The new year, a perfect time to get back on track with our finanical stewardship plan. We totally stunk up our Dave Ramsey's plan the past 6 months. Sad, we worked so diligently for several months, got completely debt-free(except our house), and then backslid. Our emergency savings is nearly obliterated and we crept back into a little bit of debt. UGH! You know why don't you?? We abandoned our budget and flew by the seat of our pants. Bad bad idea. Where there is no plan, there is a plan to fail. So, I've filled in a beautiful and detailed cash flow plan(sounds nicer than budget). My youngest sister, Katy and her hubby Kyle, are a jillion times smarter than Mike and I were at their ages. They made a gorgeous Excel spreadsheet complete with sums formulas for their cash plan. I borrowed it, added many new rows to reflect our family, and man am I super proud of this baby! Nerd--why yes. I've also made all our new envelopes to return to the cash system. Forking over the hard earned greenbacks is so much more painful than a swipe of a debit card. Once again, Katy outdid me. She's a creative designer type--I'm your plain vanilla, whole house is tan type.
And here are hers.
My envelopes are plain white with black letters. I have one for:
groceries and household items
Minivan gas and maintainence
Mike's gas
Eat out as family
Mike's on the job eat out
Clothing
Christmas fund
Haircuts
Daycare
Offerings and gifts above tithe
Tithe
The ideas is that you calculate your monthly cash needs, withdraw that amount when you get paid, and take the cash out to pay for the items. Only pay cash! We use automatic bank draft for a lot of our bills so that they are deducted from our checking account.
Let this soak in a few days, go check out Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and then we'll chat more. Off to work!
Good luck! So excited to see someone doing Dave Ramsey. We love being able to tell people that we pay cash for everything and that we are debt free! Such an awesome feeling!
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