The Alternative American Lifestyle...Living Debt Free

Smith Family's story

Two things are prompting me to write this short post today.

1)  I made the LAST payment on our family vehicle this week.  Yeeessss! 

2) This facebook post from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. about the Smith Family.

Credit where credit is due.  

A few years ago a couple I knew attended Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace class hosted by their church.  I listened when they talked about the principles of the class and it reminded me of what I considered common sense & what Mom had taught all those years ago with babysitting and paper route money.  But being a  DINK (Double Income No Kids) household we didn't really focus on it.  However, it stayed at the edges of my mind and after the boys were born it quickly moved to center stage.  I had more to worry about now than just my future.  

So we bought the coursework & DVDs and dug in.  We live rural, as I've mentioned so there wasn't a class nearby.   I was excited.   I'm a planner, spreadsheet type (Dave has words for my type) and Michael is a fly by the seat of your pants type (Dave also has words for Michael's type).  I was so ready to start working on this.  So we breezed through step 1 - build an emergency fund.  The boys were changing fast so I took all the baby gear they outgrew and sold it on Craigslist to get to that emergency fund goal faster.  Truthfully, we'd always had something of an emergency fund so I had something to start with too.

Then we got to step 2 - pay off debt - and things slowed considerably.  It's not a magic plan.  It's slow and steady.  Kind of like smart weight loss.  There are no magic pills or short cuts.  It's hard.  But we hung in there and this week we've made it to the first big hurdle.  We've paid off one of our vehicles.  YES!  That is MAJOR incentive for us to get that snowball rolling and take that extra $500+ in our monthly budget and roll it into our other vehicle payment (the tractor) and get that paid off too.  And so on.  Until our household is debt free and we can do the things we want to do with the boys and teach them by example about having a smart financial foundation in this ever shifting and unsteady economy.  This is one gift I hope desperately to give to my boys.

I encourage everyone to attend or watch a Financial Peace University Class.  It'll change your life.

More later.

Thanks for visiting!

Arlene