A change in personal finance philosophy…

I was driving down the road one day and I turned the radio off of my favorite country and western station to one of the “talk shows” on the AM dial.

 

It was this feller on their talking about money and debt and paying “stupid taxes”.  Now I know some of you don’t put much stock into this “Dave Ramsey” man, but for me, what he was saying was making a whole lot of sense.

 

Now just so you know, I don’t always agree with some of the things he says, and I haven’t completely “drank the Kool-aid”, but I must admit that I have taken a couple of swigs.

 

When he talks about a borrower being a servant to the lender and how folks can’t concentrate on putting God first in their lives if they are always worrying about money – well, that struck a chord with me.

 

So, I sat down with Beulah and we have decided to start incorporatin’ some of these ideas in our daily lives.  We really already have and we didn’t even know it. 

 

Like take for instance, we worked like dogs putting everything we had to paying off our home loan the first time.  That was Dave Ramsey.  We used to write down our income and expenses and figure out where all our money was going.  That was Dave Ramsey.  We always have kept a little emergency fund for those big unexpected expenses that crop up.  That’s Dave.

 

Now we are going to try and follow some of his principals again and try to wipe out this big black eye of a debt that we have, save some money for retirement, and give more to folks who need money more than we do.

 

Since I get paid from the pork and bean factory on the 15th of the month, we will start this whole exercise on July 15th.

 

Stay tuned and ya’ll come back now, ya here.