In line with my life clean up, I have begun looking at the "biggies" in life. For me, the "biggies" are those things that are so big that you MUST at all cost do it the best you can and with all the vigor you can. I have already mentioned my spiritual life and how I working on that. The other "biggies" in my life are my marriage, my children, and my finances. These are things that cannot be left alone and without attention or parts of my life WILL die.
Long story short, my husband and I decided to sit down and write out and tweak a new budget. In the spirit of money, I felt the urge to break out a book by Dave Ramsey that I had not previously read, The Total Money Makeover. About 5 or 6 years ago I read his book called Financial Peace but have not to date revisited his material (we have been doing the Dave Ramsey plan to the best of our ability since that time). I found this book very motivating and real. I really do want to live like no one else so that some day I can live like no one else. (You really need to read one of his books to fully understand that sentence.)
Wow! Isn't it amazing that when you start to really clean something up you start finding all these messes you never saw before. It is like cleaning out our linen cabinet a few months back. I am meticulous about how towels stack - that they all are folded exactly the same, stacked the same way, and placed in the cabinet a certain way. I wanted to re-stack towels and sheets (mostly the sheets). As I pulled my clean linens from the cabinet, I was shocked to find some sort of white dust lurking in the back. I think it must have been breeding on the spot because it felt like the more I cleaned the more I found.
Let me tell you, when I looked straight faced into our finances I was shocked, saddened, happy, excited, overwhelmed, depressed, and blessed all in a matter of minutes. I was shocked to finally put a number to my husband's school debt - much more than most people's homes. I was sad to see that our money wasn't going as far as I had hoped. Happy to know that although we have made some mistakes financially, we really weren't so bad if you took away the house and school debt. Excited to see that we can and will get out of it. Overwhelmed with what to cut, how to arrange the money so that it works, and putting numbers to everything. I was depressed to find out that until we get debt paid for we cannot have many extras that we had been planning for. And last, I am blessed to be married to a man who is willing to stand by "us" without blame and move forward.
I know many of you are thinking how did it go wrong with the Dave Ramsey, iron clad, tried and true method. Well, just as Dave would tell you LIFE. Thank God (literally and not in a derogatory way) that we had the knowledge from Dave before life's circumstances. We have debt; we aren't perfect. We have put life on hold for my DH to finish his training. We made hard and at times not perfect choices that we felt would put us right where we would want to be at the end of his school and training. We knew the risks; we understood the consequences. But, re-armed with a fresh take on old methods, we are ready to move forward. It is time to stop living in our self-made time warp and step into our bright future.
Although it may look weird, we are making the choice to live like no one else today so that someday we can live like no one else. It is funny how big of a role society plays on you. When people find out that we don't have cable TV we get many gasps. That is just one example of how we don't live like most people. I hope to make a change that will literally change my family tree permanently. I didn't come from money. In fact, my mom was a struggling single mom for years. She built my life on her back. Just as my mom gave me a leg up in life, I hope to leave a legacy for my kids that is routed in the word of God and one that is founded upon the idea of how to use money and not become trapped by it.
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