When we first decided to kick our debt to the curb it wasn’t that easy. When you grow up not being taught how to manage your money. Not taught how bad credit cards are, isn’t a high credit score good after all? I was taught to get a credit card and get a credit score. I was not taught how to invest. Budget. What’s that?I just knew I needed a job to pay my bills and hope to one day….Idk I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I did not have a dream of being anything. I didn’t want to be a stay at home wife. I actually never wanted to get married and have kids, that is a whole different topic. No Cinderella dreams over here. Ha! It is kind of sad when you think about it. And here I am, married for over 4 years, two kids and stay at home mom. Interesting how thing work out for the good 😍
I read this Article from Dave Ramsey’s website today and agree with it all. We have literally done it all. Or gone through it.
1. The doubt was enormous but once we made our budget and starting plowing through or debt i was optimistic.
2. We really got gazelle intense! I was looking in every direction on how to save and pay off.
3. I listened to Dave Ramsey Podcast, all three of them. Everyday. While I worked out. Cooked. Cleaned. I loved it. It is SO motivating! I was able to learn so much. It also helped me give money advice to others. Pretty darn cool.
4. Oh my goodness did we sell. We sold so much our dogs thought we were moving. Haha! No joke. We had about 1/4 of the stuff we moved with and it felt AMAZING! We live a pretty simple life now and I never want to go back to the “old us”.
5. Bargains. Yes, varage sale is huge in California so I bought used everything. I tried to get as much free stuff also. A lot of people just want to get rid of things and I loved it! Of course I sanitized everything but I never minded second hand stuff.
6. Budgeting. Not the most desired thing for me but I started to love it. This is such an important step when getting debt free. Tell your money where to go, every penny of it.
7. Cash. It gives me a bit of anxiety to use cash….at Costco. But once I started using cash it got easier. I treat it like a game, a challenging one. I also save the change for a rainy day. It’s amazing how fast change adds up.
8. Family. Yes. My husband and I were on board from day one. It would have been impossible to do this without him.
9. Work hard was an understatement. My husband, he is amazing! He worked SO much overtime. He would work hard around the house on weekend to save money also. I also worked my hardest to make homemade everything and fix stuff myself. Sometimes a second job is needed. Thankfully we are doing it without.
10. When you are able to see how the progress is going it can be very motivating. I have it written on our dry erase board.
11. The word no. Oh gosh, that’s a hard one for me. My husband, not so much. He is good at saying no. Learning how to say no was probably one of the hardest things ever!
12. Packing lunches and making our own coffee was easy for us. We were already doing that and not to save money but to be healthy. I love black coffee! Love! I would spend $10 a day at Starbucks (if I only drank black coffee). That’s $70 a week and $3,640 bucks a year! On just coffee!! How bout food. You eat out for each meal. 3x $10 (the average meal these days). That’s $30 a day, $210 a week and $10,920 a year! That’s not including alcohol, going out, fancy foods. Just plain old fast foods. Coffee and fast a year (on average) would be $14,560. Its way cheaper to make food at home and brew your own coffe with no added stuff. And healthier! By far. I am 20 lbs lighter than my wedding day because of this 😃 a win win situation.
13. Spending time with people who respect your process is ideal. It makes it easier.
14. Creative should be our last name by now. It is an important piece to our puzzle.
15. We stopped my husband 401k since mine didn’t exist due to me not working anymore.
16. Prayer. Ah yes. This is one thing I do a lot. Sometimes scream, cry and just talk to God about it all. Faith is what has kept us chugging along in our journey. 
Once again, Dave Ramsey has put together such a great list. If you are thinking about getting your finances together. The time is now! It’s never to late to start. We started when I was 31 and my husband was 33. It’s not usually fun in the beginning but once the train starts to go it gets better. Believe me. We will also teach our boys how to Manage money, that I do know. I do not want them to be clueless about their future. I highly recommend you check out Dave Ramsey, listen to his podcast and start today.
Live debt free
Live simple
Flourishing Home with Hannah 