Slow Start

The  seeds of want to become  frugal, money smart, and thrifty had come sometime before I had actually lost my job. It had just never sank in that we should be living that way all the time instead of just when we didn't have money to spend.  A few years ago while still at my old job a friend had recommended that I read  Dave Ramsey's book The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness ... So I sat down and over the coming week or so after I read through the book learning the method Dave laid out before you to become financially independent. For a short time after a different mental state come over me and I pushed my family in a direction to stop trying to catch the Jones. I slowed spending and eating out, I cut out going to lunch every day from work and started carrying leftovers or microwave meals and I put us on course to pay off all of our bills just like those in the book had stated could be done.

The want, the need to be Debt Free lasted for quite some time I even picked up another book by Dave called Financial Peace Revisited  which just furthered my resolve that we needed to be debt free.... We did pretty well, in the first year after reading these books, we managed to go from blowing every incoming penny to actually having a starter emergency fund (outlined by Dave as $1000 put up for emergencies only) and having a small nest egg starting to grow in our savings account which to this point was only there because our bank required we have a savings account to have checking. We followed the "Debt Snowball" given to us in the book until we had paid down to just our last 3 or 4 bills (counting our house), with debt freedom in sight we were on the home run stretch...... And then....

My stupidity set in before home base, I decided I wanted to go to school to learn about computers. Technically, not a stupid idea just not a well founded idea when you have to take out a high interest loan to do so. And on top of that I let advertisements for a "career education" center, cloud my brain. I saw the 6-9 months to do what you love ad and I fell for it just like any other sucker that doesn't think things through first. I'll fully get into why this was a bad choice later but this is where my resolve broke and we really started spending again.  Going back to school I added a school loan of $18,000 back into the snowball that really has done nothing for me and has yet to pay for itself. 

On top of going back to school I found out that my wife was pregnant with our 2nd child at this point and again good judgment went out the window. I took my fully paid off 4 cylinder gas friendly truck and sold it, to go purchase a new "family size" gas hungry Chevrolet Suburban because that was my dream vehicle and I finally had reason to need the extra space. Another large bill back into the debt snowball that was now growing larger than it had originally began with all of the small bills in it that we had worked to pay off. With a new child on the way should have been the time that we cracked down, got in line and pushed to finish our goal of freedom from debt, instead it is where we fell apart and started making unwise decisions again.  Our debt snowball had been down to just my wife's car, her school loan, and our house a total of about $125k owed. But after my bad decision it was back to over $150k for us to work on again.  And I tell you this not  looking for you to feel sorry for me but to show you that even the best laid plans start to fall apart if you do not have dedication to the goal at hand.

Next post: A couple years of stupidity.