Getting Out of Debt Progress

I am always going to remember 2012.  It's the year that I found Da.ve Ram.sey.  A girl that I used to work with mentioned him a couple of years ago and how much his teachings helped her start to manage her money.  I was curious but never really acted on investigating him. 

Back in June I decided that we needed to do something.  I had been in my new job for 8 months.  We were making payments on everything but clearly we weren't getting ahead or making a dent in our mountain of debt.  My boss had given me an Ama.zon gift card for my birhtday so I decided to download one of Da.ve's books on my Kind.le.  I blew through the book and was so inpired by the Ba.by ste.ps because they seemed manageable.  Playbacks of Rich.ard Drey.fuss in the movie "What.Abou.t Bo.b" were in my mind.  "Bab.y steps, Bob, bab.y steps."  Dav.e's plan was broken down for me in baby steps, I could do this! 

The first baby step is to Save $1000 in an emergency fund.  Now this was probably not the best choice but we found ourselves in a triage situation when we began.  I had pretty much been in charge of the finances but R had a few things that he was in charge of.  Everything transferred to me and I found that we had some past due issues with some of R's things because he was struggling with the consistency of his business (not to mention, he's terrible with money and still an issue in our marriage)

I made the choice to get caught up on everything first because there were some bills that needed to be paid YESTERDAY!  We paid our association dues, paid off the bunk beds that we had on credit that the deadline for no interest was about to be up, and a past due credit card of R's.  Once we got everything up to date we were able to start building our emergency fund.  

 I taught a college course this past quarter and it allowed us to begin building our emergency fund and pay cash for two different car repairs that would have previously put us in the poor house.  In November I got a Chris.tmas bonus that allowed us to finish our emergency fund, pay off two more credit cards, and pay cash for Christ.mas!!!!!!

So as we stand right now we have a zero-based budget every month (every cent accounted for), $1000 in our emergency fund and we've paid off 5 bills.  We are currently working on bab.y ste.p #2 which is Pay Off All De.bt with the De.bt Sn.owball.  You keep rolling the extra money you are saving from paid off bills into the payment for the next lowest bill. 

I use the budgeting sheets that Da.ve has on his website and when we started there weren't enough lines for all the various debts that we had but when I was making January's budget I only had to add one extra line in the space provided for debt.  We also have our deb.t's listed in order from lowest to highest on sticky chart paper hanging in our bedroom.  I love being able to cross off debts or change the amount owed to a smaller number!!!!      

I have high hopes for 2013!!!!  Baby steps do make it more manageable!  I wish that I would have gotten on the bandwagon years ago but we're on it now and making wonderful progress.  If there is one thing that I could curse my parents about it's them not teaching me how to handle money.  You can't just let your kids "figure it out" because society leads them down the wrong path.  We are going to teach our boys about money and be sure that we don't push them out in the world without the necessary skills they need to succeed!  

Merry Christmas!!!!!!