Our journey began more than a decade ago. I was working at a bank, and my future husband was finishing up his college degree while working at the Navy Reserves. We were living like most young Americans; We didn’t have much money, but we had love and dreams for the future...

When my husband got a job in IT after graduating, we decided it was time to start a family. I was still working at the bank, where I had to sell credit cards to customers. But the more I helped people with their finances, the more I realized I loved guiding them in the right direction rather than selling them products that could harm them.

While I was helping a customer one day, I noticed she had a series of envelopes, and they were all labelled. Intrigued, I asked her about them, and this is how I found out about this guy named Dave Ramsey. At the time my future husband and I were not financially joined, and we had started fighting about money. (That was a first for us). I asked my customer to tell me all about the Dave Ramsey program. With great enthusiasm, she shared that it would change my life (Turns out she was right!)

I did my research and found out that he has helped millions of couples reach their financial goals. I was ready because anything had to be better than fighting with the one you love, right?

So, I got the envelopes, and I tried. The problem was I never had budgeted before this… and I was bad at it. At this point I was pretty far along in my pregnancy, and we were not making any progress. We were also going “Dave Light”. Which is when you try to follow the Dave Ramsey Plan, but you ignore some pieces you think are too hard or do not apply to you. As it turns out, the whole plan applies to you. We were still using credit cards like most people for the “points” and the “benefits”.

Then one day, the stuff really hit the fan!

Our baby was born. The cost of infant daycare was nearly matching my salary. I had to ask what every new mom asks herself: Did I want strangers raising my new baby? Wouldn’t we be better off if I were the stay-at-home mom and my husband be the sole provider? I was nervous because we were already fighting about money. In the end I decided to quit the bank.

After we got home from the hospital hubby had to return to work the next day. So, there I was on the 1st day by myself with my newborn and I realized my baby was not well. We needed to go to the ER. When he came home from work that night, I gave him the news. His response was that “…they ended my contract today; I no longer have a job.” We got in the car headed for the hospital with our newborn and we were completely freaked out.

It was Christmas Eve.

There we were on Christmas, both of us unemployed with a brand-new baby and an ER bill and thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Stress, anxiety. post-partum and depression were our Christmas spirit that year.

Over the next few months my future husband found a job. We had quit doing the Dave Ramsey plan. We felt hopeless.

As time went on, our anxiety level continued to grow as debt continued to rise. Arguments and bickering became the center of our new family. We could not get through a day without fighting about money and resenting any spending done by the other person. I was worried about how we were going to take care of our new baby. I was scared.

We realized that our life choices were wrong and that getting married was the first step in the right direction. So, we got married. We had a small ceremony that we paid for ourselves.

Over the next few months, my husband was promoted to the rank of Chief in the Navy. We found out I was pregnant again and life seemed like it was getting a little better.

Then the worst happened. My husband came home and told me he had lost another contract, and he would be without a job again. This time it took him six months to find another job.

So, there we were, no job and two babies we were worried about feeding. A new husband I kept fighting with, and our new marriage hanging on by a thread and to top it all off, we still had a mound of debt and with neither of us working, we got into even more debt.

My husband eventually found a new job. The only problem was it required us to move to a new state 700 miles away.

Still in debt we set about fixing ourselves and we revisited the Dave Ramsey plan. This time we were utterly frustrated with our financial situation and

WE HAD HAD ENOUGH!

WE WERE DONE BEING IN DEBT.

I call this my Scarlett O’ Hara moment. There is a scene in the movie “Gone With the Wind” where she is standing on the hill of her house and she is starving and she said, “I don’t care what I have to do I will never go hungry again.”

Well, I don’t care what I have to do, I will never go into DEBT again.

This time, we committed fully to Dave Ramsey’s plan. We followed it with renewed determination. This time we went extremely hard! We developed Gazelle intensity the way Dave Ramsey advised. We did envelopes. We did budgets. We sold everything not nailed down. We did extreme couponing. I learned how to shop for my family the right way. We had many, many, many budget committee meetings and throughout it all, we discovered one unexpected aspect: it was both fun and satisfying to us! It became a game. We found greater unity as husband and wife than we had ever felt before. We finally found peace in our marriage with this money thing. We have not had a fight about money since the day we declared we were tired of being broke. Enough.

During this time, we managed to:

• Pay off my compact car and replaced my it with a dependable used car that better fit our growing family

• Pay off my husband’s college debt

• Pay off a major remodel in the starter home

• Pay off hospital bills

• We sold our motorcycle, our truck, and most of our luxury items

• We reduced the credit cards themselves into confetti and then credit card debt to zero so to never hindered us again.

• We managed to maintain our mortgage on a house we no longer lived in and pay the rent on an apartment in our new city until the house could be sold

• We moved to a new state and my husband continued to work and provide while I cared for our two children.

• We became DEBT FREE!

• We purchased a farmette style homestead on 35 acres with a 300-year-old house that is a ‘work in progress’

• We cash flowed our remodel which my husband and I built ourselves over a five-year period and we saved an estimated 100-thousand dollars

• The military called and my husband had to deploy overseas for a year. We took a massive pay cut for the duration of his service time

• We saved aggressively for our kid’s college even though it is still years away

• We completed the first five baby steps the Ramsey plan outlines and soon, we will complete the sixth baby step towards Financial Freedom

  In time, we will be completely debt free including the mortgage.

Why do I tell you all of this? The purpose is to help you see that if we can do it, so can you.

As a certified Dave Ramsey Coach, a homeschool mom, a military spouse and a DIY home remodeler, I understand life can get stressful. I can help you tackle budgeting, decode interest rates, and even keep the peace with your partner.

Let’s build your path to generational wealth together!