I remember when my parents got out of debt. I was about six or seven years old, and they never looked back. They used only the money they had from that day on. Fast forward many years, and I was debt free too. I even graduated from college with money in my pocket to help me get started in life. For some reason though, I took a credit card just in case of emergencies.
A couple of years later I got married and stayed at home. Staying home took a lot of sacrifice on our part that most people would not even consider taking on, but we thought that our kids were worth the sacrifice. The only problem was that we burned through our savings and began using the credit card to make ends meet. (If only we had known then what we later learned...like not having so much taken out of my husband's check for taxes so we could make ends meet every month.) Every year with our huge tax refund we would pay off our debts and start the whole cycle again. A couple of years ago, I got really tired of this cycle and began praying that God would change things. I was really irritated with my husband for what I thought was irresponsible spending. The funny thing was that when God answered my prayer, I realized that I was just as much a contributor to our financial tightness as my husband was.
One day my husband came home talking about a new guy named Dave Ramsey coming on the local talk radio station. After a couple of months of listening to him, we began working on our baby steps, and my husband decided to order Financial Peace University. Because of the price, I was hesitant about ordering the class, but didn't voice my concerns because I was excited about my husband being excited about learning how to manage our finances. I'm so glad I didn't say anything in opposition to him. The class helped clarify questions that we had about the baby steps. Twenty-two months after we began the class, we have paid off $30,ooo--mostly vehicle loan debt. (During this time, the Lord gave my husband a pay raise, and provided a couple of at home jobs for me.)
I didn't realize how much it meant to our kids until we went to make our last payment on our vehicle. As the payment was going up in tube of the drive through line, my husband and I heard a spontaneous chant from the back. "We're debt free. We're debt free."
Not only are we debt free, but we plan to stay that way this time. Financial Peace University taught us how to do that. We learned how to start off with a baby emergency fund to keep us from having to crack out a credit card for emergencies. We also now know to save up for a 3-6 month emergency fund now that we are debt free. Not only that, but we have also learned how to prepare for the future and have a plan for our money instead of our money having a plan for us. Oh, let's not forget the budget and learning how to work together as a team was also something else we learned. We are now on baby step three and looking forward to getting a larger house for our family of six.
As a side note, the first baby step is $500 for people who have an income of $25,000 or less. Also, much of the same information used in Financial Peace University can be found in the book, The Total Money Makeover (also available at most public libraries.)
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