, shoot me an email. I’m happy to chat.