We began looking for a community outreach for our church to participate in. One that would check off a lot of boxes. We were looking for something that would reach out to parents of the community children that attended our AWANA program during the school year. Something that would attract and interest the parents of these kids rather than a date night or grocery shopping kid-free.
Little did we know when we started watching the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace series, that we would essentially change the financial trajectory of our own family. We’d always been good with money, we lived within our means, had a modest mortgage and car payment, some school loans, we didn’t use a credit card. We began watching the series with the couple who would be teaching the class so that we’d have an understanding of what was going on in the room down the hall on Wednesday evenings.
After our friends left that first week of watching the video series, Adam and I stayed up long into the night talking. We obviously had a lot of improvements we could make on our finances. When it came down to it, we had a general idea of where our money went each month, but couldn’t really account for every dollar and when emergencies came up, they were just that, emergencies.
We decided that night to go all in and see what happened, to lean into this program and see if it worked. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty of late nights spent pouring over the budget and the conversations we had of what was most important to each of us financially (It turns out a new kitchen is way higher on my priority list than Adam’s). But 18 months later we found ourselves without any consumer debt (only our mortgage remains), and building a rainy day fund to help with our future.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t something that happened overnight. And honestly, Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University isn’t the only way to achieve financial freedom and security. The biggest part is to have a plan, to commit and stick to it even when it’s hard, and to trust in the process and of course the Lord.
Below you’ll find the video of our family’s Debt-Free Scream on air with Dave Ramsey. We are not sponsored by Ramsey Solutions in any way.