WayfaringStrangers

Behn and I started watching Dave Ramsey YouTube clips and listening to his daily radio show in January 2017.  Dave lays out the 7 steps to Financial Peace and they made a lot of sense to us. We listed our debts from smallest to largest and discovered how much we truly owed- a little over $55,000. Most of these were educational loans. Behn and my undergrad, as well as Behn's Master's Degree. Years of paying minimum payments meant we had paid a ton in interest and the principle balances were stubbornly high. This is not hard to understand, but for years we'd only been able to pay the minimums. Now we were looking these financial statements in the eye. We were "sick and tired of being sick and tired," as Dave Ramsey likes to say. It was time to run from debt. We went ahead and bought Dave's Financial Peace University and committed to watching the DVD's and doing the workbooks together every Tuesday night. At some point we planned on going to a community cla...

Flashback to 6.5 years ago: ***I stood in the Kroger grocery store line, glancing around nervously, hoping no one I knew would see my WIC food vouchers. I watched the cashier ringing up the food and held my breath- hoping, praying- the number would not more than we had in our account. "That will be $200, ma'am," the cashier says. "But, but, I don't have that much money...can I put some things back?" The line is long behind me and I'm sweating nervously.  I hate this.*** And then I wake up. It's just a dream- actually my recurring nightmare about not having enough money in our account for groceries. Except it's not all a dream, really. We did use WIC checks (government assistance for food) when I was pregnant with Patrick. I really did sweat and hold my breath in the grocery line, praying the number would be low. Much of our furniture and clothing and other goods have come from second hand shops. But for the first time in our 10 1/2 yea...