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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Hello and Goodbye, Baby Step One!

Our TMMO: Update


As you know from my previous post, our family began the journey of a Total Money Makeover a few weeks back. It has been fantastic feeling like we are in control of our money rather than the other way around!

We're doing some "weird" stuff now. Putting cash in envelopes, using cash more and cards less, living in a more planned out, on purpose sorta way.

Baby Step 1


As part of your TMMO, the first thing you do (Baby Step One) is to save up $1000 cash as fast as you can. Here's why,

Crap happens; life happens. Things go wrong. Cars break, appliances break, emergencies happen. So we want to "insure" against those things that we CANNOT budget for.

The emergency fund is NOT for chips, dip and a case of Livewire Mt. Dew (my personal preference) when you spaced that you invited friends over.  And it's not to get your hair and nails done because your friends invited you out to "like, this totally awesome party..." it's for EMERGENCIES!! Hence, "emergency" fund.

It gives you peace of mind, knowing that if something happens, more than likely you'll be able to take care of it--and do so with cash, not your pals Capital One or AmEx.


Success!!



Monday we finished our emergency fund. $1000 cash, phew! What a relief. Now things are great! We're rockin' and rollin' into the Debt Snowball and Baby Step Two!

That is until our freaking fridge decides that it no longer wants to keep our food cold! Butter melting and semi-cold milk (that's where I draw the line! Milk has to be ICE cold!).

So within 24 hours of yippee-yahoo-ing about having our emergency fund in place, we waved goodbye to half of it!
Initial reaction:


"AHHHHH YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! We just barely get things somewhat in line and THIS happens??!??!"

We were bummed.  I mean, we'd met out first goal! We were movin on, making progress, ready to go Ninja Turtle on our debt! It was like when you land on "Chance" right before "Go" in Monopoly and the card you draw says, "Go to jail, go directly to jail...". We were ALMOST to Baby Step Two and then we weren't!

"Nothing ever goes our way, this kind of stupid stuff ALWAYS happens to us, etc, etc."


Hold the Phone!!



But then I started thinking...hold on. We purchased a major household appliance with CASH, when we needed it, and it didn't hurt us financially! WOW!!

Two months ago I don't know what we would've done...payments to the store, loan from parents, I'm really not sure! No matter what, it would not have been good and it would've caused a TON of stress!

What a blessing our TMMO has been already. We are sooo far for where we want to be, but in this case, I feel like a million bucks! Our planning and commitment paid off (and my milk will once again be ICE cold!).

Following Dave Ramsey's plan brings hope, structure, determination, and in this case financial PEACE! Thank you Dave!



Question: How important is financial peace to your life?

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Twitter: @Skropp2

8 comments:

  1. Ahh, good ol' Murphy. Congrats on finishing baby step one! Did you get a great deal on the fridge by paying with cash?

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  2. Thanks Nick! Ya I think Murphy too up residence in our basement!! Haha. You know, we didn't get a deal for several reasons, it quit suddenly, so time was not our friend, and I'm out of town all this week for work so my wife had to go try to find one on her own.
    But we paid cash, didn't use a credit card and didn't borrow from family, so I'm ok with it!

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  3. Congrads on get baby step one done. Having the emergency fund brings a lot of security and takes a lot of stress off a person. I am proud of you keep up the good work big brother we will see you guys at baby step seven in no time.

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    1. Thanks little bro! It does bring some security having that little emergency fund in place! And if by "no time" you mean 3+ years, to got it!! Haha

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  4. Congrats, Mark. We have finished baby step two. We weren't too far into debt, so we haven't had to get too weird. Just keep going! Murphy doesn't like an emergency fund, so if you keep it funded, he won't come around as much!

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    1. Than thanks Josh for stopping by my blog! It's gonna take us awhile to get through baby step 2, butcwe'll get there! It's funny how when you start all of a sudden you don't WANT to spend money, you just wanna put it on your debt!

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  5. Thanks for the Twitter follow. I also enjoyed reading your post. We're also on our own financial journey which I'm documenting over at my site. Stay with it and keep it up!

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    1. Thanks for stopping by Mike!! I look forward to reading your site as well!!

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