So hubby and I decided that we want to be debt free. We have accumulated a lot of debt since moving back to the USA and me being in school for four years hasn't helped. Since neither of us really knew where to start, we decided to go ahead at do Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University". Well.... I'll be honest, I decided we should do it. I had to convince hubby to join me. But he agreed, reluctantly! However, after the first lesson (we decided to do it online) hubby became enthused and we are both super excited to get going on paying off our debt. We assumed that we had about 40K of debt including my student loans.
Well, the first step of Dave's baby steps, is to get a 1K "emergency fund" set aside. That took, um, one second. Hubby went to the ATM and pulled out $1,000 last night and we put it somewhere safe!
The next baby step is to pay off our debt as soon as we can and with "gazelle intensity". Well this meant we needed to figure out how much debt we have. So I took out my college info to look up how much I have on my student loans and I looked at my two credit cards and hubby looked at his two credit cards. We wrote it all down and added it up. Then we both nearly cried as we saw the big fat 84K that we have to pay off! We were devastated! We don't even make that much a year. I had no idea that we were in that much debt. I'm shocked! But I'm not going to hide it either, I think that admitting it is part of being able to change my spending habits! And quite frankly I'm sure that many people are in debt too, so even though we don't all know each other's debt, I'm declaring war on mine and this is what it is!
But here goes... one of my goals for 2013 is to tackle this with every ounce of energy and with every penny I can! I don't know how we're going to manage getting rid of so much debt. We have several thousand in savings, but Dave's plan requires us to pull every penny (except our $1,000 emergency fund and our retirement funds) out of savings to put into paying off our debt. That makes both of us extremely nervous. What if something happens and we need money? We are cutting up credit cards and vowing to not use debt EVER AGAIN, yet we are also going to extinguish our savings, other than our $1,000!
Here's to our new journey of faith. We are going to have faith that Dave Ramsey's plan will work for us. We are going to have faith that our Father in Heaven will help us as we live by His Word and not live in debt. We are going to have faith in each other, that we can continue to support and love each other through this journey. It's going to be uncomfortable, but I know it's going to be worth it.
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