Step By Step Toward The Ride of Your Life

Most of you know our story. Stacie and I had all of our assets and all of our income coming from Real Estate. When the bubble started to slowly lose air and beging falling, so did our financial outlook, our hope, and our emotional disposition. We found Dave Ramsey in December of 2007. We immediately stopped borrowing, started budgeting and paying off debt. By that time we had $40,000 in consumer debt (most of it in credit cards). It seemed as though we would never be able to pay it off. Even though we taught FPU and saw success in the lives of others, we never really seemed happy with our progress. We expected more of ourselves. Dave's statistics from literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been through FPU and succeeded are that it takes 18-24 months to complete baby step 2. Thats too long for me! I want to be debt free now! Of course looking back I realize that it took me 7 years to make my mess. Getting out of it in 6 months is highly unlikely.

I was inspired to write this morning becuase Stacie and I realize that we are just a few short months (possibly sooner) away from being Debt Free! I can only explain this phenomenon in this way. It's like waiting in line for Space Mountain. The sign says 45 minutes from this point. You get in line and there are a million people ahead of you. You look at your watch and think about the psychology of the sign. Do they put higher numbers on the sign so that when you get there in only 40 minutes you are happy? Perhaps. However, you never see them changing the sign so who really knows. Anyway, the bottom line is that slowly, methodically, and deliberately you move forward. One step at a time you move. Sometimes you burst forward for several feet. Sometimes you seem stuck for what seems like hours without moving. When you have somone at your side supporting you the time passes less painfully. The trick is to keep moving. Never let the gap in front of you get too big. If you can only inch forward a few feet, do it. Before you know it, you can see the entrance and you know you are close. Then it gets exciting. You see others getting on. You see some getting off and they look like they just had the ride of their life.

Don't give up. Keep inching forward. God is good and faithful. Stacie and I came home from FPU last night fired up about the possibilty of paying off our final $17,771 by April or May at the latest. May would be 17 months. Hmmm. I wonder how Dave does this.