The Dave Ramsey Plan...how we survived!

Just about 1 year ago, we became debt free except for our mortgage.  It was such an exciting thing for us and totally a life-changer, so I thought I would share our journey with you.

It all started almost 10 years ago.  Steve and I met, fell in love, got married and within a couple months went out and bought a brand new car.  Steve had already purchased a house shortly before we met, so we already had a mortgage (a small one, because the house was tiny!)...what a better way to start out our marriage than by getting into debt?  Of course we got an awesome deal of around $18,000 for a CAR...but it was at 0% interest rate and the payments were affordable.  Then, I bought our wonderful Kirby sweeper. Now, I do love the thing and it works great, but it was like $1200 and we put it on financing...we had the cash, but it was at 0% interest for like 9 months, so we paid it off right before the first payment was due.  And then, we bought a washer and dryer...and you guessed it, 0% interest for a short period and we took advantage of the great offer and financed it again.

Then we decided we needed a bigger house.  Ok, so it was more me that Steve.  Because he had purchased the house on his own, it wasn't in a location I would have chosen, it wasn't the style of house I would have chosen, and we could afford more of a house, so why not?!  It took us almost 2 years to sell the stupid thing, but we finally got out and just about broke even.  I think we maybe made $500, which we put to paying the bill for storing our stuff while we looked for our bigger and better house.  We finally decided to pay a little more than we initially wanted to get a bigger, better house than we originally thought.  So, we stretched ourselves a little, but not too much because we were both working.  Our payment was about 25% of our take-home pay, so definitely still in the conservative category.

We had some cash savings, but instead of using that for a down payment we got creative with our financing and financed the entire house and used our savings for a fence for the yard, new appliances (and not the cheap ones, either), some new furniture to fill up the new house, you get the picture.  About a year after we moved in, we decided we also needed a newer vehicle.  Mine was literally falling apart and was still my car that I had from high school.  But, we decided we needed an SUV and we also needed a car payment to make it happen.

Everything we did from the time we were married (even before) to about 2007 was just living the normal American lifestyle.  It wasn't until we were pregnant with our first child that we really thought about what we were doing with our money.

My mom was (and still is!) a stay-at-home mom.  I am the oldest, and my youngest sister is still in high school.  I'm grateful that my mom was able to stay at home and care for us, but I always thought I would be bored and didn't ever want to stay at home full-time.  I thought that I would like to work at least part-time so I could keep my sanity.  But then I got pregnant and everything started to change.  I couldn't imagine leaving my precious baby with someone else all day or even part of the day.  But there was a problem.  We had too many expenses each month for the amount of money my husband brought home.  Almost enough, but not quite.  The difference?  The stupid $315 car payment for our lovely SUV.  I wasn't going to let that come between me staying home or working, so we promptly started chucking $1000 payments towards the thing.  I was able to stay home with my son for the entire 12 week leave that I was allowed to take (but it wasn't all paid!) but then I had to go back to work for 6 months until we could get the vehicle paid off and I didn't have to work anymore.  We paid the car off on a Friday and I turned in my 2 weeks notice that Monday.  I loved my job, but with having kids, suddenly priorities shifted.

As I said, my husband could now cover all of the expenses with his income.  Except that our house payment was about 50% of our income now.  My income was just slightly under 50% of our household income, so while we could do it, there was no breathing room at all.  Finally, in 2009 after reading about this Dave Ramsey guy on a lot of the blogs I followed, I decided my new year's goal was to find out more about him and do the Financial Peace University course.  Because we had baby #2 on the way and I was scared.

So, early in 2009, we had a chance to do the FPU course for the first time at our church and it was a life-changer.  While we lived within our means before and had only once carried a credit card balance (our first Christmas together), we realized that we didn't have a plan.  And without a plan, it seemed like our bank account was always teetering towards $0 and that we would never get ahead.

