I was hoping that my car would make it till after we were done with baby step 3, but it has bit the dust. It had 217,000 miles and the transmission and clutch are not needing mechanical work. Rough trade in for my car is $250 - $600 dollars according to Kelly blue book. We have decided not to put any more money into the car and to junk it. The bad thing is we just put new tires on it over the last couple months. Luckily we have a spare vehicle, which is an old 1992 dodge Dakota. It runs and was our vehicle to pick up materials for our home improvement projects. I will be driving it until a new gas getter is found to drive to work.
So we have decided to put our debt snowball on hold and go into emergency mode. We are going to stop saving for everything, except Christmas. We are not going to pay extra on debt or do any home improvement. We will pile up some cash so we can pay cash for a car.
We have our $1000 dollar emergency fund, some vacation money saved up that we could use on a car. We have decided not to touch our savings that is allocated for property taxes and house insurance, since they are bills that need paid when they come. But the vacation fund is not a need.
This month with our savings and money we freed up in our budget we came up with around $3500 to pay for a car. We have been looking for 4 door, that gets around 30MPG and has less than 150,000 miles. But car with those qualities are not that cheap. So we have decided to wait till December, by then we may have enough to buy a $5000 - $6000 car. December is a 6 paycheck month for us instead of the usual 4. So we will have extra money in our budget in December that will help with a car purchase. As soon as we buy a car we will go back and built our emergency fund back up, and then start the debt snowball again.
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My families journey down the road of becoming debt free and finanicially sound.
Baby Step 3 Status
$10,000 emergency fund goal
Paused Baby Step 3 at $2500.00
Paused Baby Step 3 at $2500.00
Baby Step 2 Status
Started Total our Total Money Makeover on January 1st, 2010 with $49,705.46 in debt, not including our mortgage.
April 13th, 2012 we paid off the last of these debts. It took us 28 months and 13 days.
April 13th, 2012 we paid off the last of these debts. It took us 28 months and 13 days.
The Road to financial peace.
This is a record of our journey in finding financial peace. We are using the baby steps in Dave Ramsey's - Total money makeover, book. We will be trying to follow his plan as close as we can. We hope to have an end result where we have no debt, have a large emergency fund, are saving for buy everything, are saving for our kids college, and are building wealth for retirement.
When we started this plan on January 1, 2010. I was 32 years old and my wife was 31. We had been married for 4 years. We knew this plan would take a few years before we were on the last step in the baby step process. But we are dedicated not to give up.
This blog is to help us keep on track, and keep us focused on our goal.
When we started this plan on January 1, 2010. I was 32 years old and my wife was 31. We had been married for 4 years. We knew this plan would take a few years before we were on the last step in the baby step process. But we are dedicated not to give up.
This blog is to help us keep on track, and keep us focused on our goal.
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