Financial Peace: Do you have any?

Well, It’s been quite a while since I blogged but I wanted to write something fairly quickly. In short, my household has started on the Dave Ramsey kick!!! If you have not heard of him, do not worry. You are not alone as I had only heard of him as of April 2008.

Who is Dave Ramsey and why should anyone care?

Simply put, he is a radio, talk-show host that advocates living on a cash base system so that you are debt free. His philosophy is based upon Christian principles and whether or not you are a believer, you may find yourself being a follower because his philosophy just make sense. What is great about Dave and the show is he tells it like it is. He does not sugar coat stupid decisions and he will tell you quite bluntly and humorously to sell your car especially when it is 50% of your take home pay!! He has been broke and filed for bankruptcy many years ago so he shares his experiences and knowledge on an easy-to-understand level about managing money.

Financial Peace University (FPU): A College for Everyone

If you thought you could not afford to go to college, this is a university that everyone should attend and is quite affordable. It is not your traditional college, rather FPU is more about educating yourself with Dave’s coursework. If you are skeptical, so was I. Everyone who has made it rich or gotten out of debt has some theory about how to do it whether it is buying real estate, gold, stocks or something a little too risky or pricey for the rest of us. So, before I spent my $150 on the kit, I downloaded podcasts, read everything I could on the website and watched his show on Fox Business Network. I can now tell you that it was worth every penny.

Getting Started

To get started, I purchased The Financial Peace University Kit for $150. For that you get:

• Entrance to a class which is typically offered at a local church. Again, you do not have to be a Christian or a believer but it is based upon Christian principles
• The Financial Peace Book
• The Financial Peace Workbook
• The Total Money Makeover Book
• 2 wallets with envelopes
• Audio CDs that match the DVDs that you view while attending the class
• Access to online utilities and forums

Purchasing the kit and listening to the CDs was the easy part. Developing a detailed or cashflow budget was the hard part. I thought I had been budgeting for years as I am a seasoned Quicken user. WRROOOOOONGGGGGG!!! I had all the monthly items identified but it was items such as my annual personal property tax for my SUV or gifts through-out the year that never made it into the budget that were causing a problem. The solution? Giving ever dollar a name is Dave’s recommendation, even an amount that you will blow per month. I like this part because everyone wants to spend a little money for themselves and this still allows you to enjoy life with discipline.

Baby Step 1

The first baby step is to get $1000 cash in the bank for an emergency bank. My household was able to do this pretty quickly as we took our tax refund money and put $1500 in savings. However, Dave suggest having a yard sale, a second job or anything you can do to accomplish this step.

Now, I don’t want to give all the steps away but we are on our way to financial peace. We have cut up all credit cards, even our beloved American Excess cards and started our “Debt Snowball”.

Don’t think it can be done? I think it can which is why we purchased the Financial Peace University Kit, listen to his radio program, download podcast and have just started living and breathing, paying for everything in cash!!!

In the upcoming months I will be outline our process. Here is our starting point for “Debt Snowball”. We have listed the bills in order of lowest to highest.

From QueenGeek’s Financial Matters

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