I have become quite a fan of Dave Ramsey as of late. My friend John turned us on to him a long, long time ago when he lent us the book financial peace. Lately, I began to look at how we can improve our financial picture a little bit and stumbled across him again. I began listening to his podcast and then recently picked up his newly revised book called The Total Money Makeover. He tends to be a bit strong in his personality, but his principles and values are so simple. Taking the scriptural principle that the borrower is slave to the lender, and therefore we should not borrow, and if we do borrow, work to get out of it as fast as we can, means changing the way we live.
The difficulty is that this is a difficult process to practice because it involves great discipline and sacrifice. It is so easy just to charge something and to say we can pay for it later, but later is hard to want to pay for something that is already used up. However, it is very compelling to seek to live a simpler life that is not burdened by debt, but rather disciplined to buy when you can afford it.
So, Karen and I have begun to begin the process of the baby steps. Step one should happen real soon (hello tax return). We can then begin with step two...the debt snowball. Should be fun. We'll keep you up to date.