Skip to main content

Week 4---How much can I SAVE, INVEST, BLOW, and GIVE if I had NO payments?

On June 28th, we had our 4th class of FPU and it was all about DEBT. I think this is the part that drives people to look into Dave, they hear bits and pieces about his program and getting out of debt, but when they hear him talk about never BORROWING money again they are quickly turned off. For Felicia and me, we liked that part. This lesson is about how to get out of debt, taking an honest look at what it cost to finance things you could save up for, and what you could do if you had no debt.

How to get out of debt? Listening to Dave on the radio, I know that when I hear a new caller talks to Dave the first things he will tell them is to get on written cash plan, stop borrowing money, start saving money, and work the debt snowball. I know what you are thinking, "you need to listen to a radio show to know that." Well, sometimes you do. Sometimes you need a stranger to knock some sense into you! If it was that easy to do, we already be doing it. It would not take an economic meltdown for the national savings rate to finally increase. I guess it doesn't matter how got here, but that we are her. Now, we are on a written cash plan, and saving money. We are almost done with Step One and will be moving to Baby Step 2 in August.

Our homework for this week is to put the Debt Snowball together and figure how long it will take for us to be debt free.

When are you considering if you should follow Dave's plan or not, ask yourself this: How much can I SAVE, INVEST, BLOW, and GIVE if I had NO payments?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Handling Hiccups

Lately, we have had some weird things happen at the house that has caused us to get a little off track with the budget. In spite of these things, we have not touched our emergency fund and have just found other ways around these emergencies. Our dryer and our stove are busted. We are renting and the land lord had us call a appliance warranty company but for both appliances they claim are unfix-able and not under warranty. We are waiting to hear back from the land lords to see what they want to do about it, but nothing yet. The dryer is a simpler problem to work around because we can take the clothes to our parents house and wash them while we visit, Felicia's mom will sometimes take a couple of loads and do them herself for us, or we can go to the laundry mat. The stove on the other hand is little more difficult especially since we don't like to cook anyway and now we have to learn to bake instead of cooking Hamburger Helper. I am kidding but when we cook it is pretty bas...

It's the Budget, Stupid!

A budget is not something you put off. When we do our budget, it helps us stay on track. In the past, I have written about getting off track but even during those times a budget kept us from going overboard. This time around we kept putting it off and putting it off and just kept spending without a plan. This laziness has hurt us and it pushes us further away from our goals. When we got paid on the15th, we did pretty good and had some extra cash in our envelopes at the end of the two weeks. This paycheck, I know we have spent more than we brought in and had to go tap into savings for non-emergencies. When this happens, it feels like I have let my family down. I am the one who is going to set the example for my children and their money. I could always just spin it and tell them that this is an example of what not to do. I know the habits that we are supposed to have that will make this work. It starts with making the budget. Duh! It needs to be done in order to make the money behave. W...

Handling Ms Brown

Since we have started on the Debt Snowball, we have started to receive calls from debt collectors and one in particular has not been pleasant. Her name is Ms. Brown and she keeps calling about Felicia's court reporting bill. A little background on this bill: Felicia was going to CRID, the Court Reporting Institute, and she decided to leave early because she was in her last trimester of pregnancy and it was difficult to get around with her steno machine. Before the quarter started she told them that she was taking a leave of absence and would return after the baby was born, but they talked her into signing up for the quarter and told her it would be okay if she did not finish the quarter. It turns out they wanted her to attend until her student loan paid them and then allow her to drop, but the student loan did not pay them and now they want to collect from Felicia. Ms. Brown called Felicia one day and started to tell Felicia that she was in "breach of contract" and needed...