So, during the course, we got our act together, wrote everything down in a budget, and made a plan for the future.  Our debt snowball was pretty easy...only one item that we put on it.  The 20% portion of our mortgage (which wasn't exactly 20%, but it was what the loan officer told us to do).  Technically it was over 50% of our annual income, so it should have been put in Baby Step #6 (mortgage) instead of #2 (debt snowball), but we didn't have any breathing room and needed to knock it out in order to make it.

So we ATTACKED it with a vengeance as Dave Ramsey likes to say.  From around April 2009 - January 2011, we had baby #2 and we paid off our 2nd mortgage!  WE'RE DEBT FREE!  It was amazing how much extra money we found in our budget when we wrote everything down, stopped making those small impulse purchases that added up to hundreds of dollars, and cut our lifestyle for that time in order to get ahead.  I mean, we didn't make any extra money during that 20 month stretch (Steve didn't get any raises) but yet we were able to find extra thousands of dollars to chuck directly towards the principal on the mortgage.  It.was.awesome.  It was also a lot of hard work, sacrifice and tears, but totally all worth it.

So, from now on, whenever our house buys a new car, takes a vacation, or buys Christmas presents, you can be sure that we paid cash for it :)  Because we will never again be "slave to the lender."  We  do have our main mortgage still, but we chuck extra money at that every month and have a goal of paying it off in 8-10 years max. Because being debt-free is worth it.

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Vacation, Louisville style day 4

Day #4 was also our last day of vacation in Louisville.  Steve's convention was over Friday night at the awards dinner, so we had him the entire day.  We took our time getting up and packing the room.  Steve made a trip down to the van while we watched from the window.  Our van is the blue "blob" in the middle of the photo...and Steve could see is looking and waved to the boys.  Oh, and a cool thing to note...the remote to the power doors works from 10 floors up.  I was able to click the button and open the door of the van from up in the room!

My boys in one of their favorite parts of the hotel...the elevator.  They fight every time we get in one as to who gets to push the button!  And my favorite part?  They only pushed the "call help" button once!

On the race horse in front of the hotel.  Kinda like Cincinnati has flying pigs all throughout the city, Louisville has horses!

What was on the agenda for day #4?  What else, but the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory!  Steve and I had been there before while visiting family in Louisville probably 8 years ago so we knew the boys would love it!  Here's the famous Slugger bat, which is the world's biggest baseball bat!  It just so happened that the museum was celebrating adding a Derek Jeter sculpture to the museum and in celebration of his #2 jersey, admission was $2 each!  So, instead of $20 for our family it only cost us $4 (under 5 is free)!

Some of the displays outside of the museum along the sidewalk:

 

Yep, these boys were in HEAVEN!

Here is a video of one of the exhibits in the museum.  The boys loved this one!

You aren't allowed to take photos on the tour of the factory, but they take you through and show you the process of taking the "billet" or raw wooden cylinder (like these) to a bat.  They have a lathe that they show how they used to do it by hand, but now they have machines that do it all by program.  It's pretty cool that they can control the weight and shape all by a computer program.  They have machines that do the "common" bat types and then one machine that customizes the bats for the professionals.  They said the normal pro goes through around 150 bats in a season!

At the end of the tour, we were given Mini baseball bats.  The boys were thrilled!  Now the trick is going to be to keep them from beating each other (and my house!!) with them!  Here's a photo of them with one of the sculptures (Babe Ruth, I think) and their mini bats.

After the tour, we visited the kids area and the boys were able to hit in a "batting cage" setup with balls and a tee!  Tyler loved this and he was really good at hitting it!  Ryan, not so much but he had fun!

  

Steve took his turn in the adult batting cages.

After the tour, we found a local Mexican restaurant that I had heard good things about....Los Aztecas!  It was yummy...Steve had his normal steak fajitas, but I had a really good Shrimp salad :)

You know it's been a good day of vacation and that the kids had fun when this is the sight on the ride back home:

Once we got back to Cincinnati, we took the Anderson Ferry back across the river to my in-laws house to pick up the dog.  The boys loved it just as much the second time as the first time!  Especially since the trip the second time was with about 10 motorcycles.  Steve even got out of the van with them and went to the edge too look over.

