I Heart Dave Ramsey

Money is a very emotional subject. It's impolite to talk about it. Heck, did you notice I started off this blog by revealing what we paid for our wedding stuff and then stopped? Why did I do that? Because money and spending is deeply personal. We're more likely to talk about our sex lives than our financial lives. (For the record, we're paying $1,300 for the photographer -- which, sadly, is very reasonable considering what we're getting. And I paid $22.95+tax for the Mennonite in a Little Black Dress book.)

But I am going to go ahead and be uber-transparent on this blog moving forward. It was the transparency and humility demonstrated by others, which the Lord used to change my heart about money. And I hope to pay it forward.

So this is kind of a "Pause for the Cause" post. After college, I spent more than I made. This made me exactly like the vast majority of middle class Americans. I need only look to the current amount of consumer debt spread across America to know we've got a problem: $2.5 trillion. I contributed significantly to that figure by single-handedly racking up $24,000 in credit card debt.

Twenty. Four. Thousand. Dollars.

Like so many Americans, I got it in my head and my heart that I needed to live a life that looked like that of my friends...friends with spouses (read: two incomes)...friends with whom I interacted professionally (read: older, way higher salaries and two incomes). So I bought stuff and gave extravagant gifts and went on trips and ate out like it was my second job. And racked up all that debt. I lived a life where I had to serve the masters of Citi and Visa, which kept me from being able to serve the Sovereign Master of Creation. (Matthew 6:24)

There were several steps along the way that brought me financial sanity. There was the Crown Financial Ministries class I took with my BFF's Chris & Amanda. There was also the day when my BFF's Josh & Jessica broke free from their own debt, and I got to see how God used that freedom to allow them to adopt Jadon and lots of other blessings.

But it was Dave Ramsey who made it simple for someone like me to understand that I could and should get out of debt and live at or below my means. His "Steps to Financial Freedom" and his podcasts led me to make some drastic decisions: Namely, moving back from Boston to live with my parents for 18 months so I could pay off ALL my debt. To date, I am down to about $7,500 in debt and it will be paid off completely by the time I become Mrs. Brant Benninga. Praise God!! (And THANK YOU, Mom & Richard!!!)

You can watch a five minute video on Dave Ramsey's philosophy here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b--HwXE3064

To bring it back to the wedding planning...

One thing I learned from Dave is that when expenses get higher than income (and my "income" is altered by the equation: Gross Income - Debt Snowball Payments = Net Income) then it's time to MAKE MORE MONEY! For many years I've enjoyed a nice relationship with Bella Luna Cafe such that I can come in and wait tables whenever I needed to. However, at this time, it would be super-stressful in an already-stressful season to work on the weekends, so I'm trying to pull in as many house- and dog-sitting gigs as I can.

But Brant takes the prize. He's overload teaching again this semester, which means for the second semester in a row, he's teaching more than the full load of classes with no break and no planning period during the day. This results in some stress for him, but also some SERIOUS extra cash (way more than my housesitting!) and it means we will definitely be able to pay for some wedding stuff we'd been stressing about. YAY Brant and YAY God! We will also be having a spring garage sale and selling some stuff on eBay.

The moral of the story for anyone wanting to pay cash for a wedding: If you don't have the cash for something you really want, don't put it on a credit card, MAKE MORE CASH! (Thank you, Dave Ramsey.)

I hope writing about something so personal isn't making anyone uncomfortable. However, if my story of how God changed my heart about money inspires anyone else to think differently about how they live and work and spend and save, then it's worth it.