Dave Ramsey

While we were in Montana I was on the internet, probably pinterest when I came across a blog post about Dave Ramsey style budgeting.  I read the little bit she had and I was hooked.  I was telling my mom and grandma all about it and we went to his website to learn a little more and my grandma bought his started kit.  I read both books in less than a week and learned so much! The books were great and make so much sense, I am going to get my own copy one of these days so I can mark it up and look up things when I get further in life (like saving for college,  retirement...)

After I read the books I told Matt all about them and we decided that we would start to handle our money better and it has made a huge difference!  It has only been two months of us having a budget and we can see huge results, no stress and savings!  I wish we would have learned about budgeting at the beginning of the summer so we could have saved a lot more, but next year we will be ready!

There are basically seven steps:
1. have $1,000 emergency fund
2. pay off all debt
3. save up 3-6 months of savings
4. invest for reitrement
5. start college fund
6. pay off house ( if you haven't already)
7. build wealth and give

( This is a very basic list, read more about the steps here.)

We obviously aren't very far since we haven't gotten into "grown-up" jobs yet, but by following the steps we are less stressed about money and can actually do more things that we want to do.  By having the emergency fund we don't need to use our credit cards.  If something happens we use our emergency fund and then refill it with left over money in the next few months.  Any extra money we have we put toward out debt.  Once our debts (past credit cards, student loans and medical bills) are paid off we will have so much money to first put into savings, and once we have our savings we will have so much extra to spend on fun stuff, I intend on going on a cruise sometime in my life :).  If we keep following our budget and no real emergencies happen then we will be completely out of debt by next summer.  He also talked in depth about life insurance and the different options and why we need it.  We now have life insurance :)  So if anything happens we will be okay from a financial position.  I highly recommend having a budget and sticking to it!  I am amazed every time I look at our bank account :)