The Money Taboo

One of the hardest part about doing Dave Ramsey is containing the pure joy and excitement we feel every time we pay off a debt or make some other milestone.  The people who care are genuinely excited for us, but those people are few and far between.  More often than not, the response is comprised of raised eyebrows and questioning glares.

Farewell Fiero

This weekend I sold my Fiero.  This car was beautiful.  It was a 1984 2m4, 33,000 original miles.  Bright red.  I bought the car when I was in college and put less than 3,000 miles on it. Here's a picture of it, a parting shot.  I hadn't really driven the car in 5 years, so it was probably time to sell.  Would I have rather kept it?  Yeah.  Sunk money into it for tires and a likely ac repair?  Absolutely.  But when you are getting out of debt you don't do that.  Part of getting out of debt is sacrifice.

Debt Snowball Update

My wife and I started Dave Ramsey's debt snowball in February.  We had returned from the honeymoon in Aruba, and we had unwrapped all our our wedding gifts.  One of our gifts was Dave's book, The Total Money Makeover.  Ironically, we received the book from one of the vendors we used for the wedding.  The people we rented chair covers from gave us the book.  I mean, chair covers.  How much more frivolous can you be?

Anyway, Aleece read the book, and I started listening to Dave everyday on my drive home from work.  We were ready to start our debt snowball on February First and hit the ground running.  Our debt includes (well, included) some left over wedding expenses, credit cards, furniture purchases, student loans, car payment, and our mortgage.  As of May 1st, we have paid off over 10% of our non-mortgage debt! (If you count the mortgage we are at roughly 5%). That might seem like a small amount, but it is huge!  By now we probably would have booked a vacation, bought more furniture or made plans to buy another car - all using debt.  Instead of piling up even more debt, we have taken it down!

Communicating about money has helped add to a solid foundation for our marriage - we are both furiously committed to getting out of debt in order to have the freedom to go on a vacation, or buy a car, or whatever without worrying about the risk.  Yes, 0% financing is great - unless you can't pay the bill and the 0% becomes 36%.  When we are debt free, if one of us were to lose a job, or decide to stay home to raise a family, it would cause zero stress on our lives or on our marriage.  This is just one reason why we both want to live debt free.

Every month I plan on posting with an update on our debt snowball progress until we are DONE!