If you live like no one else, later you can live like no one else - Ramsey

I started reading the Total Money Makeover book by Dave Ramsey last night. It's the same things I've read before but I do enjoy some of his statements. Joshua and I are wanting to build our house in Conway soon but we won't be able to do anything until we get better with money. We aren't terrible but we aren't great. We have some stuff to pay off, car and student loans along with two credit cards. We have about $19,000 we need to get rid of and $3k of that is the two credit cards. The way I see it is, if people that are way more in debt than us can pay it off it a year or so then so can we. Luckily I get to handle all the bills too so I need to come up with some method of breaking down our debt. I have it lined up from smallest to largest right now. I think I will take Ramsey's snowball approach if I can. Joshua wants to pay our truck off which is second in line so we might start with that first which would free up $150 a month to put towards something else - like the credit cards.

You might be asking yourself what has brought on this urgency of taking care of our finances. It basically boils down to me wanting to go back to Ohio. I haven't been home in two years and right now we have about $100 in our bank until the hubby gets paid tomorrow. We live paycheck to paycheck. We have never taken a real vacation, we want to build our home, give our daughter the things she needs / wants, and live without the worry of finances. We want to make trips to Ohio, trips anywhere really, without wondering where we will come up with the money. we both have family offer to help but neither of us want that because not making a trip somewhere won't kill us. Like the quote I have as my title - If you live like no on else, later you can live like no one else. Basically, we have to make sacrifices now so that we can have the things we want in the future.

So in ending this I am giving myself a challenge. I am challenging myself to get the truck and two credit cards paid off by December and to stop eating out more than once a week. That will be about $4800 of our debt. I am also going to give you all a challenge. If you have a credit card that you have a balance on - pay it off by December. I don't care how big the balance is, just pay it off and then only use that card for REAL EMERGENCIES if you want to keep it, otherwise cut it up and use cash.