The B Word

Budget

This can be a bad word for some people. I know it has been a cause of worry for Big D and I. We have done budgets before and what we have done in the past is budget all our Bills and let the little things we buy in-between fly with the wind. These budgets don’t work well for us.

In the future I would like to see Big D retire comfortably, help our kids with collage, cars, homes etc…the only way to do this is to seriously budget. Big D and I are not money savvy in anyway and budgeting our money is always in the back of our heads, so when the forth person mentioned Dave Ramsey’s plan to me and how well it is working for them I decided this must be a sign and Big D and I got on board.

We did our budget last night. It was stressful because we had to account for every single dime we made per month, from haircuts to toilet paper we had to find room in the budget. When we completed the first draft we noticed we spent way more a month then Big D makes, imagine that. So we had to cut certain things down and that is where the sacrifice came in. We did it, we budgeted for everything we could think of and I believe we had .43 cents left over.

We are using the baby Steps Dave Ramsey suggests in getting rid of debt and saving money.

Everything Dave Ramsey says is easy common sense but it is hard to do especially if you are like me and like to have “things” when you want them. The hardest part of this plan is the dreaded D word, Discipline.

We have a budget for everything under the sun now and it feels good, but I know it is going to be hard when the kids want things or when other people want us to do things that are not in our budget and we have to say no. It will be hard at first but the goal is to think long term and what we want for our family’s future.

One of Dave Ramsey’s ideas is to have money so you can give it away. Sounds crazy but dear friends of ours have told us the same thing. For some reason the more money you give away the more you will have. I don’t know how this works but it does.

I look forward to be financially comfortable so I can help out my friends and family who need it, give more to the Church who does so much for us and those who are in need. This is a major goal of ours as well.

With Lent around the corner and since I cannot fast I was thinking of something I could do. One would be to pray more and the other is to acquire discipline to make this plan work, not only for my family but eventually to help people and my community. It may take a while to get there but I am happy to have started the journey.


One last thing about this plan is you can go to Dave Ramsey’s website and buy the materials he suggests, or you can do everything for free. You can down load the budget; view the baby steps, and get his books from the library like I did. You can do all this for free if it is something you would like to try.

I pray that the dreaded D and B word will not be dreaded anymore, and that in doing this my family can focus on God and each other rather than money and Stuff.