digging deep..

Three weeks ago I started going to a boot camp offered here at work. It is an exercise boot camp that is offered three days a week at two different times each day. The first two weeks were trial weeks and this is my first official week, so I decided to sign up. I have to admit that I am in horrible shape so keeping up is quite difficult at times. Scratch that, all the time! Never the less I am still going, I am determined to loose weight, get in shape and get my pre-baby body back. I think I am on the right track. So I am working out at boot camp three days a week, Yoga once a week and in the mornings, I walk a mile with one of my coworkers as soon as we get to work. We come in, drop our stuff of at our desk and go straight down to the indoor "track" in our building. By 7:15am I have my walk on. By 7:30 or so we are running up our five flights of strairs to go back to our desk to start our work day. Not a bad deal, get it out of the way immediatly! I like it!

In addition to digging deep in that aspect, Brian and I have also started digging deep in telling ourselfs "no" more often. In the last month my husband and I have had a few major purchases and with that comes getting further into debt if you do not have the cash flow to fork over the money for it. The worst part is they were unavoidable purchases, our house is only 6 years old so it is a bit premature, but they were bound to happen in the next few years... So, I was stairing at our bills spreadsheet that I keep every month and looking at what comes in verses what goes out. The amount that goes out has dramatically increased, triple what it was a couple of years ago to be exact.... oy, we have a problem. At this point it is just a problem, not a emergency situation, but definatly one that needs to be addressed so that it does not get worse. I have a friend that told me about Dave Ramsey a couple of years ago, I decided to look him up and see what his process is for getting out of debt. He is a national spokesperson on getting out of debt and staying out of debt.

Here is what his baby steps for getting out of debt and staying out of debt perminatly - there are 7 I am going to put my short term plan into effect here is the first three I am going to focus on.

1. $1,000 emergency fund - if we would have had this saved up, we could have paid cash for that refridgerator or lawn mower..... ugh... tack it onto the this credit card please...
2. pay off all debt using the debt snowball - List your debts, excluding the house, in order. The smallest balance should be your number one priority. Don’t worry about interest rates unless two debts have similar payoffs. If that’s the case, then list the higher interest rate debt first
3. 3 to 6 months of expensives in savings - Once you complete the first two baby steps, you will have built serious momentum. But don’t start throwing all your “extra” money into investments quite yet. It’s time to build your full emergency fund. Ask yourself, “What would it take for me to live for three to six months if I lost my income?” Your answer to that question is how much you should save.

The Dave Ramsey website has a lot of tools to use to assist you in a budget and help keep you motivated. I have started listening to Dave everyday from 1-4 pm to help keep my motivation up, because lets be honest, once you loose motivation, you will or at least I will end up back in the same spot where I previously was... And frankly I am tired of living like that.


As Dave says, " If you will live like no one else, later you can LIVE like no one else"