Road to Financial Peace (Week 1)

Diane and I have been listening to the Dave Ramsey radio show for almost a year now and we have been using some of his advice such as budgeting our dollars (well, Diane has been doing this part) and putting cash into envelopes for specific purposes (dining out, groceries, clothes, etc). This has been helpful and we have become more conscious about how we spend our money (when the cash in the dining out envelope is gone then that's it, no more McDonald's) but we still weren't able to meet our savings and gifting goals and we certainly weren't closing out our debts (credit cards, student loans, etc) nearly as fast as we would like. Our church started offering the Financial Peace University classes a couple months ago and we missed the first 2 sessions but when they announced a third session we jumped on it. That it happens to coincide with New Year's Resolutions making might have been planned...

Tonight was the first class: Super Saving. In the DVD presentation, Dave talked about the peace that comes from having an emergency fund and the importance of setting aside $1000 as soon as possible for "God Only Knows." He pointed out that this is an important first step because it signifies not only the ease of saving up $1000 but also the commitment that it represents by taking this step. He also told a story about a lady who came to one of his book signings. Apparently, when she arrived, she was distraught that her car broke down on the way and now she was worried about paying to get it fixed. Turns out she had been following Dave's plan and had already saved $12,000 in her emergency fund so her reaction to the car trouble was just a reflex and when reminded that her emergency fund was for just that kind of situation she instantly calmed down. That's the kind of peace I want for our family. Every little thing seems like a crisis now since we don't have a cushion of savings to fall back on when the unexpected happens.

After the presentation we broke up into smaller groups to talk about what we learned. There are nine of us in the smaller group and we talked about the stupidity that we all shared when it comes to choosing not to save and relying too much on credit cards. It was refreshing to hear that we are not alone but also eye opening that our "instant gratification" culture has led us all down a dark road toward constant debt. I explained to the group how frustrating it is to make a fairly good salary and still be living paycheck-to-paycheck. This first class has given me the resolve to change and I'll try to post here as we proceed through the learning process. The funny thing is that the lessons all appear to be things we already know so it's really re-learning and applying the common sense lessons that we were raised with.