Setback

Well, it's bound to happen.
Especially immediately after I make a decision to change the way I handle our money.
We had a financial setback today. Brent and I got online this morning to check out our usbank.com account. We were surprised to find that we are in the negative. After some investigating we discovered two payments that we made, but forgot to budget into this pay period. We goofed. Brent just was dumbfounded. It's been a long time since he has made a mistake on the budget. We are just so thankful for overdraft protection.

After doing some work to clean up our mess, we opened up Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace.
We recommitted to killing our debt. I can't believe we have allowed ourselves to get so far off base.

The first baby step is $1000 in an emergency fund.
The second baby step is paying off all debt, starting with laser-like intensity on the smallest debt regardless of payment size or interest rate.

Right or wrong... we took $700 out of our credit card to fully fund our step one emergency fund. And now we're ready to start hunting down our debt and killing it! We listed out our debts out from smallest to largest.

1. Brent's motorcycle
2. Brent's truck
3. Our credit card
4. My car
5. Student Loans
6. Home Equity Line of credit

Our payment on the Buell is $158.07. So we are going to be adding as much as possible to that to get it paid off as quickly as possible. We will be using the debt snowball method, so when we get the Buell paid off, we will roll that payment amount into the Dodge truck's payment, so we will almost be doubling it. This is going to take a while. We didn't get into this debt overnight. I'm sure it will take even longer to get out of it.

But at least we are starting. Why did we have to experience a setback to initiate change?
Dave says you have to be mad to create the energy to change. "Remember, there is not energy in logic, only in emotion." Financial Peace pg 273.
So we got mad. :)

The other financial "setback" we are experiencing now is me working less. Because I'm working one less day every week we are making about $400 less every month; net, not gross.
This is a BIG number if we are looking at this from a human standpoint. But if we look at this from God's perspective I know we can overcome this obstacle. According to the commuterride website my commute to work costs me roughly $7.50 one way, adding up to around $60 in savings for the four days I'm not working in an average month. And if I use that one weekday each week to organize my coupons and ads, shop for savings, and make gifts for Christmas instead of buying them, that day could end up being worth far more than $100. In fact, the benefits of staying home that one day are huge just for the time it gives me with my boys.

Maybe this hasn't been such a setback after all.