Battling the debt monster

One of my favorite financial lesson-givers is Dave Ramsey. He is the author of The Total Money Makeover and Financial Peace among others. He hosts a radio and TV show and does live appearances. He has may popular sayings including, "debt is dumb and cash is king." He even has some very good ideas for teaching kids the value of and responsibility with money. He balances real world financial knowledge with spiritual understanding and is one of the most popular people from the financial world today.

Why do I explain all of that? Because a big focus of Larissa and my lives has been getting out of debt. I have made many very bad financial decisions throughout my life and this has been the source of much contention in our marraige. I was raised with a terrible understanding of money and didn't learn anything the easy way. One of the lessons I've learned the hard way is how to communicate about money with my wife. We have grown in this area over time and have made a lot of progress together, but it seems that we rarely have understood the same thing the same way at the same time. Until now. One of the suggestions Dave gives is to have monthly (or more often if necessary) budget meetings. We have worked on things together, but never that consistently. Last night we began a 'meeting'. As usual, I began in the wrong way and frustrated her. She felt I ambushed her while I thought I was being considerate. Finally it got through to me that spoken numbers never connect with her and that she was feeling attacked. We dealt with some of the more sensitive and difficult spending topics, and we are working with the right budget again. It also resulting in me completing a colorful bar graph of all of our remaining debt for her around 4am. :) It feels good to be on the same page again, with a plan. With over $120K of debt (not including a home) 6 years ago it has only felt depressing and like we will never get there. I've been very committed, but a sense of hopelessness in any arena causes you to make poor decisions. Working together with Larissa I sincerely look forward to consistent progress with an attitude of hope.

I'm told that being debt free is an amazing feeling. For one of the few times I am beginning to believe we may have the opportunity to find out. It would be nice to make our money work for us instead of the other way around. We really want to do more giving, saving, and having fun. We must make the money behave instead of the other way around so that is where we will start.