Dave Ramsey- Town Hall For Hope

Just announced yesterday (I knew being on Facebook was good for something, ha ha!), is the upcoming Town Hall for Hope on April 23rd hosted by Dave Ramsey.

Tired of hearing the fear, doom and gloom that’s filling the airwaves? Join Dave Ramsey for a nationwide town hall meeting and discover what’s happening with the economy, how we got here, and where we’re going. Plus, Dave will answer your questions live throughout the event!…We’ll take questions by phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.

Here’s the official promotional video with more information. (Sorry, you have to click on a link to see it. I’m stupid when it comes to technology sometimes and can’t figure out to embed the YouTube video. Well, actually I could figure it out, but my 5 month old just woke up from his nap. Gotta be quick during naptimes!)

It’s Just Sticking Your Head in the Sand!

And to this, I say no. I’ve seen a few remarks already about the Town Hall for Hope meeting and a few have been negative about Dave Ramsey’s outlook on the recession and economy. I think Dave Ramsey has such a positive outlook on the economy is because he refuses to sit back and let the doom and gloom take over his thinking. It doesn’t mean he has his head stuck in the sand or isn’t facing reality. Having hope and overcoming your fear does not mean you are in denial. It means you are not letting fear run your life. It means you have a plan and are putting it to action. (Instead of waiting for the government to come up with a plan for you).

Mark Your Calendars

April 23rd, 8:00 PM EST. You can attend the Town Hall for Hope meeting at a location near you. So far they have no plans to rebroadcast it online (please, please change your mind Dave Ramsey and crew!), so it looks like I will check it out at a local venue. So far over 1600 locations have signed up to host it, and that’s in less than 2 days!

Posted in The Economy | 1 Comment »

I Am Keeping Up With the Jones’s This Year!

We are keeping up with the Jones’s this year, heck, I think we are a step ahead of them even. See, saving money is “in” this year. It’s trendy, hip, and what everyone seems to be talking about.

I subscribe to a bunch of magazines (all free of course-I don’t ever like to pay for magazine subscriptions). Lately I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the amount of articles on couponing, saving money on groceries and how to cut down on your credit card debt. This week’s USAA magazine cover has just the following phrase on it”

“Life in the New Economy- Your Home, Your Credit, Your Budget”

Woman’s Day April issue features articles with titles like

“Decorating on a Nickel”

“374 Cost Cutting Tips”

“Save on Groceries”

“Outsmart the New Credit Card Traps”

See a pattern yet? Nightly newscasts feature segments on “Where to Find More Coupons” and other cost-cutting pieces. It’s been the talk in my mom circles and even women’s bible study. Everyone has tips to share on how they save money, do their budget or stories on reducing their debt. Maybe it’s all the talk about the recession but people have money on the brain.

It’s nice to not feel like such an oddball, and I’m learning some great new ideas along the way.

Have you noticed your friends, family and coworkers talking about finances more this year?

Posted in Save Money | No Comments »

Should I Set Up a Car Repair Fund Before I Pay off My Debt?

Last month I received a comment that has gotten me thinking about the way we have handled our budget and debt payoff. I had written about a flat tire we received and how we had the emergency fund available in case we didn’t have the cash in our weekly budget to replace the tire.

PK commented in response:

Actually this is not a very good use of emergency fund dollars. This is a very foreseeable event and a separate car maintenance fund should be in place for this instead of resorting to the emergency fund.

I agree. And disagree.

For those that are out of debt it’s a good idea to set up “sinking funds” account to cover expenses. Things like car repair, new car fund, gift money, vacation, house maintenance are a few examples of things that could be covered with sinking funds. I was under the impression that it’s not advisable to fully fund your sinking funds before you are even out of debt. Which is why we did not put anything in a sinking fund specifically earmarked for car repair. BUT, I fully agree that it’s a good thing to have and we plan on doing that once our debt is fully paid off.

Should we have done this already? Do you have an amount of money specifically put aside for car repair? When did you first set aside the money? Was it before or after you were debt-free?

In our situation we didn’t have to touch the emergency fund. We had enough in our budget that we could have moved from putting into savings and put towards the purchase of a new tire. That turned out to not be necessary. Instead our cost was $25 to take the nail out of the tire and repair it.

How do you handle unexpected car repairs while you are paying off debt?

Posted in Personal Finance | 7 Comments »

Do You Have an Emergency Fund Yet?

And if not, why not?

Today I got another reminder from life about the importance of an emergency fund. On my way to drop some papers off at my sons’ school I fet the car drive a little funny. I thought maybe it was the wet roads. I didn’t think anything more of it but when I stepped out of the school office I was greeted with a very flat tire. No, it didn’t just need a little bit of air, it was flat. Very flat.

