Dave Ramsey-ing it!

As I mentioned a few posts ago we are going though Financial Peace University right now. It is a study of Dave Ramsey's book Financial Peace. For those of you who don't know who Dave Ramsey is he is a popular talk radio personality who answers people questions about their finances and gives them suggestions to get them under control he is also an author of money management books (2 of which we have read now-Total Money Makeover and Financial Peace Revisited) and does a segment on Fox News every evening about money and finances. He really is very interesting to listen to so if you ever get a chance I would recommend it!

We want to "dump our debt and build wealth" (Dave's terms) and be able to enjoy our kids as they get older we don't want to have to be working every spare second to try to pay for 3 kids clothes and food and school activities and cars {{shudder at the thought when we will have 3 children driving}} We want to be able to be there for our kids and be there for ballgames and band concerts and school plays and anything else they might be involved in. We want to be able to give more. And personally I don't really want to live in this house for the rest of my life (grin).

So as I also said before we are really trying to crack down on our budget. Dave's philosophy is "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else". We are trying Dave!! We keep jockeying with the budget and the place we seem to be jockeying the most is the grocery budget. Dave Recommends that certain items you only pay for with cash (and never ever use a credit card for anything!) Groceries/food being one of those things. So we started out trying to put $100 dollars a week into an envelope and anything we needed we bought with that money. We did pretty good and weren't even using it all every week so daddy decided we needed to cut the grocery budget back. Now I should also tell you that not only does groceries come out of this budget but basically anything and everything we use in this house comes out of that budget i.e. diapers, shampoo, t.p., cleaning supplies, you name it. So last week I was given $85 on Friday. J6 and I went to wally world, on the way there he mentions that his gym shoes are hurting his feet and with the weather as it is they are playing in the gym quite often...so add gym shoes to the list...which also included diapers this week and everyone was out of tooth paste and after a trip to the dentist on Thurs. j6 reminded me that they told him he needed to use a spin brush (which usually we do use just hadn't got one that last time). So the list kept growing and the money wasn't growing! Needless to say grocery wise we came out of there with the bare necessities. Just enough to get us through-barely! We did eat this week just not as well as we usually do but no one is starving by any means.
It does make you stop and think about those who are going hungry in this world. Those who don't ever get to have ice cream after dinner...if they even have dinner (ice cream was one of the things we had to do without this week and was probably the most missed item around here.) About those who would love to have the choice between peanut butter and jelly and bologna. It made me stop and think how blessed my family is and maybe gave me a little better attitude about "the budget". I usually try to make it to aldi's at least once a month. More if I can. Which greatly helps to stretch our grocery budget. I am trying to be better at watching sales and have clipped a few coupons for things we might need that we don't buy the generic brand of (which really isn't much). I am always open to suggestions or money saving tips so feel free to send them my way. I really do want to be a better steward of what the Lord gives us! And I do want to be debt free and living like no one else!