Dave Ramsey

My mom has been a fan of Dave Ramsey for a long time, so I've heard his stuff repeatedly while growing up. Now, I guess, I've actually started paying attention. So here are his baby steps to financial peace, as found on www.daveramsey.com.

DAVE RAMSEY’S
SEVEN BABY STEPS

Getting out of debt will not happen overnight; it takes time.
Here are the Baby Steps that will get you started:

1. $1,000 In An Emergency Fund
2. Pay Off All Debt With The Debt Snowball (order debt by lowest to highest balance, pay off lowest first, then when that is paid off, apply whatever you were paying on that to the next and so on...)
3. 3 To 6 Months Expenses (not income, but that wouldn't hurt either) In Savings
4. Invest 15% Of Income Into Roth IRAs And Pre-Tax Retirement Plans
5. College Funding
6. Pay Off Your Home Early
7. Build Wealth And Give!
   

We are working on these steps, some a little out of order. For example, we are working towards paying off our home early, but don't yet have 3 to 6 months of expenses saved. I'm not going to change our automatic mortgage payment though. We will, however, focus on paying off our little bit of debt first, then work on savings, then on my Van fund, which should probably be after we are saving something every months for the boys college/missions instead of sporadically like we do now.

Oh, another good book, The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. I'll talk about it later, but its naptime and I need to organize some things (like my CVS shopping list).