How Dave Ramsey Changed My Life

I gave up on my first million during the summer of 2002. My wife was pregnant with our first child. We had been married for two years and we had never seriously discussed our finances, our goals, or any other money related topics. We simply got paid and spent.

At that time, we owed about $16,000 on two vehicles, $7,000 in credit card debt, and somewhere around $20,000 in student loans. We had no money in savings and my wife was beginning to fret. Her maternity pay would only be 60% and she was afraid of not being able to cover the difference.

At that time, I began listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio. It didn’t take long to realize that this was the advice that I had been looking for. The moment things changed came when I heard Dave Ramsey ranting about people “going to the gas station and you have to put a candy bar on your credit card with the gas because you don’t have enough money in your pocket to pay for it.”

Well, that was me. On a daily basis, I didn’t have enough money available to buy a snack on my way home from work. At that point, I realized that my method wasn’t working. I needed a different direction, and I found it on the radio.

We put away the credit cards, began paying cash for everything and made saving our top priority (after tithing). By the time our baby came we had a successful emergency fund, we had cut our spending significantly, and we had a plan developed for getting out of debt. We paid off the last of the student loans in January 2006 and became debt free.

I share this story to let people know that sound financial planning works. We are a young couple living in rural Missouri. We now have three children, we live on one income and we have all the basic financial planning items in place (will, life insurance, disability insurance, IRA’s and ESA’s).

Why doesn’t everyone do this? I wish I knew. Sometimes I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness. But, ministering to others is something God has given me the resources and a passion to pursue. So I will.