Update on the Dave Ramsey Dance
I mentioned some time ago that we are doing the Dave Ramsey dance this year. I cannot tell you how many e-mails people have sent me, all saying basically the following: ”Matt! I mean, Mr. Ryan! How is the Dave Ramsey dance going? We’re dying here!”
I cannot tell you this, because, inexplicably, none of these e-mails actually arrived in my inbox.
Still, I’m sure they are out there, floating around in the interwebs, looking for a home. There are questions that need to be answered, and someone’s gonna have to do it. And since I’m the only one authorized to post on this blog, I guess I will have to do it.
Most interesting comment thusfar was when Amber said, “This really bites.” I agreed readily. But after I thought about it for a bit, I added, “The thing is, though, it’s funny how we blame the pain on getting out of debt, when that isn’t the cause of the pain. The cause of the pain is getting into debt in the first place.” Weird.
The first step for us was establishing the emergency fund. Ramsey says that once you decide to start the dance, something unkind will happen to you that will tempt you to quit. For us, it was suddenly needing to replace the tires on my Z. I really wanted to leave that emergency fund alone and I was really tempted to just put all of that expense on a credit card. But instead we used the emergency fund for what we created it for, to pay for an expense that we didn’t plan, to keep us from accumulating more debt.
I realized soon after how important the emergency fund really is. It isn’t just about avoiding more debt. As I type this, about 45 days after having bought the new tires, I can look back and see that what mattered, more than anything else, was knowing as we came through that setback that we hadn’t lost any ground on our progress toward paying off the debt. That was big for us.
I remember distinctly one day contemplating this on the way to work, wondering if this is ever going to end. We’d had a major family event in January that cost a lot of the money we would have put toward debt, then in February we had to replace the tires on the Z. I wondered if the initial progress we’d had was just an illusion; it seemed at the current rate we’d never be done.
Then I remembered Uncle Sam owed me some money.
I quickly did the math. I realized the difference the tax return would make, not only in attacking the deficit, but also in monthly cash flow. Then I went on through the rest of the year and saw the debts just falling away.
It’s too early to say, but I wonder if the first part of the dance is the hardest part. You know, the part where you think you’ll never, ever learn the steps. Then suddenly, something happens and you make some major progress. Suddenly you think maybe you’ll learn this dance after all.
Time will tell, but after gutting it out and having some recent wins, it seems like things are a bit brighter.
