Anyone follow Dave Ramsey / Use a budget?

mintea

I operate the budget for our house and when LO was born I totally fell of the wagon. We are (and have been for a year) in the debt snowball stage. We have a lot of student loan debt and our snowball is better measured in years than months.

Anyhow, I just revised our budget with our new expenses and oh.my.gosh it is ugly.  DH is studying for the bar and hopefully, fingers crossed, he will land a job sometime this fall. Until then we need to pinch! 

So, I thought I'd check in if any of you use the method and we could share tips / commiserate / cheer one another on. 

As an aside: I make quite a good salary- looking at how the money disappears in this spreadsheet makes me wonder how anyone does it on anything less! Life is expensive. 

 

sapphirebride06

Can you cut down on cell phone plans or cable/satellite?  Spending money on starbucks instead of making it at home?  What about Netflix or something similar?  Not sure how helpful this is but trying to think of ways we could cut costs and this comes to mind.  We are switching cable providers because our contract is up and our current provider is not offering us any incentives but the competition is so we are switching.  What about gym memberships you do not utilize?  Dry cleaning you could do at home?  You could possible do a forebearance on your student loans in the meantime if you cannot cut out other stuff  Ive had to do that once years ago and while was on maternity leave.  

i do our household budget and it is hard!  what helped was planning a weeks worth of meals and buying what need for that - then there was no what is for dinner discussion as we are hungry and passing by restaurants!  It really helped trim expenses too.  i bought just what we need for the week and not snacks stuff except for healthy options since I knew what was for dinner each night.  I do not do Ramsey but I do follow a spreadsheet budget and feel much more organized.  Maybe look at what you can trim and start from there.  HTH!

Lizg1799

I don't follow Dave per se because, like you, we have A LOT of law school debt.  I make a great salary as does DH but we barely make a dent.  If Dave were to talk to us he would tell me to sell one car, live in a shack, and eat beans and rice...well, no thanks.  We both contribute at least 10% to our 401k, have an emergency fund, great savings, and have started a college fund for DS.  But, I still want to enjoy my life and have a house, etc.  

I coupon like crazy and have basically changed our lives with it.  We were spending about $100 a week on groceries for just the two of us and we were still eating out (and drinking out) ALL the time.  That probably accounted for another $200 bucks or so a month.  Those were the law school days when our rent was cheap!  Now I spend maybe $200 a month on groceries.  With DS, we don't eat out much but we do still occasionally.

So basically I coupon for all groceries and tolietries.  I have a stockpile (nothing crazy) and it makes things much easier when we run out of something so we don't have to pay full price for a replacement.  For example, we had a cookout last weekend and I was out of ketchup.  Instead of having to go the store and pay full price, I had one in my stockpile from when it was on sale and I had a coupon.   

As for alcohol, Trader Joes works for me.  All of their wine is cheap and really, I don't care...I just want a glass of Chardonnay when I put LO to bed.  A lot of time if we go out to dinner we will skip the alcohol at the restaurant and have a drink on our deck when we get home.  

Whenever we have birthday, Christmas, anniversary or whatever else our parents insist on buying a gift we always ask for gift cards.  We either ask for a clothing store or a nice restaurant so that we can treat ourselves without feeling guilty.  

I think it's the small things that make a difference.  I'm not going to drain my savings and sell my house to pay that student load debt.  I have it automatically drafted (we pay about $100 extra on that and our mortgage) and just dont worry about it.  I hate it and it irks me to no end that my DH was in the top 10 of his law school class and we are still stuck with nearly $100k student loan debt.  Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do other than hope to win the lottery.  

busterbeagle

We also have a lot of student loan debt and need to be better at sticking to our budget.  We don't use Dave Ramsey's method, but I would be interested in a check-in!

elektra1835

Hey, I love Dave Ramsey! I credit him to helping me get my head on straight when I kept getting overdrawn at the bank, lol. Anyway, I know you guys will be able to get out of debt as long as you remain diligent. And I know it sucks now, but all the pinching will be worth it once you guys have all your debt paid off. Do you guys have your emergency fund set up? Are you continuing to give? I don't know if you're a Christian or not, but I'm assuming you are (hopefully not wrongly) since DR's teaching is biblical. I know sometimes it can be hard to give when things are tight, but it always seems like my family is better off during the times we are being diligent in giving as opposed to when we're not giving as much. And I second PPs input about planning meals ahead of time. A lot of the money we spend often goes towards eating out. I really do need to get back to making (and sticking) to a budget. If you need any more encouragement, feel free to PM me.

