One Step At A Time

Last Sunday was our 3rd class in Financial Peace University, and we talked about the the dreaded B-word, Budget. Since I read Total Money Makeover months ago, we have been doing the budget and have posted several times about it. Therefore, I am not going to go over every detail of this past Sunday's class, but will discuss some of the issues I have with budgeting so far. I believe if I keep honestly critiquing us and our money management, it will help us in the long run to win with money. Having a lot of money is not the desired result of this process, the results we are looking for are Financial Peace, retire with dignity, and pursue some of our dreams later in life. Below are just some of the things and habits that gets in our way of achieving our goals. One of the things that I do that absolutely does not work is create the budget and never look at it again. I work hard to make a zero based budget and making sure every dollar has a name, but never pull out the game plan to m...

I have not written an entry in a long time, because it has been hard to find time since Maya was born. She was born 02/02 and weighed 7 lbs 7 oz. She is the prettiest little girl you have ever seen with thick black hair. We have been doing pretty good with our money, we only dipped into savings once and that was when we came home from the hospital. We may need to dip into a little bit in a couple of days with the health insurance being due but that is what it is there for. Felicia and I are looking into attending one of the local Financial Peace University Classes in our area. I am really excited about the thought of it. Following Dave Ramsey since July has allowed us to enjoy every moment with our daughter without having to worry about money to much and we wanted to see what else can happen when continue with the rest of the plan. We still have a small problem of eating out, but we are getting better each month. Got to get back to the kids!

So far it has been a horrible start to the New Year as far as budgeting goes. I am not trying to make excuses, but we need to find out why we are doing so bad. I think I know...we are getting anxious about the birth of our daughter. Felicia has been feeling bad the last couple of weeks and this week she has been having irregular contractions. We keeping coming up with excuses not to cook or to buy something we really don't need. Deep down we know we are just trying relieve stress or make ourselves feel better at that moment. Now is the time to stop and tighten the ropes a little bit. Felicia has stopped working two weeks before we planned, but the good news is that we did so good in savings that we have enough in an emergency fund to survive. Thanks for the advice on that one, Dave Ramsey! We stockpiled some cash and now we need to be careful in how we spend it. It would be a shame to do so well and then manage those funds poorly. Even though we have done poorly this mont...