My husband is on his way home to check it out. I know we have a spare and I’m sure he’ll replace the flat tire with the spare. But we are going to need to buy a new tire. Which is where our trusty emergency fund comes in. I’m going to look over the budget this week and see if we can buy the tire directly from our budget. Even if we don’t have enough to cover a new tire I am reassured by the fact we have an emergency fund to cover things like a flat tire.

So, how’s your emergency fund? Is it full and ready for you to use in a time of need? If not (I’m sorry I sound a bit preachy here or a bit like a nagging mother) I urge you to cut out extras or earn a little extra money so you can set up an emergency fund. It’s smart to have one at all times, but given the current economic conditions I think it’s even more essential to have a back-up fund.

Ok, I’m going to step off my soap-box now. The little guy (he’s 4 months old now!) just woke up from his nap.

Posted in Life, Personal Finance | 4 Comments »

Looking Back at 2008 While Looking Ahead in 2009

A little over a year ago I wrote down our family’s financial goals for 2008. It’s been awhile since I sat down and reviewed the goals, and honestly I was a bit nervous to see how far off track we’ve come.

“Pay off Debt” -We are not debt free yet and I’m a bit disappointed that we still haven’t reached our goal. One hold-up is that we need to sell our truck. It’s paid off but we are still waiting on the title so that we can sell it. We’ve ran into a few snags (does anything ever go smoothly?). We are hoping to have possession of a duplicate title this month so that we can sell the truck. Once it’s sold the cash will pay off our remaining debt.

“Sell house and move” - We closed on our house July 30th and moved 2,000+ miles to California. We accepted an offer that was exactly our bottom line and I’m glad we did. Since the summer home sales and prices have slowed even more and I thikn we got out of there just in time.

“Fund Emergency Fund with 3 months worth of expenses” - Yes. And No. When we moved we received a lump sum payment for expenses. It’s sitting in a savings account untouched. Why haven’t we used it to pay off our last little bit of debt? Well… as a husband and wife we try hard to work together as a team on our finances. The amount would fully found an emergency fund for six months, but we still haven’t reached an agreement on what to do with or label this sum of money. One wants to keep it in a savings account earnings interest for a down payment on a house, and the other wants to use a portion of it to pay off debt. Our compromise in the meantime is to just let it sit in a savings account.

“Up retirement savings to 15%” - Effective January 1st, 2009 my husband’s company will match the first 4.5% we put into our 401k. We upped our 401k contributions to 5% a couple months ago to prepare for this.

“Have some fun as a family!” - We’ve definitely accomplished this. We probably could have been a little more gung-ho about paying off the debt in the last year but we would have missed camping trips, a day of sledding in the mountains, a day trip to the beach and other fun. We made a few concessions that we felt were well worth it for our family this past year.

What about the Nikon camera and flat-screen TV?

We did not buy these. I got a small digital camera from mother-in-law and sister-in-law for my birthday. It works great and will do just fine until I can buy a digital SLR camera someday. We also said “no” to the flat-screen TV purchase and have since upgraded to a “new to us” 37″ TV given to us by some relatives. Cost = $0! It’s not anything fancy, but compared to our old 25″ inch TV with blotchy purple spots on the screen, it’s like we have HDTV now.

So 2008 wasn’t too terribly bad. I still wish I could have given that “I’m Debt-Free!!!” yell to Dave Ramsey, but we’ll get there soon. On the positive side of things we became a little better at budgeting, finding free & inexpensive fun things to do for entertainment, and cooking at home more.

So What’s in Store for 2009?

Say good-bye to debt! - We will sell our truck and pay off our remaining debt.

Monthly Meal Plan to reduce our grocery bill- Our grocery budget took a huge hit when we moved to California. Regular prices at the grocery stores are insane ($5-$6 for a box of cereal!!!). Couple that with the fact that 2 major grocery chains (Vons and Ralphs) switched to extremely limited double coupons and raised their prices and my grocery bill has just exploded. I’ve had to switch up my couponing technique a bit but I’ve seem to got it down now. This means that having a 30 day meal plan and shopping for a month’s worth of groceries would be best since I don’t go to the same store every week. I’d like to continue to build my stockpile, work on a monthly meal plan, and work on reducing our grocery bill again.

Save for a house- We are currently renting. We want to get to know the area a little better and look for the right house and school area. Our goal is to also save an additional $36,000 this year towards a down payment on a house. I’m not sure that our down payment will be big enough to buy this year, so we may end up signing another year lease on the rental house so that we can have some more time to save.

Retirement contributions- I’m torn on this one. Do we leave our contributions at 5% (once we are debt-free) while we save for a house? Or should we up them to 15%? We are 32 and 30. I don’t know what is the right choice here.

So there it is. I was brave and looked at whether (or not) we have met our goals for 2008. We’ve made some new ones for this year and I look forward to meeting them.

Have you made any financial goals for 2009?

Posted in Our Debt Payoff Progress | 3 Comments »