Over the past 3 years, I have completely changed my views on the value of a dollar, managing my finances, setting goals, and living with content. My journey hasn't always been smooth, and I haven't always made the best choices, but I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I would have been if I had never heard of Dave Ramsey. I have done amazing things under extremely difficult circumstances, and I am so proud of how much I have accomplished when it would have been so easy to make excuses and feel bad for myself instead of sticking to my goals. Our first accomplishment was cutting our expenses way down and learning to live with less "stuff" and being happy with what we have. Our second accomplishment was paying off all of our consumer debt, and our third accomplisment was paying for a new (to us) car, a wedding, and a trip to Disneyland all with CASH! Now we are on to a new chapter in our lives and saving for our first home. On May 1st of this year (less than 2 months ago), I posted about starting a Purposeful Savings Account for the down payment on our new home. We started with $2,000 in that account and we began putting every extra penny we could find, my entire part-time paycheck, as well as the money we could get from selling some un-used things around the house into that account. Now, on June 25th, we are up to a whopping $7,000! I can't believe we were able to find $5,000 in less than 2 months! And anyone who says that this would be impossible under their circumstances, you have to remember we did this on one moderate full-time income and a small part-time income at the same time as paying on student loans. We are not wealthy by any means, we just REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want a house!! This just shows that if you put your mind to something, and you really reevaluate your priorities, you can make anything happen! This exersize also taught us that we have a lot more extra money after our monthly expenses than we thought, and that maybe home ownership (and all of the extra expenses that come with it) isn't going to be as difficult financially as we first thought it would be. I am so excited at the prospect of looking for homes in the next few months, and to see what we can accomplish before then!! This also motivates me to come up with additonal ways to bring in a bit of extra income on top of my part time job now...I've been racking my brain lately with being creative and putting my skills to work. Maybe a free-lance tutor? An editor-for-hire? Maybe babysitting occasionally? Or I could just be a big girl and get a real job :)
Happy Saving!
Sarah
