Welcome to our blog about our Journey to become Debt Free!
We are a young married couple with one child. We live in Texas. My husband, Steven, is the bread winner in the family. I stay home with our son, who I will call "Monkey". I also attend college part time. We have been struggling to become debt free for most of our 4 married years. We have a little less than $30,000 to pay off. Most of it is medical bills, one car, two student loans and one, yes only one, credit card. We have previously paid off 5 other credit cards, 4 of which were department store cards, JC Penny, New York & Co, Victoria's Secret, Lane Bryant, and DressBarn, the 5th card was a MasterCard that we had actually opened to use as a emergency fund, how irresponsible! We will be living on CASH only!!
NO debit cards, NO credit cards!
We are super excited to be starting over on this Journey to become debt free! We follow the plan set by Dave Ramsey in "The Total Money Makeover".
Baby Step 1: $1,000 in an emergency fund
Baby Step 2: Pay off all debt with the debt snowball
Baby Step 3: 3-6 months of expenses in savings(fully funded emergency fund)
Baby Step 4: Invest 15% of income for retirement
Baby Step 5: College Funding
Baby Step 6: Pay off your home early
Baby Step 7: Build wealth and give!
We are currently on Baby Step 1. We are hoping to have the $1K by the end of October.
Thank you for reading and following!
Rusti, Steven and Monkey!
COngratulations on your journey! That is the first step! My husband and I walked through Dave Ramey's class when we first got married and are now DEBT FREE!! You can do it girl!
ReplyDeleteAwesome!!! I am so excited to be starting this journey...again! lol we have a pretty good plan this time so hopetully it will stick!
ReplyDelete~RustiAnn
Since we make so little (around $25k a year, sadly) we have decided to only do a small emergency fund of $500. We do have a auto transfer of $25 to savings which will continue.
ReplyDeleteReading TMMO has changed my life. You can listen to Dave Ramsey's radio show (3 hours a day, weekdays) on his website for free (lots of commercials but if you listen in the archives, you can skip them by fast forwarding.)
Fridays? I think he does the WE'RE DEBT FREE!! calls where you can hear how people from all income levels become debt free.
Yes I love all the Dave Ramsey things! We are doing a baby emergency fund of $1000 because my husband makes close to $30K a year could be $48K a year soon! I can only hope!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes TMMO is a life changer!
~RustiAnn