Baby Steps Towards the Future.....

My husband spent 21 years in the Air Force before we retired to Florida in 2007. Despite years of dreaming, planning, education, and goals, the economy was not on our side for our planned foray into the next big stage of our lives. In plainspeak, he couldn't find a good job. Oh, there were plenty of low paying opportunities for him to waste his MBA on, but nothing that gave him a chance, nothing that made him feel worthy. So, the job of breadwinner fell on me. Again. My plan was to return to school and finish that nurse practitioner program I started in 1997. So that was on the back burner. With a full time job, a part time job, a small military retirement, it was time to start life anew. A new home, downsizing a vehicle, new schools, we had a lot of balls in the air. We were also accumulating a lot of bills. Our credit cards were no where near maxed out, yet I could never keep them paid off. A mortgage, car payment, credit card payments, and daily expenses were causing quite a strain. I felt like I worked constantly just to tread water. I began listing heavily on eBay in my spare time (yes, you read that right. Sleepless nights). I also began using coupons to generate enough overage that a trip to the commissary made our purchases free. Then, my husband lost his part time job. I left my part time nursing job, but kept the full time position and my eBay stint. We were getting nowhere fast. Then Dave Ramsey entered our lives. We read Financial Peace University and Total Money Makeover and decided we were already so different from our peers, it was time to take a leap of faith and trust that we deserved our status as weirdos.

On July 1st, 2009, David and I held our first family meeting and started on our first zero dollar budget. More to come on that and how much we've accomplished in 5 months!