Disclaimer: this is probably the most boring post ever but I hope you will stay with me.
About a year ago, Clark and I took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class. It absolutely changed our life. If you have never taken his class, you are probably rolling your eyes as far back as they will go because I did the same thing before my “budget Nazi” days. I’ve always been pretty responsible when it comes to debt. I was always scared of credit cards; I only had 1 and never carried a balance. I did have a car payment on a really sweet Audi (I’ll address that in a sec) but that was my only debt. My big problem was saving money. I didn’t spend more than I made but I would spend every single penny, usually on clothes so I never had enough money for the essentials.
After the class, I traded in my really sweet Audi for a Jeep Liberty. It was heart-breaking. I went from having every option on my car to having power windows and cruise control and nothing else. It’s been almost a year since I traded it in and even though it was tough, I have never once regretted it. I dumped about $10k in debt with one signature! I also cut up my credit card and haven’t gotten another one since. I’m not bragging, it was really hard. It’s really hard to not go shopping once a week, to cut back on gifts, and to budget every single penny. It’s really hard but it’s been totally worth it.
If you google reasons for divorce, most statistics list financial issues as either the number 1 or number 2 factor. I am not going to list any statistics because I don’t trust anything I find on the internet but I think we can all agree that money plays a huge part in our relationships. C and I have arguments all the time, we don’t have arguments about money. I know we aren’t married yet so things will get a little more complicated when we start joining our money but we are completely on the same page. As soon as we got engaged, C put together a mock budget for us and we didn’t even have to have a conversation about it because I was in complete agreement with him.
Dave says in most relationships, there are basically 2 types of people, “nerds” and “free spirits.” If you know me and C, I would be willing to bet that you think you know which type we are. Let me go ahead and shock you and say that I am the nerd and he is the free spirit. When we first took the class, I said just the opposite. I have since become crazy about my budget. I budget every single penny and check every day to make sure my budget matches my actual spending. Dave has a budget you can download online but it was pretty tedious to budget it all manually. I created my own spreadsheet for my budget and it’s all done with formulas so I never had to add or subtract anything, I just plug in the numbers that change. I created one for every month so I only have to tweak it a little on pay day. I get paid once a month which makes it even easier on me. I am putting the spreadsheet on here so you can download it for yourself. You’ll probably have to change the categories a little, Here is a link to Dave’s site, the “monthly cash flow planning” worksheet has the best example of all the possible categories.
Download the excel file here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An_oMtRews19dFIxNDR1R2l5dS01cy1ablA1cnhDVlE You aren't supposed to have to have a google account to access it but if it doesn't work, let me know, this is my first time sharing a file on the blog. Click on "file," "download as," and "microsoft excel 97-2003." Then you should be able to edit it however you want.
Sorry that was so long and not even a little bit fun to read but thanks for making it this far! I will never put you through that again!
Sorry that was so long and not even a little bit fun to read but thanks for making it this far! I will never put you through that again!
