I grew up listening to talk radio and perfecting the art of tuning it out. Some days I would actually try to follow along to Rush or Hugh in an attempt to have an "intellectual" conversation with my dad in the car. Other days I would entertain myself with my own thoughts, only tuning in to the radio when they played bumper music. This trend followed me into adulthood and one day I asked Albert what we were listening to. Dave Ramsey. My life was forever changed. From that moment on I have listened intently to talk Radio. Let's face it, I am addicted to Dave.
We are passionate people. When we believe in something we don't just dip our big toe in the water, we jump in. So, we started working Dave's plan full force. We took the class, we taught the class. We always find a way to bring up "Uncle Dave" in conversation. We obtained several copies of his books to give away as gifts when anyone shows the slightest bit of interest. You have to be careful when asking us about Dave. It's like when you ask your dad how to change the oil and he teaches you how to rebuild the engine. We eat, sleep and breathe Dave.
Starting the baby steps was easy for us. We already had more than the emergency fund in our bank account, so we set that aside and got to work. Our first credit card had a balance of $0 so we were able to feel accomplished immediately from closing that account. We had very little to go towards our debt snowball, but several of our debts were small and we were able to close 12 of them in the first 5 months. Freeing up those minimum payments gave us a large enough snowball to start hurling at our other debts.
Today we have only two debts. We have zero credit cards. We have two paid for cars. We budget every penny, every month, together. We love being weird!