 

nmaldo77

Lizg1799:

.  If Dave were to talk to us he would tell me to sell one car, live in a shack, and eat beans and rice...well, no thanks.     

This made me laugh because that is exactly what DH says about Dave.  I am more of a fan, but I am the saver and DH is the spender.  I WISH I were in charge of the budget.  At least DH is getting a TON better, so we are taking small steps.  

The one thing that has helped a whole heck of a lot is, we stopped eating out and that alone saves us so much money.  As PP mention it helps to make a menu for the week.

We also find that when we give, it seems like money comes out of nowhere and it is a HUGE blessing.  However, DH has seemed to have forgotten this lately and we need to give more.  Our goal is to be out of debt (minus one car) by next Feb.  

mintea

Lizg1799:

I don't follow Dave per se because, like you, we have A LOT of law school debt.  I make a great salary as does DH but we barely make a dent.  If Dave were to talk to us he would tell me to sell one car, live in a shack, and eat beans and rice...well, no thanks.  We both contribute at least 10% to our 401k, have an emergency fund, great savings, and have started a college fund for DS.  But, I still want to enjoy my life and have a house, etc.  

Yeah, we aren't following the Ramsey method to a T because of that very issue. Working with a consultant we established that our debt snowball presuming our current income (which is just mine), very best case scenario is about 4-5 years.  Oh student loans. It made it really hard to read his book and hear about the long snowballs being...gasp!... a year. Frankly, we are doing what we can.I have had too many friends die before being old and grey so I am hesitant to put off life too much.

We don't have channels beyond the over-the-air ones. We have internet but it's pretty much a must as I WFH sometimes and DH needs it for his prep course. Our cell phones are on contract but we are in a cheap plan. We don't have anything like a gym membership or a landline or a maid or netflix.

I have combed over this thing and the one place we could stand to cut would be food. I realize it somewhat depends on where you live, but what do you think a reasonable pinch budget is for groceries for 2 adults per month? What about for restaurant eating?

We have a 1k emergency fund. And regarding the question on tithing, we try. We give to our parish each week. At the start of the year we planned our giving and I just had to cut it down to 1/3 of what we'd pledged. Otherwise we'd be dipping into the emergency fund just to get by.   

shortsweet&sassy

We are following Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps. We are doing our debt snowball now. We dont follow it exactly, we have a "blow" category each payday so we can use that to eat out or buy things we want but its only $40 a month. The thing that really opened my eyes to help me do a more stirct budget is we tracked everything we spent for a month, kept every reciept. It was amazing how much we spent on little trips to the grocery store or eating out or on stuff we really didnt need. I was then able to re-work our budget. We also use cash only on everyday purchases and once its gone, its gone. It really makes both of us think about what we're spending our money on. We have been able to pay off  a very small student loan and we hare working on a small credit card right now. We've been working on our debt for 2 years. Its slow going and having our 2nd child we had to put a hold on the snowball while I was pregnant and now we have 20K in medical debt BUT just being able to get our debt snowball going again has felt SO good. We have already been able to make some kind of dent in it. We've had to make some sacrifices. I coupon and we eat alot of pasta, breakfast for dinner ect but it will be worth it to us in the end. I go by the motto "Everything in moderation". You have to have fun, you have to eat out once in a while, you need to buy yourself something sometimes, otherwise you'll go insane.  Only you know what works best for you and your family and you dont have to follow the Dave Rasmey plan to a T for it to work, you just have to keep sticking to it even when you do have set backs. Even though we havent been able to pay things off as fast as we would like, it has made a difference with how we handle our money. There have been a couple of times that we've been cut in pay or insurance has gone up and if we didnt have a budget in place we would be screwed. Hang in there and feel free to PM me if you need some support. Finances are stressful and hard!