Hello everyone! So it’s been a couple weeks since my last
post and man how things have taken some turns that I never would have imagined
since then! This isn’t even going to be diet/food/weight related because in all
reality, due to said changes I have been preoccupied and have not devoted
myself as I had been previously. No worries! I’m finally back on my game and
things are looking up in ways that I’ve not seen in quite a while. But the next
few minutes I’m going to get pretty personal so don’t judge and just bear with
me.
So let me just ask a question…have you ever been to a point
in your life where you just felt something was not quite right? Not quite
missing but not all there and as it should be either? Well, after our Disney
trip a little over a month ago, I came home and felt very burdened by our
finances. Yes, we did just take a dream vacation to the most magical place on
earth but coming home didn’t feel quite the same. I had been working my butt
off at my second job and was able to stash away a filling amount of spending
money meant just for the trip. It felt so “freeing” to not have to rely on credit
cards, as credit cards and I have had a love/hate relationship all of my adult
life. Once back home, the reality of our being slaves to debt really opened my
eyes to how I didn’t want my family to continue to live but how we should
be living. Between credit card debt, doctor bills, car payments and school
loans…our debt just didn’t seem to be getting smaller but expanding somehow. In
addition to that, with my newfound respect and dedication for mine and my
family’s health, our grocery budget certainly increased greatly. (I swear the
government knows exactly what they’re doing when they make eating healthy
almost unattainable for families living paycheck to paycheck…but I’m not even
going there!).
It wasn’t until one night a couple weeks ago that I was
working on our monthly budget that I realized how in debt we actually were and
how quickly it had escalated. While we were making enough to cover all of our
bills, it wasn’t leaving us much to live off of AFTER our bills were paid. If
you know the type of person I am, I thrive on adventure. I am always in search
for something my family and I can do in our spare time. I love the richness of
new experiences. I love seeing new places, even if the new place is a town or
two over. And we are raising a daughter who is quickly becoming exactly like me
in that sense. She’s got the same adventurous spirit I have. Just last night,
she reminded me that I told her we would go to Hawaii in two years where she
could meet Bethany Hamilton and learn to surf. For the record, I won’t tell
anyone anything that I don’t mean, something my mom drilled into me from an
early age. Say what you mean and mean what you say is her favorite quote. Thus,
my five year old already trusts that a Hawaii trip will be in our future. No
complaints from me though….if you’ve never been, it is truly one of the most
breathtaking places you could ever imagine. But as I was sitting and working on
my budget, I realized that at the current shape we were in, we wouldn’t be able
to provide ourselves such opportunities or even feed the savings fund for
Gracie’s college at the rate we were going. And that Kilimanjaro trip next year
that this blog is basically based off of? Ha…who am I kidding? That’s a six
thousand dollar trip, if not more with the way gas prices are increasing, and
that’s just for one person! And what about the date nights Gary and I would
like to enjoy a couple times a month? Sure, we could whip out a credit card and
have a good time with no problem. But it was that mentality that got us in this
position from the start. I knew it was time to make a change. So as I huddled down
in my living room floor, cried tears of desperation and begged God to give me a
newfound and wiser way to handle our finances and get us out of this mess, He
heard my cries, as He always does. It wasn’t but a short time later that one of
my closest friends, who I shamefully had not talked to in far too long, emailed
me a very personal and heartfelt message, almost as if she sensed my pain. In
it, she mentioned a fellow that put her on a financial plan and she couldn’t
have been happier about making the decision to follow his plan. Enter Dave
Ramsey. Coincidentally, I had one of his books. Granted, it was a book that had
been gathering dust on my bookshelf. But after talking to another good friend
who actually teaches some of Dave’s classes, I was able to gather the courage
to do something I never thought I would. Let me first say, Dave does not play. He
means business. I mean the kind of business that if you are barely scraping by
with no means to start making headway to get out of debt (like us), do
something drastic. So we did. We sold my car. My precious 2012 Hyundai Sonata.
Of course, not without making sure we had a backup for my transportation first.
I’ve been blessed with an amazing family that picks each other up when they
need it. My grandmother gifted her car to me since she doesn’t drive anymore and my mom said that we could fix her Camaro up and use it as well.
It’s a far cry from the kind of car I was used to driving, but it serves the
purpose and it is already making a drastic difference in our budget and we have
already been able to pay off one small debt. I know God answered my prayers in
the form of that one email and friends who encouraged me to check Dave out.
As I look into the future, I am actually for the first time
encouraged that we can do things and travel places and save for retirement (did
I just say that?) and Gracie’s college like we have only talked about doing up
until now. Gary and I are on a total path to financial freedom free of the debt
that today’s society seems to push on Americans, and most of us fall for it.
There is so much more to life than worrying from day to day how to just scrape
by. We’ve took great effort in teaching Gracie that life is one big adventure,
whether nice and clean or ugly and messy but that’s it’s always important to
recognize life’s beauty in even the smallest day to day adventures. I’ve just
learned that sometimes the ugly and messy is of your own doing. Sometimes you
have control rather than letting the messy control you. Funny how that works
huh? My child taught me what I was trying to teach her. I just think she
learned it much quicker than I did. Let’s see where our next adventure takes us…
