We will persevere!

The Randolph's have been on the Dave Ramsey diet for the past two months. It took me a month and a half to get the system in order and get all our debts and budgets in order.

Dave has worksheets you can print out for everything but I was burning a hole in the papers from all of the erasing. I tend to transpose my numbers. Well I got so fed up I just took all his information and created excel spreadsheets. What a difference?!

We have four spread sheets. The first is my original sheet that lists all my bills, when they are due, how much they are, and the account numbers. I thought that this sheet would work but it ended up not keeping us from bouncing the checking account like a beach ball.

The sad part is we are not great with money. Mostly just down right suck at it. Our friends the Thevis' have inspired a change in our life. They really seem to have a grasp on their budget and well its time that we get in the groove. It's just sad that it has taken us this long to figure if out.

Well now there are three other spread sheets. One is the Monthly Cash Flow Log, this is where all the budgets are made. Groceries, gas, gifts, clothes, etc get decided here. After all the bills are paid then I divide the remaining amongst these categories. We almost have an average of how much will be budgeted each month but by the middle of August we should know if this is a firm number.

It's amazing how much Murphy visits when you have no savings. It's almost as if he can see your bank account and if it's empty thats when he attacks your car, makes your dish washer stop working, or your hot water heater breaks. So Dave Ramsey's first "Baby Step" is to get a 1000 dollars in an emergency fund. I am proud to say at the end of the month our little family will actually have a savings account. It's not much but maybe it is enough to keep Murphy away. Hopefully I didn't just jinx us though.

We will not be leaving this money in a regular savings account. It has never serves us well there. It doesn't make us any money that way. Dave says you should always have your money working for you, so we will take the thousand and throw it into a mutual fund. This way we can't see it when we pull up our chase account and won't be pressured into transferring funds willy nilly.

The second "Baby Step" is getting rid of your debt. This is where we continue to fail. We pay something off then Murphy visits only for us to have to create more debt. I have a spreadsheet just for the debt and it's the Debt Snowball spreadsheet. Sounds kinda dirty but if we can stick to our guns this will be our saving grace.....

More to come later!