So, vacation was exhausting for me.  But the boys had fun and lots of memories were made!  Vacation, Louisville style is now in the books!

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Vacation, Louisville style day 3

Day #3 of Vacation in Louisville started off a little slower than the previous two days.  Steve had classes to attend in the morning, but planned on being finished by around 11:30.  So, we decided to stay at the hotel and take our time getting ready so that he could join in the fun for the day.  Well, the boys decided that getting up before 8am was a wonderful idea...what kind of vacation is this?!   I tried entertaining them in the room, and this is the result...

Please note that we disconnected the phones as soon as we arrived in the room on day #1.  Because I've told you what my boys do with phones.  But there were 2 phones in the room, so the boys were able to "call" each other...

After about an hour, I decided that two boys cooped up in a hotel room was not a good idea. So we decided to take an adventure walk.

Our hotel room was on the 10th floor, but there were 17 floors (really 16, but they skipped numbering the 13th floor).  So, we hopped on the elevator and went up to check out the view from the top floor.  Here's the Louisville skyline as seen from the 17th floor of the Louisville Marriott downtown, facing north towards the Ohio river.

This next photo is pretty cool.  That black spot in the middle is actually a spider on the outside of the window.  I think it was alive...I thought it was cool because it's on the 17th floor and because I saw one on the outside of the Sear's Tower in Chicago when I was little and have always wondered how it got that high up!

So, the other thing that we did was take a walk though the lobby.  We didn't have internet in our room because it would have cost us $13 PER DAY!  But they had free wi-fi on the first and second floors.  So we went to the second floor and I checked my email.  They we used the skywalk to walk over to the convention center.  The boys thought it was really cool, so I made them race back and forth about 5 times.  It was the length of the city block and I thought it might help them to burn some of their energy.  I got a lot of weird looks, but it worked!

Finally Steve was finished and joined us for the afternoon.  We hopped in the car and found a Chick-Fil-A and the boys were ecstatic!  We let them play for a little bit and then they turned in their toy for an ice cream cone...yum!

Our destination for the afternoon was Henry's Ark.  It's an animal rescue and petting zoo.  I had no idea what to expect because they don't have a website, but I found some favorable reviews and thought the boys would enjoy it.  I was right!  It was chilly on Friday, but we bundled up and it was fine thanks to the sun being out!  There was no admission charge to the petting zoo, but donations were accepted in a donation box.

The first animal you see when you walk in is an ostrich!  He (or she) came right over and we were able to pet it.

This goat was wandering around and the boys thought it was so cool.  I had picked up a bag of carrots (10 lbs!) at Kroger right before arriving, so we fed the goat some.

They had a pond for the ducks as well as some other animals.  That goat just kept following us :)

Zebras!?  Yep, we got to pet them and feed them carrots!

I'm pretty sure this is a Yak.  There were signs posted on the fence, but this one was in the barn and didn't have a sign there.  Whatever it was, it was big!

The goats tried to get out and get our carrots.

I think this was a water buffalo?  It was big and wouldn't come eat the carrot, but we tried!

In addition to Water Buffalo, Yaks, goats and ostrich, there were also sheep, ducks, camels, dogs and cats, bison, peacocks and emu!  Definitely the best petting zoo we've ever been to!  I took a video of feeding the Ostrich right before we left the petting zoo.  Please excuse the sound...it was windy that day!

When we got back to the hotel, my husband took the kids swimming in the pool and I hopped on the treadmill for a few minutes to myself!  It was great to get on there and run to relieve some of the stress of being on vacation with 3 little kids!  We got back to the room and the boys enjoyed an extended bath time with their snorkels and goggles :)  Steve had an awards dinner to attend Friday night, so the boys and I did take out from Champion's which was located in the lobby of the hotel.

Day #3 was a success!

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Vacation, Louisville style day 2

On our first day of vacation, the highlight was the Louisville Zoo.  Our second day was rainy so we decided to check out the Louisville MegaCaverns.  These caverns were old Limestone quarries and they take jeep guided tours through the caverns.  I found the info online and then saw a brochure at the concierge desk and decided the boys might enjoy it.  I really wanted to do a real cave, but I thought at 2 and 4, the boys really aren't ready for spelunking!

