Mountain into a Molehill

Several months ago, shortly following my wedding, I picked up a book that my husband had been reading for quite awhile.  I started to thumb through it and a few hours later found myself halfway through the book and formulating a plan in my head.  The book I was reading was Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover".  I called Justin up after reading through the first couple chapters and started to discuss the book with him and see how he felt about it.  So we decided to give it a try and the next day began the process of getting rid of our debt.

As you can imagine, we have quite a bit of debt, most of it is my student debt from attending Wake Forest.  However, we also have some credit cards and things that need to be paid off as well.  Per the plan, the first order of business was to write down all of our debts from smallest to largest.  We sat down together and figured up all of our debts and what the minimum payments were for those.  The next thing was to pay the minimum on all debts to keep them current while accruing an Emergency Fund.  Luckily for us, we had just gotten married, so we used the cash we received as wedding gifts to establish our fund for the most part.  The next step was to maintain making minimum payments on our debts until the smallest was paid off.  During this time, Dave Ramsey suggests throwing any extra money you have at this smallest debt in order to pay it off faster.  We accomplished this first milestone by paying off my credit card that I acquired during college.  One debt down, several more to go.

Dave Ramsey calls this phase of the plan the Debt Snowball.  Basically, you continue to pay minimum payments on everything and once you pay off a debt, that debt's minimum payment gets added to the next smallest until you have only one or two large debts and are making substantial payments on those every month.  He tells you to go after your debt with a gazelle-like intensity and sacrifice now so you can play later. 

So we have been working diligently at this and have managed to still enjoy a comfortable lifestyle while paying off another small loan that my husband accrued and are just about to pay off another credit card in only six short months.  It is such a great feeling to know that we are making this happen.  All the while, we are building up our savings and taking these debts out one at a time.  I thought this plan was really a good choice for us because it gave us some direction as to how to get started and where to go first.  We are well on our way to being debt free.  I can't thank my husband enough for getting this book and planting the seed.  He is also working his behind off in order to help pay off debt so that we can cut into it while I am in school and only working part-time.  He is an amazing man and I am so lucky to have the kind of support he gives me!

I feel like the verse in Psalm 1:3 that says, "And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."