How I got to know Dave...

Since Robbie at FPU decided to share my link (how cool!!) I decided I better give a little background into my story and how I was led to Dave...

My name is Sarah and I live in Oregon with my husband of 2 years, John and our 9-month-old son Hudson. I am a part-time substitute teacher and full-time mom! I am an eternal optimist and I enjoy looking at the bright side of things and trying to remain positive through all of the trials God has put me through in my life. I enjoy learning new things and constantly challenging myself too. I was raised in an amazingly loving middle-class family with two working parents out on some acreage in the country. I was never given formal financial training or guidance, and I was a first generation college graduate. That is where my journey to Dave begins.

Going off to college at the ripe old age of 18 and 1 month, I thought I was pretty savvy and had it ALLLLLL figured out! I had maintained some form of employment all through my tens and had a checking account and a savings account already set up and knew how to use them properly. My first year in school I was living in the dorms, on the college meal plan, and had grants and loans set up to help pay for school. The next year, I had a roommate in our own apartment, was eating out and meeting new friends, and had a few less grants and a few more loans. The next year I was living in my OWN apartment (how cool was I??) paying my own bills, and had even fewer grants and more loans...this goes on for a total of 7 years. During these 7 years I also found out that my school would even let me borrow more money than I needed for tuition to pay for such incidentals as a new couch, some fancy new make-up from the department store, or even a trip to Chicago!! These were all necessities of course, and I would obviously pay them back when I got my grown-up job after graduation!! In my defense, I was working a good amount all through college as well, but that never stopped me from taking out the maximum amount of loans offered to me and making sure I enjoyed my youth to the fullest! Fast forward to my graduation from graduate school in 2009 with a fancy teaching degree into the worst economy my generation has ever seen. Not only are there no jobs, the are even less teaching jobs. Once my deferments and forbearance ended, i was paying almost $1000 a month with no salary. Luckily for me, by this time I had met and married my amazingly supportive husband, and we were making do with his income. And on October 29, 2009 which was 19 days after we got married, we attended an event that changed our lives!!

I had seen Dave live once before when I was in school, but with me barely scraping by and not having the opportunity to change my habits much, a lot of what he said went right over my head...but I was still hooked. I convinced my new husband that he should come with me for the next one, and after all of the dirty looks and sighs I endured for dragging him to a 6-hour financial presentation, he actually enjoyed himself! As a matter of fact, during the intermission, we dug into my purse and grabbed out half of the $200 I had saved up for a new iPhone to go purchase the FPU membership. For the next few months until we officially got registered for his course, John and I took bottles and cans in for redemption, I sold almost my entire library to a used book store, and we lived on macaroni and cheese while I tried to build up my network of teachers to substitute for. We then signed up for his course at a local church starting in January of 2010. We began the program with an embarrassingly high amount of student loans (this is the only amount I'm not wiling to share...yet...but its over $50k) and a little under $16 in consumer debt. The only thing we had done right up to this point was to save up and paid for our entire wedding with cash, so we had no debt from that! We really needed help at this point because John had been off work for an injury for almost a year and was collecting temporary disability on top of me trying to find work. Yet we managed to pay off every single penny of that consumer debt that year being gazelle intense and working our butts off! At one point I was holding down four--yes FOUR--jobs and we were experiencing so much happiness in our marriage, the communication was better on all fronts , not just our finances, and we were having fun!!!

I will explain more about our journey step-by-step throughout this blog, and even note some of the stumbles we have had along the way. We are still working on the journey and I hope I can inspire myself to keep going too!!