Time for change!

Wow, I just realized the pun in my title of this blog… Change is a coming…for sure!  Tonight Robert and I started our 91 day journey to financial peace.  We are taking the Financial Peace University class, which Northwoods Presbyterian Church (www.northwoods.org) is hosting.

I am a spender.  I have always been a spender.  I also have always believed that we will have enough.  After college when I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (www.jesuitvolunteers.org) , I made $65 a month.  I always had enough.  After the volunteer corps, I thought I was rich, because I had my first job at $18k a year.  I always had enough.  There were certainly hard times but somehow or another, I made it to my next pay check.  Then I fell in love…with a saver!  I realized HE was rich!  haha… he had a savings account!  no debt!! how???

Then we got married and sadly I brought him over to my side instead of the other way around…now, after 15 years of wonderful marriage, two kids, many pets and a bunch of other “things” we are not as debt free as I’d like to be.  I am going to be super honest in these blog posts, because I feel like so often we “hide” what we don’t want others to know… and then we suffer in silence! Thinking we are all alone…only to finally find out when we open up, that we are not alone and then a support group is formed!

So, I told my husband, I AM READY!  He nearly fell off his chair!  Really, he said???  Yes, I want to be debt free and I am finally at a place where I can see us focusing on it and making it happen.  I love the phrase it’s not magic, hocus pocus, but it is intention, focus focus.  So we started the journey tonight.  It was funny, because as the main money handler in the house, I tend to hide the “ugly” from Robert…but no more secrets.  Today starts an honest journey to debt free and financial peace.

I LOVE the idea of PEACE in my financial world.  I will be blogging our journey in a special series of Financial Peace = Making Change.  I love the idea of having CHANGE in my bank.  In my emergency fund.  Tonight Dave Ramsey said it’s funny how once you get an emergency fund, you find that you have less emergencies!  So true. I love that we can start today to teach our 11 & 13 year olds what living a debt free life can mean for them as they grow into their teen years and beyond.

I am scared because you really have to be honest.  It’s time to take the shame out of our finances and put some new beliefs on the table. Dave Ramsey said money is amoral.  It is not good or bad…I like that.  It helps me release the hold it has on me.   When I sat and looked around the room I found it interesting to see people in all stages.. Single, engaged, married…parents, grandparents…all of us from different places wanting to go to the same place.  We want peace.. We want financial freedom.

Today is the day and it’s time for change!