So this will be my first serious post on our blog. If you know me at all, you know that I enjoy talking about financial issues (OK so enjoy is a VAST understatement). Our good friends Damien and Natalya had mentioned Dave Ramsey a few times during financial discussions, but I was always quick to dismiss what they shared with us because the ideas seemed "too conservative", "unreasonable", and "impossible". For example, Dave says you should cut up all credit cards, not buy anything unless you can write a check for it (or use a debit card), with exception of a house on which you shouldn't have greater than a 15 year mortgage. About a month ago I was sitting at work bored, and decided I would listen to Dave Ramsey's radio show. On his show Dave answers caller's questions about money issues. In the process of listening to Dave give these people advice I had a huge paradigm change about money. Long story short, Alisa and I are reading Dave's books and committing to follow his money advice for the rest of our lives.

Now many of you are probably thinking, "How can you be so committed to the teachings of this guy?". Or maybe you think we've been roped in to some "secret" get rich quick plan. First, Dave will be the first to admit there is no "secret" to getting rich; he teaches that handling money is 80% behavior and only 20% knowledge. The secret is not just knowing what to do, but having the discipline to control spending habits and lifestyles. And as to to how we can be so committed to this plan...maybe it will be best if I share some of his teachings. As you read over these statements think about where you hear these principles taught regularly.

-Stay out/get out of debt because "the borrower is a servant to the lender" says Proverbs. I always enjoy when Dave challenges people to find one good statement about debt in the bible (I would extend that challenge to any modern day scriptures).
-Have 3-6 months expenses set aside for rainy days. Dave calls this building a wall between you and Murphy (you know, Murphy's law?). People tell Dave he needs to be more positive, and his response is always "I am positive...that it is going to rain"
-No matter your income develop the habit of tithing/giving

As you can see, Dave's main goal is not getting rich. He wants people to reach "Financial Peace", in fact that is the name of his first book. He teaches basic principles that anyone, at any point in life can follow. He makes you realize building wealth and financial peace are not as much a function of what you make, as how much you spend of what you make. How many of us have heard of some professional athlete, musician, or actor going broke when they've made millions? Just recently I heard Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson were fighting foreclosure on their homes.

So why am I blogging about this? Mainly because we are so grateful for Damien and Natalya introducing us to Dave, and I would feel guilty if I did not at least attempt to share this stuff with other people too. Now I know that many of you will just think we're crazy and that we're joining some weird cult, but frankly we don't care. For the first time in our marriage, budgeting did not end with Alisa falling asleep or us getting frustrated, and we're already enjoying the peace that comes with preparing for tough times so that they will hopefully be a blip on the radar and not a life catastrophe.

For those that are curious, I refer you to Dave's website www.daveramsey.com. It is great timing because until Tuesday his books are all on sale for $10.00. I would recommend starting with "Total Money Makeover"; it is a very easy read and very entertaining.

This is sort of random, but I thought it was funny and indicative of my thought processes for the last few days, so I thought I'd share a dream I had today:

First of all, I have to give a little background. Nate and I have been looking for another car. Nate started listening to a guy on the radio named Dave Ramsey - he's a financial advisor and is a very firm believer that the only thing you should be in debt for is a house. He says that besides a house, if you can't pay cash for it, you can't afford it. He also believes you should have an emergency fund of 3-6 months income saved. That being said, Nate and I have decided to try to live that way. We still have quite a bit of a payment on our car, so we decided to try to find an older car that we wouldn't have to make payments on, but would still be reliable.

So there's some of the background, now here's the dream:


I dreamed I was pregnant and apparently I was 9 months because I was in the hospital. I'm not sure why I was there because I wasn't in labor - I was just kind of sitting there so they decided to induce me. However, Nate wasn't there because he was out looking at a car we wanted to buy. I'll say that again. My husband wasn't at the hospital with me because he was looking at a car. So then a nurse came in to say that I might have to get a C-section (not sure how it got to that point since I still wasn't even in labor). I asked her how much that was going to be so she pulled up an estimated price on a computer. It was $877,435. For some reason, my eyes were really blurry so I wasn't sure if it was $80,000 or $800,000. I figured out it was the slightly higher number and told the nurse I wanted to call my husband to talk about it (which, I think is rather funny - imagine that phone conversation: "Honey, the nurse says it's going to cost $800,000 to do a C-section. Should we see if there are other options here?"). And that was pretty much the end of my dream.

So if you haven't figured out where my brain has been the last few days...well...maybe you should read it again.


I hope your dreams are less bizarre than that.

And no, I'm not pregnant. :)

If you saw my post below, you noticed that I was 75 on my library's waiting list for Breaking Dawn. Amazingly, I was okay with that. As long as no one spoiled the book for me, I didn't have to read it the second it came out on August 2.

However.

A friend came over on Saturday night and said she had bought Breaking Dawn, but had finals this week, so she didn't want the temptation around her while she studied and asked if I would keep it for her (thanks Dana!).

Yeah!!

I just finished (did anyone doubt it would take me more than a couple of days?) and it's VERY good. I won't give anything away, I just wanted to increase your excitement to read it. As always, with this Twilight series, I laughed. I cried. I gasped. I got really tense. And I loved it.

Enjoy!