Sunday, December 19, 2010

Sigh of Relief


Guest post by my mom

If you've been reading this blog for more than a week, you know that we had to move out of our house. It wasn't an ideal situation. In fact, it was kinda a crisis. Mostly because with two dogs and a baby, we were pretty limited as to where we could go. My husband is in the military, and we were scheduled to leave for an entirely different state in about 6 weeks. As a result, we really couldn't rent a new place for a month--where we currently live, there just aren't options like that which are financially realistic for us.

We are huge fans of Dave Ramsey. So, we are very committed to staying out of debt. And yes, we really mean no debt. No credit cards. No store cards. No gas cards. No student loans. No car payments. "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law" Romans 13:8.

Add these two things together and we were surprisingly prepared. We moved ourselves out of our house. And paid for it. Because we choose to live well below our means (which, we understand is weird), we were able to just focus on figuring out where to stay. While that was still no easy task, it was far less stressful than figuring out where we were going to stay AND accruing debt from a move or worrying about how we were going to pay for it.

I don't mean to sound boastful at all. But we are truly thrilled with how much traction we're able to see in our life since adopting Dave's Baby Steps. We're able to actually see progress in our goals which is an amazing feeling. While we're still living out of a hotel at the moment and aren't sure exactly where we're going to live when we move, we've still breathed a sigh of relief because this situation never became a financial burden or crisis. We set the goals to get out of debt and stay that way, and it's paid off more than we could have imagined.

As the year comes to a close, many folks start thinking about goals for the new year. Even if you're not into Dave Ramsey, I would highly encourage you to sit down and actually write out goals (both financial and personal) for the new year. Jot them down in a place that you'll see them regularly, so that you can refer back to them throughout the year. If you happened to do that in 2010, evaluate where you're at. Are you ending the year where you thought you'd be? Are you happy with your progress--or lack of it? If you aren't seeing the results you'd like, think about trying something different for the new year. It doesn't need to be Dave Ramsey's program (though I can't recommend it enough!), but try something different.

Now to work on my own goals list for 2011...

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