MY MONEY JOURNEY

TL/DR:
With the help of Dave Ramsey's principles as well as the tools and philosophy of YNAB, we were able to come up with and implement a system that works for us. We went from being literally dirt poor, going into overdraft month after month, living from paycheck to paycheck, to having accomplished paying off two homes and living the life we dreamed of while sitting in this little blue house. It is possible with hard work, consistency, and time, the dream is possible!

Full story:
See this blue house? This is where my money journey began. It was 2001. I had just gotten married and a friend of my parents offered us this house to rent for cheap. At the time, I was working as an American Sign Language interpreter at the local state college, and my husband was between jobs - both of us were students. This was all we could afford.

The Blue House, as it came to be called, was originally built as a bunk house for farmhands in the 1940s. It had no foundation, so the living room floor was sinking into the ground. Because of the crookedness of the house, all the cold air of winter came in through the windows and doors. We would sit bundled up at the breakfast table and watch our breath form ice crystals in the air.

The summer was not much better. The warm weather brought with it pill bugs and spiders who felt like this was their home. We learned, quickly, not to walk around without lights on and to sweep up the bugs and put them back outside a couple of times a day. A futile attempt since part of the kitchen floor was dirt!

There was no shower, only a small tub my 5' 11" husband could not even stretch out in. The water heater was too small to house enough water to fill the bathtub beyond a couple of inches, so we boiled water for each other to have fuller baths. Thankfully, my parents lived only a few miles away, and they would let us use their shower when we just had to have one; and they let us use their washer and dryer (parents are great).

It may surprise you to hear, but we love this house. We learned so much here! We learned that the only thing we knew about managing our money was to avoid debt (that was just about all we had been taught growing up). In this house, we learned that if you don’t do a good job of keeping track of your spending, you run out of money quickly! We learned that sometimes newlyweds argue about the cost of buying a salad for a potluck (I won that one). We learned that even though one partner says they will keep track of the checkbook, they don't always follow through (we were both guilty of that one). We learned that we didn’t know anything about money!

Fast forward about 3 years. We both had full-time jobs and things were looking up. We had just moved into our new home expecting to be able to work and save up for adding children to our home someday. The next month we found out we were unexpectedly expecting. We ran the numbers and discovered that we would be trading my income for child care - making my income obsolete. We made the decision I would stay home with the baby and my husband would continue to work since he was earning more - even though he was still going to school. Money was tight, to say the least.

Over the next few years, we added two more surprise babies and things got even tighter. Yes, my husband was getting raises and promotions (and did finish school), but there still never seemed to be enough. It was then that we were introduced to Dave Ramsey. We were all in - Gazelle intense! We understood the concept of the debt snowball and got started on that, but we didn't have the budgeting/saving thing figured out. We couldn't get that puzzle piece to work. We would set a budget, but at the end of the month, we were always over budget and out of money. We tried many of the popular programs for budgeting, but something was always missing - we were going into overdraft every month! The frustrations and "discussions" were also "intense."

Our problem? We would check our bank account to see if we had money, if we did, we would spend. The problem was when we both spent the money unaware the other was spending. To make things worse, we would forget about the bill that would be deducted at the end of the week. We just weren't doing a good job of tracking the spending. We were looking back at where the money had gone instead of making a plan for where we wanted the money to go and making sure it got there. It was a good thing we had a good overdraft policy with our credit union because we used it A LOT. Then we played the blame game with each other.

After years of trying and failing every month and getting very close to the end of our rope, my husband found this little-known budgeting software program. It was new but sounded like it might be the answer. You Need A Budget (and we did) was different than any other budgeting software we had tried. It was like envelopes for your money, but digital. You could plan your budget, then keep track of your spending in each category as you went along. It was exactly what we needed! There was a steep learning curve (I could have really used a coach back then), but after some trial and error over a few months, we finally got into a groove with it. We began implementing our own systems that worked well for us and trusting ourselves to make better financial choices. We said goodbye to our overdraft account and have not been in overdraft since! No longer were we stuck in that paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. We were finally living below our means and spending with intention. We finally had HOPE!

Fast forward to today, we have used the philosophies of Dave Ramsey, the tools and principles of YNAB, along with our own tricks and hacks we figured out along the way to create the life we used to dream of sitting at the breakfast table watching our breath. We've paid off two homes and are working on a third. We have no debt to worry about and can save and invest for retirement (hopefully that'll happen early). It is possible to live the life you dream of. It takes time, effort, and consistency, but it is possible!