Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Are You Waiting on Your Finances to Change?

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New years’ is just around the corner.  And along with it, a flood of new years’ resolutions about finances.  People around the world will make resolutions to make more money, save more money, and just improve their finances in general.  Something like 45% will fail within 6 weeks.  Within 6 months, a majority will have failed.  They’ll have failed because they’ve given up.  They’ll have given up because they didn’t take action (or enough action) to make the change that they were seeking.

In short, they are waiting on their finances to change.  Somethings are worth waiting for.  Red lights, for instance will change if you only wait long enough.  The weather, if you wait long enough is likely to change as well.  But, your finances aren’t going to change if you only wait on them to.  If you want them to change, you’ve got to make a directed effort to change them.

new years fireworks

If you’re planning on making a resolution this year, and it doesn’t have to be directly related to finances, make one additional resolution.  The resolution to make an effort to fulfill your resolutions!  Make changes, learn about the steps you need to take to get things moving in the direction you want them to go.  Stop sitting around and waiting on your finances to change for you.  You change them!

Sites like this one are chock full of information on improving your finances.  For most sites, you can easily subscribe to email updates.  Here, you can simply enter your email address in the box under “Subscribe” in the top of the sidebar and click on the “Subscribe” button.

Here’s a few posts to get you started.  (hint: you don’t have to wait until new years to start making changes to change your finances)

Got debt?  Get the debt repayment moving with a Debt Avalanche!

Once you get the debt repayment moving, you’ve got to stay gazelle intense!

Debt gone?  First, congratulations!  Now, get your money working for you.  Perhaps investing in something like a Lending Club account?

Whatever you decide to change this year, make your resolution a true resolution and keep going with it.  If you’re still going strong on it at 6 months, you’ve already done better than the majority of your resolution-making peers!

Will you be making resolutions this year?  Have you in the past?  And did you stick with them?

A Review of Dave Ramsey’s Revised Financial Peace University & New Speakers

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Dave Ramsey has changed thousands, if not millions, of lives with his Financial Peace University.  Now, he is looking to improve on that formula with the newly revised Financial Peace University.  While this latest version of Financial Peace University has all of the benefits of the old version, some of the material has been changed, and there are new speakers added to the mix.


The revised Financial Peace University kit includes a workbook; Ramsey’s book, The Complete Guide to Money; a welcome guide that includes a pencil, sharpener, and eraser;  an envelope system; a laminated Financial Peace University Progress Chart; a folder for Financial Peace forms; and most importantly, 10 audio CDs containing Ramsey’s lessons.

The 10 audio CDs cover the following topics:

CD #1:  Super Saving:  Common Sense for Your Dollars and Cents

CD #2:  Relating with Money:  Nerds and Free Spirits Unite!

CD #3:  Cash Flow Planning:  the Nuts and Bolts of Budgeting

CD #4:  Dumping Debt:  Breaking the Chains of Debt

CD #5:  Buyer Beware:  The Power of Marketing on Your Buying Decisions

CD #6:  The Role of Insurance:  Protecting Your Health, Family and Finances

CD #7:  Retirement and College Planning:  Mastering the Alphabet Soup of Investing

CD #8:  Real Estate and Mortgages:  Keeping the American Dream from Becoming a Nightmare

CD #9:  The Great Misunderstanding:  Unleashing the Power of Generous Giving

CD #10:  Dave’s Story:  Learn How Dave Found the Peace He Was Missing

 

There are three major changes I noticed in the newly revised Financial Peace University.

1.  The course has been shortened from 13 weeks to 9 weeks.  Some may say that this time frame is too short, but I think it is great.  Ramsey is such a motivational speaker, that after hearing him speak for one class people are fired up and ready to get their finances in order.  Shortening the course to 9 weeks allows them to make quicker progress and begin working on their financial situation sooner.

2.  Content that wasn’t relevant to everyone has been moved to the website.  Some content, while useful to those in a particular situation, isn’t applicable to the majority of people.  For instance, Ramsey skillfully explained exactly how to deal with harassing bill collectors in the original Financial Peace University, and that information is essential to those in that situation.  However, since the majority of FPU participants are not in that desperate situation, that content has been moved to the website.

3.  Ramsey has brought in three new speakers–Rachael Cruze (Ramsey’s daughter), Jon Acuff and Chris Hogan.  Fans of Ramsey will probably have mixed feelings about these new additions.

Rachael Cruze has the hardest job.  Ramsey is a dynamic motivational speaker who makes his job seem effortless.  People will naturally expect the same of his child.  In reality, Cruze is young and new at this business.  She is definitely not as polished as her famous father, though truthfully very few people are.  However, she offers the voice of a person who has been raised following Dave Ramsey’s principles and hearing her success is encouraging.

