Total Money Makeover

Originally, this was going to be a new blog.  But I've already got to many blogs going.  The title of this blog is "Learn Teach Tech."  The Total Money Makeover fits into the learning.  So there.  No new blog.  Just a series of posts on our family's Total Money Makeover.  

We got Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover for Christmas from my brother.  They've been doing it for a bit and highly recommended it to us.  It's not very often that my brother gives me a book.  I took it seriously.

I'm already 124 pages in and it's making sense.  I'm excited for the Wife to start reading it and see if we are on the same page.

So, the first Baby Step in the process is making a $1000 emergency fund.  I've been working on this on my own for about 2 months.  Right now, I have $2600 in the savings account.  The key to this is the "I."  The Wife didn't really know about this and isn't a big saver.  This "I" needs to turn into a "We."

But Baby Step #1 is done.

Baby Step #2 is the Debt Snowball.  

Basically, you list all the debts that you have and start focusing on one at a time.  That's the conversation that "We" are having tonight.  There are a couple of forms to fill out so that we can start working through them.

I'm hoping that with the extra $1600 in the emergency fund, we can get some of the smaller store credit cards paid off and start working on the bigger Visa cards.  

My only question so far in this process is car payments.  Mr. Ramsey says to sell the cars that we have loans on and buy with cash.  If we sell the cars that we have loans on, we won't have transportation.  We don't have money laying around to purchase even a crappy used car, let alone two crappy used cars.  How do do the transportation piece if we don't have money to pay for used cars?  Can't these debts be rolled into the Debt Snowball and paid off as soon as possible?

I'm hooked on doing this and can't wait to start seeing our debts wiped out and start building wealth.