Is anyone else, besides Phyllis, familiar with Dave Ramsey? Well, I went to the seminar yesterday with Bob. It was a 5-hour live seminar on his Total Money Makeover. Kansas City turned out a HUGE crowd of nearly 12,000 attendees. HE said that his largest live crowd so far. A lot of folks in Kansas City must be at least wanting to get out of debt. How many will actually DO it is far less. We are such an in debt society that owing your soul to the company store, in a matter of speaking, feels like NORMAL instead of the insanity it really is.
Seeing him live was amazing. He is SO dynamic. He makes you really get MAD about owing money and not having a retirement plan. He has a good point that your loan holders really are your taskmasters.
There are several Financial Peace University classes going on around the area in the next few weeks. Even though I work a weird shift, I am going to see if we can attend one of those. I think doing the hands-on 13 week course would make me more accountable, just like going to Weight Watchers helps in my weight loss efforts.
He was talking about the 7 Baby Steps to getting yourself financially afloat. I've been checking his books out of the library and listening to his books on tape and radio programs for a couple of years now. Going to the seminar renewed my determination to climb out of the debt hole.
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be taking a good hard look at many of my spending habits. One hole in my budget is definitely food - eating out WAY too often and that hurts my weight loss plan also. Another way I overspend is with my yarn purchases. And so, I'm officially, starting today, on a serious YARN DIET. I can't buy more yarn, knitting books, knitting needles . . . anything knitting related for a while. I really DO have enough of everything I need knitting-wise to last a good long time.
My theme for this year is "Awareness" and as such, I'm becoming acutely aware of things that are NOT working in my life and financial fitness is definitely one area that needs signficant improvement. It ties in, very closely, with physical fitness, and I'm not sure why, other than the fact that in both areas, I'm using money/food to make me feel better - emotional crutches that are costing me way too much.
Ironically, when I woke up today and discovered today's Daily Word - is "Divine Order." I realized that is exactly what I need to do - get my life in Divine Order. Things feel really out out of whack right now, and achieving Divine Order is going to take a lot of planning, and sticking with the plan requires putting a reign on the childish, "I want it and I want it NOW" mentality that both overeating and overspending spring from.
I started the day by cancelling an order I had started to place for more shawl yarn. Don't need it. Now I'm off to go cut up veggies and plan our meals for the next week. Here's to establishing Divine Order.
2 comments:
I too listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio. He has a lot of good common sense information. I am working my way to being debit free and have a plan even though my recent road blocks have slowed the pace down a bit I still plan to move forward. Rather than achieving this goal by the end of summer my target is now by the end of the year.
The key thing is to get started and be AWARE of when there is scope creep that needs to be addressed.
Melaleuca did an a-long for this system. This also fits into my word "enough". Something new and interesting for me to read. Thanks!
Yarn...sigh.
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