baby steps.

I've been listening to Dave Ramsey talk about his Baby Steps program on the radio this year.  I catch his show here an there and always listen for a bit.  Normally, when I hear him give advice to others, I think "Wow, glad that's not me!"  But now that I've been a home owner for a couple years and I've been slowly doing renovations and updates to my home, I'm looking at my financial situation differently.  I'm fine financially.  But, could I be doing better???  Could I have more financial freedom?  Could I have the financial freedom I want sooner?

I know that the answer is a big, fat "YES!!!"  

I know that I'm good on Baby Steps 1 and 3; and I have a good-for-now situation on Baby Step 4.  What I see is that as financing builds up on my home renovations, I need to focus on Baby Step 2.  Fortunately, the financing is all for necessities and I currently have no other debt besides my home mortgage.  I've been able to borrow from myself and slowly pay myself back.  I have have one line of financing that's interest free for the next year and a half, with very reasonable minimum payments, and I have made at least the minimum payment each month.  My other line of financing is super low interest with a ridiculously small minimum payments.  Neither financing has any prepayment penalties.  However, the total balance of all of this is more than I'd like to be hanging over my head.  All manageable, yes; but what I don't need to do is continue to burden myself with these payments for years to come. Why should I force myself to keep track of this for years?  I can do better!  

I'm starting the "beans and rice (sometimes PB&J) with snowball method" in order to make larger than the minimum payments to myself and to the two lines of financing in order to pay these off quickly.  My goal is in 6 months; 8 to 10 months may be more realistic.  

Dave has some strict ways of looking at this method.  Me... not so much.  I'm going to tweak it to fit my needs while still reaching my goal. So, what does this look like for me? 

No frivolous purchases. 

Minimal dining out... I'm not giving up my book club outing each month or my brunch group that meets every few months. 

No new clothing unless I need to replace something that's worn out. 

I still plan to participate in a few 5k races, something I enjoy immensely.

I may or may not cancel my Netflix subscription;  I've already reduced it to the basic plan.

Postponing planned road trips and taking low cost day trips instead.

Finding free or low cost activities for entertainment in lieu of more costly activities.

Packing my lunches for work and cooking meals for dinner at home.

Dave would say I'm doing it wrong.  Sorry, Dave!