Jon Acuff shares Ramsey’s sense of humor, but his jokes don’t go over quite as well.  However, his tips on negotiation are good, and readers can definitely learn from him.  A few more years of working with Ramsey, and he will have the natural, relaxed attitude as Ramsey does.

Chris Hogan is the most charismatic new addition.  While he is not Dave Ramsey, he is a natural public speaker.  He gives important information about buying a home, but his lessons are peppered with humor that naturally engage the listener.

My husband and I both listened to the CDs, and I didn’t mind the addition of the new speakers and know that Ramsey is probably adding them to prepare to eventually hand over his dynasty.  However, my husband did not like the new additions and felt that most of the speakers were simply reiterating what Ramsey always says.

Overall, Dave Ramsey’s newly revised Financial Peace University is an improvement on the first version and can inspire participants to pay off debt and improve their financial situation once and for all.

 

Need Money Quick? Have a Flash Savings Challenge

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The last few months have not been kind to my family.  As Dave Ramsey says, “Murphy came to visit.”  Within the last few months, I have had several medical tests run, my computer broke so I had to buy a new one, my husband’s pay was docked $750 for two months in a row because his employer didn’t take out enough taxes, and my husband had to pay $1,700 out of pocket for a conference for work and we are waiting for reimbursement.

IOU Piggy BankBecause we were trying to pay off as much as possible as quickly as possible on our debt, we had very little in emergency savings (only about $1,000).  All of our unexpected expenses cost much more than that, so we not only used most of our emergency fund, we also added to our credit card debt.

Because we had paid down our credit card debt for 10 straight months, having to add to it for the last two months was difficult.  Even though we didn’t come close to erasing all of our progress from the last year of gazelle intensity, we definitely knew we were moving in the wrong direction.

Righting Our Situation:  A Flash Savings Challenge

My natural urge, now that everything has settled down, was to once again try to throw as much on debt as possible.  While it might have made me feel better in the short term, I realize that the next time Murphy comes to visit (and I know he’ll be back some time), we would end up in the same situation.

Instead, my husband and I decided to focus on growing our emergency fund, and quickly, before hitting the debt hard again.

Paying the minimum on our debt for the next few months so we can grow our emergency fund is almost as difficult as watching our credit card balance increase the last two months, but we both know a healthy emergency fund is necessary.  Since I am self-employed and bring in 1/3 to 1/2 of our income and work can sometimes be sporadic, we decided not to follow Dave Ramsey’s advice of a $1,000 emergency fund (because clearly that was not enough last time); instead we are aiming for $5,000.

To get started, we challenged ourselves to have $3,000 in our emergency fund by December 9th.  We started with $611 in the emergency fund, so that meant we had to come up with $2,389 in 4 weeks.

How We Are Earning $2,389 Extra in 4 Weeks

We are only one week into the challenge, but here is what we have earned so far:

  • Sold my 8 year old breast pump: $60 (Yes, it has been sitting in the basement for 7 years.  Why didn’t I sell sooner?!)
  • Sold 2 window guards to protect kids from falling:  $40
  • Listed my kids outgrown clothes on eBay:  $124 so far, but the auctions won’t end for 2 more days, so I imagine it will be more
  • 3 unexpected jobs I got as a freelancer:  $64.67
  • Turned in our change in a jar:  $62.67
  • Returned unopened vitamins I didn’t need:  $32
  • Redeemed 10,000 Swagbucks for PayPal cash:  $100

Our total so far, one week in is $483.34

Over the next few weeks, we intend to do more things to raise the additional money:

  • Put my husband’s reimbursement check in savings
  • Cash out reward points from our credit card and use them as a credit card payment.  Put the same amount in our savings since we won’t have to pay that money on the credit card
  • Put more stuff on Craigslist and eBay (We have kids’ clothes, toys, and equipment to list as well as some of my husband’s tools he hasn’t used for years.)

Why  a Flash Savings Challenge Is Working for Us

I have known that I have a lot of stuff to sell around the house, but I just never got to it.  Now, because we have set a short goal of just 4 weeks and also an ambitious goal of over $2,300 to raise, I am motivated.  Yes, listing all of this stuff is time consuming, but it is nice to get some money in the emergency fund to make us feel more secure, and I also like getting rid of our “stuff”.

If you have extra stuff around the house, especially toys and holiday clothes, now is the perfect time to sell it and make some cash.

Have you had a flash savings challenge like this?  What were your results?

img credit:Images_of_Money, on Flickr