Our Total Money Makeover

Last summer, Jeff introduced me to Dave Ramsey via podcasts.  After on a few episodes of his show, I was a convert.  I wanted to be debt-free (except for the house), so I bought a used copy of his Total Money Makeover book, and attempted to convert Bryann as well.  By October, I'd created a budget for us, converted our spending habits to cash-only, set up envelopes and tried to lower our spending so we'd be making some headway on our loans.  

We're fortunate enough to have been raised by very smart parents who taught us about the perils of credit cards when we were young.  So we don't have a mound of credit card debt.  However, we do have a mound of student loan debt, and I got real sick and tired of thinking about how we're actually going to end up paying almost double the cost of tuition because of all the interest we'll pay over the next 10-20 years.  I also wasn't terribly happy about the prospect of having to watch my paycheck go to loan payments for the next 10-20 years, so I declared war on our debts.  Bryann wasn't too sure about it, but loves me and respects that I want to be debt-free, so he attempted to get on board.  Besides, I made a pretty compelling argument about what our life could be like without debt, and he liked the idea of sucking it up for a couple years in order to kick those student loan debts out.  

Progress has been slow over the last year.  I could say it was because we were getting married, or because we were still working on remodeling our newly-purchased house.  Those things are true.  But we also weren't as diligent as we could have been about sticking to our budgets.  Bryann wasn't completely on board yet, and was always finding things for the house that we needed, and without Bryann motivating me, I succumbed to making luxury purchases, too.  

I don't mean to say that we failed.  We did manage to pay off about $10,000 in loans, but we could have done better. Bryann was looking at the budget forecasting a few weeks ago and realized we could have paid off the truck two months ago if we'd been better about sticking to our budgets.  After realizing this, Bryann read the Total Money Makeover book that I'd read last year and is now a complete convert. 

He's readjusted our budgets, emailed friends and let them know we had to put vacations on hold for awhile, cancelled a few credit cards, and planned out the budget for the next four months.  He's forecasted that we could have all student loans paid off by his birthday in two years, and has even considered the possibility of paying off our house in 3 more years after that.  This is a completely different Bryann, and now I feel like I have a real partner in this quest.  He's even created a blog to share our progress with others.  Check him out at his Oregon Trail to Debt Freedom blog site.  

I told Bryann last night how much I appreciated his change in attitude towards our spending habits, and being the one to step up and put vacations on hold (because I really, really like going on vacation...)  When he gets motivated, he really gets motivated.  But we laughed about how he had to do it in his own time, and come to the realization on his own.  No amount of nagging makes Bryann change his ways.  So help keep both of us motivated - check out his blog, become a member and follow along, and throw some encouraging comments our way.  It's going to be a tough two years, but we've already got the ball rolling and we're committed to our goals now.