In some ways, this cavern tour was great.  We rode on a trailer the entire time, I learned a lot on the trip, I didn’t have to yell at the boys for touching things they weren’t supposed to, Molly stayed in her car seat the entire time and slept, and we saw some pretty cool things.  But in other ways, I didn’t think it was worth the money.  It cost just shy of $20 for me and the three kids.  Ryan and Molly were free (under 3), so I just had to pay for Tyler and myself.  I did get a $2 off coupon from the concierge desk at our hotel, so if I wouldn’t have had that, it would have been over the $20.

A couple of the things I learned….the difference between a cavern and a cave is that a cavern is man-made.  The Louisville caverns are around 100 acres in size and around 90 feet under the city (mainly the Zoo!)  There are approximately 18 different business that use the caverns for storage (data, equipment, or supplies), including PODS, private individuals storing boats, cars and RV’s, and even the city of Louisville.  The Louisville Caverns became privately owned in the late 1980’s but before then was originally a limestone quarry and was even a fallout shelter during WWII.

One of the highlights of the Louisville caverns is that they have a zip line and ropes course tour.  Our hotel concierge actually highly recommended that and said the tour was just so-so.  I really wanted to do the ropes course tour, but obviously with 3 kids in tow that wasn’t an option.  I think if I were to ever go back, I would definitely skip the cavern tour in favor of the zip line!

So, after the caverns, we headed to the Mall at St. Matthews.  While we didn’t actually make it into the mall, I was able to go to one of my favorite stores that Cincinnati no longer has…World Market!  My plan was to hit a couple stores and then go to Chick-Fil-A for lunch with the kids.  We don’t make it there very often, but the boys love playing in there.  I figured it would be a good incentive for behaving while I shopped.  Unfortunately, the Chick-Fil-A was under renovations and wasn’t open!  The kids thought I was making it up because they could see the Chick-Fil-A and they could see the play area but couldn’t read the signs saying it was closed.  I had two very unhappy kids!

By the time I circled around trying to find another place to eat, it was late and so I just decided to go to McDonald’s.  While we do go to McDonald’s a lot because the one in our town has a great play place, I think I have only purchased the boys kids meals there once or twice, so I treated them to the kids meal of their choice.  They got two “cool” MegaMind toys that shoot, so they had lost of fun playing with them the rest of the day.  That kinda made up for the no Chick-Fil-A…though I would have been much happier with the first choice!  I still don’t think that Tyler gets the whole vacation thing though, because when we decided on McDonald’s for lunch he said, “OK, let’s go to McDonalds and then we can go on bay-cation again after lunch.” J

After lunch, we went back to the hotel and caught up with my husband.  The afternoon schedule for his convention was just the exhibition hall and since he had already visited all of the vendors he wanted to see, he was able to hang out with us for a few hours.  We took the kids swimming in the hotel pool.  It was great because we were the only ones in the pool so it was like having a private swimming session.  I had taken swim jackets as well as floats for the boys and they were in heaven!  The only pool we normally swim at is the YMCA pool and they don’t allow floats so it really was a treat for the boys.

Also, it was Molly’s first real swimming experience.  We have taken her to the Y twice but she slept the entire first time and the second time I had her in a baby carrier and only got her feet in the water.  This time she got in up to her neck and even enjoyed time in a float!   She didn’t cry at all, so I have a feeling she’s going to be a water bug just like the boys.

For dinner, Steve had to go back to the convention and I didn’t feel like taking the boys out by myself again so we decided to have a pizza and movie night.  I know, we had pizza for lunch on day #1, but we don’t normally order pizza at home, so I didn’t mind having it 2 days in a row.  Plus, it was really the only restaurant within walking distance that had easy takeout (at least that I could find via the GPS thing).  The boys enjoyed pizza and a VeggieTales movie and I enjoyed not having to get them to sit still and eat their dinner.  After all, this is my vacation as well!

All in all, day #2 of vacation was a hit.

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