Saturday, November 15, 2008

Money Makeover- Chapter 8, 9, 10

While I have appreciated all the insight and inspiration I am getting from Ramsey's book, I'm admitting right now that the plan to this extreme will not work for me at this point in time. I know, everyone thinks they are the exception to the rule- but let me explain. This has nothing to do with the fact that my husband and I don't see eye to eye on financial matters and everything to do with the fact DH and I bought a fixer up over a year ago and certain things aren't going to hold up as long as we had hoped, e.g. our bathroom.

What I've learned from Ramsey is that it is far better to save ahead for major purchases to avoid having to take out debit. Believe me lesson learned. Our bathroom floor is on the way out; literally we are probably a few months away from having to shower under our house instead of in it. Our tub is leaking, our toilet is leaking, there is mold growing in the walls from excess moisture and the floor was rotted away when we bought the house (what were we thinking?!?).

I have more than $1000 in our emergency fund as I have been anticipating this problem and trying to gather money in advance of a really expensive emergency. But since I am a long way off from the projected costs of the project I feel it is more important to be saving up for this so we have the money on hand within 6 months to get it fixed. This means that instead of rolling over the payments from paid off debit to the next debit I’ll be putting it into our bathroom savings account so we can pay for it without taking out more debit.

I’m still reading and applying the principals as best I can but I also want to be prepared for the future and think this is where I need to be focusing at this point in time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are making the right choice. If you have something that you know is gonna take some cash in the upcoming months, you might as well put away for that instead of paying down debt that you will just run up again.

Hey - how did your numbers come out for October?

DEL said...

Thanks for the words of encouragement! Just when I feel like I'm making progress something else comes along. Such is life. :)

And thanks for the reminder- I still need to calculate Oct's numbers and will post soon.