Wednesday, July 25, 2012

being one with dave

in the weeks before the baby was born, my employer offered to pay for anyone who was interested to take the dave ramsey financial peace university course for free.  this is ordinarily costs a couple hundred dollars but the district would pay for it provided that you complete the course.  on the brink of a major financial life change, i figured it would be a great idea to participate.  (side note, i just used the hashing out text thing for the first time, how exciting!) 
so yea, 7 weeks of unpaid maternity leave and a few hundred dollars loaned out later, i'm pretty much up the financial creek and it's not cool.  so things are evening out now and i just found out last week that i'm getting a whole 3% raise so i figured it was high time to get back on the band wagon and get my shiznit together.
for the sake of pretending like i'm having a conversation with you, whoever you happen to be, i'm going to list out my efforts:
1. made my pathetic excuse for a "gazelle budget" http://www.daveramsey.com/tools/budget-lite/ based on my monthly income of about $2000.  discovered that the outflow surpasses the income by about $150. 
2. called the bank with my car loan to find the payoff amount - about $17,500 in case you're curious (just keepin it real).  looked up blue book value - about $28,000.
3. researched used car trade ins that might give me a snowballs chance in hell of being able to buy as much food as i think i should buy every week.  called husband to consult.  was advised to keep plugging away with current vehicle.  requested budget pow wow asap.
4. re-worked budget to ensure that all bills were paid and made realistic goals and devised a plan to accomplish them.  for some reason making a budget is actually very easy but making it REALISTIC is not.  this is why i thought i could make ends meet by taking a $4 an hour paycut last september.  good times.  so i now have a REALISTIC budget.
5. prepare for life in realistic budget mode.  i can do this!  i CAN do this!  i can DO this!  i can do THIS!
.............
yea.  should be interesting.