Monday, April 06, 2009

Attacking Debt With A Vengence: Day 1

We've heard and interacted with several things by Dave Ramsey, and knew that someday we would pick up his book and run with his steps to financial freedom. Well, this weekend Rob picked up the book (Total Money Makeover), and we read quite a bit together last night and we are convinced that we are going to follow his 7 steps to financial freedom. Starting today.

The first step is to have $1,000 in case of emergency. Knowing that this was the first step some time ago we've already accomplished this goal, which is quite freeing honestly.

So we're on step 2: Eliminate debt (except your house) using the debt snowball approach. So this is where we start. The debt snowball approach is listing all of your debts and paying off the smallest amounts first (not the largest interest rate), so that once you pay that off you can snowball that payment into the next smallest debt.

So, today we are collecting information to get the exact pay-off amounts of our debts. And, in some small hope to encourage my readers to do the same (and to keep ourselves publicly accountable), we're going to do this in the public eye. Stay tuned for fun ahead!

7 comments:

Beckys blog said...

Good for you! We started this about a year ago and have paid off 4 credit cards, 1 dr office and the hospital since! It's amazing how much stress disappears when you get rid of the debt and put a couple thousand $$ in the bank! We have 1 dr bill and 1 credit card left to go.

Jill said...

Yay! Good job! Nolan and I got all our debt (besides house and car) paid off last January, and the cars will be paid off this October. Such a great feeling!

beachbirdie said...

Good for you! It is hard work, but worth it. Living debt-free (except for mortgage) and having 6 months of cash saved for essentials (like mortgage payments) is the only reason we have survived 7 months of unemployment (and of course, the grace of our Lord!).

simplykersh said...

Yeah! We are not true Dave Ramsey-ers, but we do follow a lot of his principles (We figured it out before we found him, do to Jeff being on the financial world for a while). We haven't kept exact track but we think we have paid off $50,000 to $60,000 since getting married! We are down to one student loan. And yes it is freeing. One rule we break is the $1,000 emergency fund, we have more. We tend to have big emergencies and our highest deductible is $1,500 so we always try to have at least that. Good times, and good luck!

T & K said...

Awesome! We too started about a year ago, student loans at the beginning, and still working on student loans now!! It's harder to get traction when they're ALL big! But the freedom at the end keeps us going...and going!

cacfus said...

That is awesome Robin. My husband and I also started this. We just have my WBC school loan left! 5 months. :) The book is addicting, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Hello??? I need a Robyn fix, anyone home???? Aunt Barb in Indy