Andrew and I are going on a journey. What kind of a journey, you ask? An emotional and spiritual journey. One that will require a lot of patience, a lot of saying no, and a lot of people not understanding.
As you know, we have been Dave Ramsey fans since about 2011. We have been on our debt free journey for awhile now (7 years) and although we've paid off a HUGE chunk of my student loans, we still have a long ways to go. It is almost infuriating knowing that if we just did a little more... buckled down a little harder.... we'd probably be a lot closer to our end goal. Well, now it's time to do just that.
Andrew is what Dave calls the Free Spirit and the Saver. I am the Nerd and the Spender. Boy can I spend money and justify it until I am blue in the face. Um, hello Vitamix anyone?!!? By telling you this, I am admitting that I am mostly the problem. I've never been good with money. I've always had the "you only live once" mindset and I felt I could always out earn my stupidity. Well, I was wrong. Especially since at age 25, I had to file for bankruptcy. I had so much consumer debt that I was drowning. I took the "easy" way out. You'd think that would have taught me a lesson huh? Well, technically it did... because the only debt I have is a tiny bit of CC debt, a small bit of vehicle loan, and my student loans. I do not count the house in with our lump sum because Dave doesn't. The house is the last thing you pay off.
I am reading an amazing book about a lady that decided she was going to have a shopping ban for one year. One year you say? Challenge. Accepted. When I showed Andrew a couple of screenshots of the book he sent me text back that simply said "#metoo". He's on board. I don't know why this is so exciting to me, but it is. I am curious to see how much we will actually save. How much MORE we will be able to snowball into our debt. How much we waste on things we don't need.
For awhile now, I have been interested in minimalism too and I still am to this day. I constantly go through the house finding things to donate or sell. I'm not done yet. I still feel there is too much that I have to clean and put away. Too much getting in the way of what's really important. So, this no shopping ban will really help us to narrow down what we actually need in our lives.
If you're curious about the book, it's called The Year of Less, by Cait Flanders
I will be back soon to list out our plan of attack, our budget, our debt, and our rules for any spending.
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