My wife and I were introduced to Dave Ramsey early in 2004. Well, we never “met” him (yet). There was a great couple that was gazelle intense about becoming debt-free. They shared tgeir story with us and let us borrow Financial Peace Revisited.
I’m going to share the same gift here. I will be giving away a free copy of Financial Peace Revisited to a lucky person. See the details at the end if the post.
My Story:
My wife has been the financially wise one in our marriage. I was TERRIBLE with money before we got married (then it downgraded to “terrible” without being capitalized). There was a few months that I wasn’t stupid enough to pay one credit card with another. I was worse. I would take the credit card to the ATM, withdraw some money, go to the bank, deposit the money I just took from the credit card, then wrote a check to the credit card company! (Did I mention that I was TERRIBLE with money?)
After I married my wife, she helped me to get better with our money (shared responsibility). After that aforementioned couple shared Dave with us, we spent time reading through the book. I’m not much of a dog-person, so the “Peace Puppies” kind of scared me. But then we read the word “budget” – and it kept showing up.
We started making changes. We had little debt (my stupid credit card and her car loan). We didn’t understand the whole process, and kind of mixed in some of our own ideas (well, mostly hers, because mine involved more spending and hers was more saving).
Throughout the years, we were not gazelle intense, and went up and down a few times. We hit a few hard times with school and medical bills – totaling about $6,000 in a year or two. Some of it was placed on credit cards (stupid). We recovered and paid that off as well as two car loans (another $20,000) in a couple years.
We started to forget about Dave’s plan. We had another small slip into debt (well, $3,000 on a credit card). Then I started listening to Dave on the radio, and started to get fired up again. I got my wife on board (I was starting to drive it, but she is still better with money), and we purchased “The Total Money Makeover” with some accessories. In less than six months, we were debt-free again.
I have the tendency to learn things the hard way (if you couldn’t tell). But when I finally get something, I get it.
Your Story: What is your story? Have you followed Dave’s plan? What struggles did you have? Are you debt-free now?
In order to qualify for the book give-away:
- Comment below by answering the question above.
- Fill out this simple form.
- Share this with your friends: “I entered for a chance to win a copy of Financial Peace! http://wp.me/p2wTWX-ap via @JoshuaWRivers”
I will be doing the drawing on Friday, October 19. The winner will then be notified by e-mail and announced on Twitter.
Also! There will be an additional give-away next week with two other Dave Ramsey books (one person wins both!). But this will be only available to my subscribers. An e-mail with details will be sent next Wednesday.
Before most people outside of Nashville had ever heard of Dave…long, long ago in a time known as 2000, I was in college and my cable got turned off because I did not pay the bill. So I listened to the radio…and thus Dave. He was on during my commute to the golf course after class each day. I usually only caught about 2030 minutes but that was enough. Two hours a week of Dave…for over a year. And then I kept listening.
I never had debt after 2003. I was 24 and debt free. Kind of cool. But still not on a real budget…I just finally made a lot more than I spent and that worked.
Then I met my eventual wife, who worked for him. When we got married, we got on a budget, paid off her debts, and have never looked back!
Thanks for sharing, Matt! A budget is still a little struggle for me. I still have the strong desire to be impulsive, but now it’s $5 instead of $500. It’s actually a little harder for me since we are debt-free because I don’t feel the pressure as much. Listening to Dave and interacting with CLoBlog family helps to keep things fresh.
That’s the great thing about blow money…it allows guilt-free impulse buying because you actually DID budget for it. It’s nice to know now that we already “spent” the $5 in the budget so there is no worry.
Exactly, but my problems is not going beyond that! I guess if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. 🙂 Making good progress, though. It is easier to tell myself ‘no’ now than it was before.
I think the radio show was something that also really convinced me of some of the things we needed to do.
We have tracked our money being spent for years, but never took it to the next level and developed a budget. That was our plan for October, but it never happened. Time to start planning to develop one for November.
Great story! My wife and I are still fighting our way forward to get out of our debt stupidity. But you know what? I’m thankful that we’re living what we’re living. The difficulties, worry, fear, and just downright frustration that we’re going through is slowly making us work together on our finances.
I have been a Dave fan for years…but have never been able to really get my wife into it until now. We’re still working hard on being strict on our budget – complete control! Complete control! Complete control! — I hope this budget will be the first time we nail it. Sigh. One step a time, right?
The b…b….b….budget is a hard one. Hope you guys can nail it! Thanks for stopping by!
I just recently heard of Dave and the 7 Baby Steps when I became familiar with Entreleadership. At this point my wife and I are just starting to try and use his system. We got the Total Money Makeover from the library and have been trying to walk through it. But at this point only working on number 2. One good thing was we were never big on loans so the debt is just some credit card debit to be worked on. I think the hardest change for me going through some of the book was making the decision to stop the 401K investment for a period of time and use that to build the emergency fund and pay the debt.
Good luck to you as you get started! Thanks for following – hope I can be a help!
Thanks for the comments, everyone! Don’t forget to fill out the form if you want to qualify for the book. Also, pass this on to others that may be able to benefit from this book!
Has anyone went through the Financial Peace University as compared to the books Financial Peace Revisited and Total Money Makeover? I noticed Dave recently released new videos for his university series, but wasn’t real sure how that compared to the Financial Peace book.
I haven’t gone through FPU, but I’d like to sometime. Even though I’m debt-free, it’d be good to solidify the principles. I saw two videos from the previous version, though.