Welcoming Dave into our home

Dave Ramsey. You know - the money guy. My hubby and I have decided to invite Dave over and to have him stay for a while. It started when B brought Dave's book, "The Total Money Makeover" home from work a couple weeks ago.

I have been reading it and realizing that getting completely out of debt is definitely possible with some very hard work and strong discipline. We only have one credit card but have 2 car payments. It doesn't really sound all that bad until you see the balance on the credit card. Yikes!! Fortunately our cars are not fancy so the car payments are not huge...combined they are what many people spend on one super cool car payment.

I decided to blog about this new venture because I like the accountability. In January when I started Chalean Extreme to lose nearly 40 pounds, I loved sharing my progress with you, my friends, because it held me accountable. Plus, I like your encouraging comments :-)

So, as of this week, my family is officially on a huge debt diet. We will be cutting back on expenditures wherever we can. I have been clipping coupons and am going to try and get our grocery bill down to a bare minimum. Fortunately, the kids love sandwiches and noodles because I have a feeling we'll be eating quite a bit of those in the coming months.

We are beginning with having a yard sale this coming weekend to sell anything we are not using and do not need to keep. Its going to be mostly big things since we sold/took to Goodwill most of our little things back at Ft. Bragg before we moved. This weekend it will be a twin mattress, a train table, a queen headboard, and a decent spattering of home decor that we do not need. I hope most of this sells as we are needing a couple hundred dollars to complete the first step of Dave's plan - a $1000 emergency fund. We have close to that in savings, but need a little bit more to top it off...the rest of our profits will go towards debt!

I would love to hear some encouraging words as we begin this new adventure in financial freedom. B and I are both overwhelmed each month with financial stress, so I know this is the right thing to be doing. Its just the "doing it" thats going to be tough. Maybe its just the "getting started." Either way, don't judge us for eating cheap foods and shopping at Fall consignment sales and please send me all your money saving tips and ideas! And super cheap recipes! I will keep you up do date as we begin making larger debt payments and work our way to financial peace :-)