Financial Peace is Coming

In just a few short weeks, Mike and I will once again be leading Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at our church. If early registration is any indication, we could have 75 people participate. Awesome. To get prepped for the class, I decided I would share one couple's story over the next several weeks. They lead FPU at their church across the river...(*last name has been changed)

Our FPU Story – The Millers*

“Income” – how much money you bring in, (or your financial shovel); and “outgo” – how much money you spend are the two constants in everyone’s financial equation. We don’t make a million bucks, but income has never really been the issue for us.

We know that, especially in this economy, lots of people are losing jobs or having their income reduced. I think Financial Peace will give you some new perspectives about income as well as outgo. But our story focuses more on planning, organization and re-thinking priorities versus coming up with new income sources.

Just because income hasn't really been our issue, doesn’t mean we were good at handling money. In truth, we were terrible at it. Turn back the clock 3 years ago. We always had too much month at the end of the money. We had little savings, and at times, no savings. We were always putting essentials like gas on a credit card because we never had enough in the checking account. We didn’t give an offering more times than I would like to admit. We sometimes couldn’t buy groceries when we needed them. It seemed like something unexpected was always coming up – like the kids needed school supplies – and it was a struggle to find the money. Since I did the bills, Tim would say to me, “Why don’t we have money for this?” Invariably it would turn into an argument. It got to the point I felt I was walking on eggshells around him about money, because it seemed like it was always my fault there wasn’t enough.

So it was surprising to me when, one day, he came home from work and said, “We make enough money, we should have our cars paid off.” I laughed. “No way,” I said. “We barely have enough to cover all the bills and we usually have to hold off on groceries. And we don’t even know how we will pay for Good Shepherd when Eli is ready for kindergarten.” But the Holy Spirit was working. What Tim said stuck with me. So a few days later, I said to him, “Let’s say I agreed with you about paying off the cars. How do you propose we go about paying off these cars, huh? Where would you get the money?” He told me to listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio on the way home from work and he had these things called the baby steps that showed you how to do it. That’s all he said. So I started listening. Soon after that we started on the baby steps.

To be continued...

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, consider taking Financial Peace University. It is not easy, but it does work. It really makes you think about what is really important. What the real priorities are. I will post more of this story next week because it is fairly lengthy.