Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University

Just before Christmas, DH approached me and told me that our church was holding Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University seminar series starting in January and he wanted to sign us up for it. It is every Sunday from 6:30-8:30pm for 13 weeks. I will be honest and say that I was less than eager to go. I mean, we had already had a budget going for a few years and it seemed that we were doing well enough that we didn't need it. We pay for almost everything with a credit card, but the balance gets paid off in full every month. We have a modest mortgage and DH's student loan. But otherwise, we have no other debt. We put money in savings every month, and no bills go unpaid. We buy what we need, and occasionally what we want. We are both naturally frugal, so I was a little confused as to why he wanted to do it. I tried to drag my feet, but very quickly had the realization that it would mean a lot to him if I put out the effort and go. In other words, it would be the romantical thing to do, in his mind anyway (because he's weird like that). And as he is the CFO of the family, if he felt the need to go, maybe I should believe him. So we signed up.

We are currently four weeks into the program, and it certainly has opened my eyes about our financial situation, which turned out to be not as good as we had thought. The things I said in the previous paragraph held true, but when we added up everything at the end of the month, more often than not, we'd be spending more than was coming in just from DH's paychecks. And we couldn't figure out why we weren't feeling the pinch, especially when we don't do extravagant spending. After a lot of pondering, DH fell upon the answer... extra income from mineral rights.

For our wedding gift, DH's parents bought us a small share of mineral rights up in the northwestern part of my state that had previously been owned by DH's grandfather, who had passed away the year before. And with the huge oil boom going on, we occasionally get checks for the oil that is pumped on our section. Now, the checks don't come consistently for various reasons, and the amount varies from about $30 all the way up to a few hundred... so pretty modest amounts. Either way, that money had been seeing that we never felt financial pinches, because they always seem to come at the right time. And I'm not complaining about it because money is money and we're always glad to have some. It just left us confused for a long time because it's hard to include it in your budget when you never know when you'll next get a check with an unknown amount. So we didn't include it, and just stuck the money in savings only to forget about it. But we now have a plan for this money, which I'll include in another post.

From now until the end of the course, I'll do weekly posts about how it's going and what I honestly think about whatever homework assignment we're working on (aka I will complain like a student does when they don't want to do their homework). I know it doesn't sound exciting, but maybe it'll give someone the push to sign up for the course in the future. Someone who really wants to go, but won't sign up because their spouse doesn't want to go. Or maybe the spouse who doesn't want to go will see how beneficial it can be, even if that benefit is only to do it for their spouse.

And no, I'm not a convert. If DH hadn't wanted to go so badly, I would never have given it a second thought, and even now that we're a few weeks in, I'm still not super excited to go. But I haven't decided if it's because it's not up my alley of interest, or if it's because I am generally resistant to change... and this program is all about change. I'm leaning towards change.