I’ve known of Dave Ramsey’s existence for years now, but I never really sat down and tried to understand his method. My mother-in-law is a HUGE Dave Ramsey fan and had made my husband learn all about Dave Ramsey’s methods and teachings and such. So when we finally moved in together after getting married, he just kind of naturally took over the finances and I took over the house. I trusted that he had better education on how to manage a budget than I did since my parents never really talked about budgeting with me growing up. I trusted that he would make sensible financial decisions and just went on my merry way living life and pouring all of my energy into trying to navigate my life as a new wife and mother. It was not only our first time living in our own place together, but we moved in with our first son hundreds of miles away from any familiar face. There was a lot of struggling on my end. I struggled with managing a household for thr first time. I struggled with all of a sudden being in charge of not only cleaning up after more people than myself, but actually feeding more people than myself. I struggled with not having any support other than my husband and long distance phone calls from my family. I struggled with trying to find compatibility with my husband who was, as most men are, totally different to live with than he was to date. I struggled with navigating my first child’s life with no family around to support me. And did I mention I am a horrible housecleaner and cook? I have always been that chaotic creative kind of messy person and there was one time I literally burned water on the stove. I burned it. But these things don’t mesh well with being a stay at home mom. You just can’t live in a trashed house when you have a baby. And you can’t starve yourself and your family just because you can’t cook. I was swimming in all these first time experiences and had no idea what to do with myself.

As I struggle with my new home life, my husband was struggling too. I love the man to death but he is far too attracted by shiny things… expensive shiny things. This was our first problem. Our second problem was that my husband saw how I was struggling and had no idea how to make things better for me. So he resorted to gift giving, the only love language he knows how to show me. And I don’t mean fine jewels and such kind of gifts. I mean like taking us out to eat so I won’t have to cook that night kind of gifts. Or cute small things I see at the local walmart that I like, such as makeup and sometimes even clothes. Somewhat practical gifts, but still expensive and not in our budget. And I was too self absorbed to realize we were living outside our means until it was too late. Even when I did start noticing suspicious things like him using what looked like a credit card, I didn’t say anything for way too long because I was afraid of offending him by second guessing his financial decisions. We were newlyweds and I was still lacking so much confidence at that point in my life. So I let these poor spending habits go on and on for too long until eventually my husband was the one to admit to me that we had a problem. I tried to write out budgets more than once, but none of them ever stuck. Looking back, I think I was way overcomplicating the budgets and it was just not working out for either of us. We also struggled a lot with communicating what/when we were spending money (I say “we” but realistically I was not the one spending money).

The budgets didn’t work and we essentially dug ourselves into a nice little pit. Recently, however, I have been in a position of unusual power in the household. I am now solely in charge of the finances. I sat myself down and watched videos on the Dave Ramsey’s financial freedom methods and have written up a comprehensive budget that does distinctly highlight savings, but also allows for a small amount of freedom money to have some fun. We are currently working on our emergency fund and then I will promptly start our debt snowball after that is finished. Sitting down and really adding up all of our debt was really hard for me. I am not proud of how far we’ve fallen, but I know what we need to do to remedy our problems and I am excited to start the process. Sitting down and put together a clear game plan has helped me so much. Knowing exactly what steps I need to take to chip away at our debt is exactly what I needed to move forward with really getting somewhere with our finances. I feel so relieved to finally know what I am doing with my life. This will be a long and difficult journey, but I’m ready and I will drag my poor husband with me whether he likes it or not. Our financial communication has come a long way and I am reallu proud of how we have matured together. I wish we didn’t have to build so much debt to get here, but that’s life. Know better, do better. Fingers crossed this budget and financial plan works for us!