How Dave Ramsey Changed Our Lives
We’re not (even close to being) millionaires, but we’re better than yesterday
Years ago, when I was dating my (now) wife, we attended her grandfather’s funeral. It was a really sad time and coming back to my house afterwards felt like a funeral dirge on its own. I mean, what do you really say to your girlfriend whose favorite family member just passed away. On the one hand, you want to be there to support her, but everything I could think to say sounded lame, or fell-flat on delivery. We get back to the house, turn on the lights…and…nothing. The power had been turned off for non-payment.
Here we are in the middle of raw grief; and in my role as a supportive boyfriend; I leave her on her own in a dark house while I call my mother to borrow some money to get the electricity turned back on. To make it worse, I pretty much had to play the “my girlfriend just returned from a funeral” guilt-trip card to election some sympathy and get her to open her purse. Talk about a lesson in humility!
And so I turned to Dave Ramsey…well, not for another 15 years.
This electricity thing happened relatively often. In fact, I could only pay two utilities a month and let the third float for the 30 day grace period. I had money for the mortgage (I wasn’t that irresponsible!), eating out- sure! A movie? Why not! But, generally speaking, I had way too much week for my paycheck.
Credit card balances were high, interest rates were high, late payments were high. Pretty much everything was high except my credit score and my sense of fiscal responsibility.
So what did change me around?
Every so often, I would Google ways to save money, budget, get rich, etc. and this name, DAVE RAMSEY, kept coming up. No matter where I was, there he was, too. It was like an oblivious stalker in my life. I couldn’t afford his money makeover system. Truth be told, I could’ve, but I didn’t really want to. I didn’t really believe that a system would make me wealthy. Money was what I needed, not a system.
Saying that, there were some free stuff on the ‘web that I looked at such as Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps. I read this and it seemed to make sense. After reading it a few times, I even started to do some of what he suggested. This was all clandestine, of course. I would’ve felt better about telling my wife I was a habitual cocaine user rather than admit I had a problem with money. (Hint: it was pretty obvious that both of us had problems, but I had my pride to placate!)
By chance, one day I was talking with a co-worker and really close friend. While he wouldn’t describe himself as wealthy, he definitely can afford the $400 emergency that unfortunately, most Americans can’t afford (Covid-19 aside). I mentioned I was following Dave Ramsey (sure I was…) and lo and behold; he said he was also a Dave Ramsey follower.
Well…wait a minute…so I don’t trust a random stranger but this was a guy I trusted who used a “system”. Maybe there was something to this after all. Not only that, but he had the old DVD system (now it’s streamed) and he loaned it to me.
By this time, I decided to come clean about my bad habits of not keeping good track of my finances. While my wife worked on college papers from her laptop, I would watch a video every day. She had headphones on, but would remove them from time to time and say things like:
“Why does he have a Barbie doll on stage?”
“Did he just pull out $100 bill from inside an orange?”
At the end of each video, I would recap everything I learned. Being able to recap the “Davisms” started making things stick and within another week, I started putting some of his easier lessons to the test. No budgeting — NOOOO!!! But, I did take a puff of his stuff, you know, just to try it out.
For example, the first thing I tried was negotiating a credit card interest rate deduction. My credit was not amazing, ( 💳 = 🚽) but I’d been with this company a long time. I assumed they would say “no”, and I decided that I was ready to walk away from them. Although I still owed a balance, I felt they were charging me an exorbitant interest rate. I researched cash back credit card interest rates online (about 5 minutes of work) and called my credit card company up. I told them that they were higher than the average rates for similar cards and asked if they could drop it. To my shear amazement, they said “sure!” Not only that, but they dropped it 2 points lower than the average credit card rate. All of a sudden, because of a simple ask, I realized that this Dave Ramsey crap really worked, and I was gum-dipped to try even more of his strategies.
Since starting with Dave Ramsey three years ago, my wife (who also got intrigued after seeing what I was doing) and I have:
- Refinanced our mortgage, dropping 24 payments off the end date
- Nudged our credit scores to 800+
- Financed several deferred maintenance repairs to the house
- Paid off our credit cards
- Paid off our vehicle loan early
- Created an emergency fund of $2000
- Saving up a 6 month full-funded emergency fund
We aren’t wealthy. Not even close.
At this time, we are on Dave Ramsey Baby Step 3.
What we are, though, is competent in budgeting and living within our means. We are confident that we can adjust our finances to get to what we want. We are continually striving to use credit and cash as tools to help live a better life within our means.
Dave Ramsey’s montra: Live like no one else so that you can live like no one else.
