Where do we start?

Let’s talk about some things we can do to be successful in our world of personal finances. It seems that there are several types of people out there who are “Broke”.  I have a few friends who know that they do not do a good job of managing their money but they believe that efforts toward recovery are futile.  I bring this up to tell you that if you are one of these people, you may just skip my articles because they are not for you.  Learning or relearning to manage your personal finances does require Work.  That’s right, WORK. This is not just an overnight thing.  You have to change your mentality toward your spending and it starts with planning.

So, after all of my readings, studying and planning, Dave Ramsey says it best, you have to do anything you can to get 1K in an baby emergency fund as quickly as possible. Why only a thousand dollars? There are couple reasons.  First and foremost, if you are carrying credit card debt, you have to plan for an emergency. If you are trying to get out of debt and you do not have a plan for emergencies, an emergency will happen and if you don’t have a plan to address it, your credit card comes to the rescue and you have made little to no progress.  So, before you start to tackle your debt, put aside a little bit for an emergency. Secondly, you will feel better once you establish this baby emergency fund. It provides a security blanket for your finances. You can now safely start to pay down your and know that you have money in case something happens. Believe me, LIFE does Happen and when you least expect it. If you are in a relationship, you will find that this will help your spouse feel better about your finances too.  Ladies, you know what I am talking about here…  Tell your Husband how it makes you feel to know there is a plan.

Next, you have to have a plan to make your money work for you, yes that’s right, you have to create a budget.  This will be addressed in my next post, but you have to learn to make your money go where you tell it to go and not let your money tell you where to spend it. Don’t worry, I know this is a dreaded area of discussion for a lot of people and I know that many of us have tried unsuccessfully to manage our finances on a budget and we failed. I failed many times.  I am going to make this as easy and painless as possible but I will say that if you do not commit to living on a budget, yes you can skip it because you will fail again. Before we address the Budget we have to talk a little bit about communication. You must learn to, no let me correct myself, you must talk to your partner about your money. I have talked to so many people who do not talk to their spouses about money, you make decisions about your finances that tend to cause problems in your relationship. I have been there, I am sure there are plenty of you who have also been there. You have to talk to your spouse or accountability partner about your finances. Come up with an agreement that you together will work through each of the processes to become debt free and agree to work together. You may ask about an accountability partner, if you are not in a relationship with someone you can talk to about your money, I don’t want to tell you to go it alone.  I want you to have someone you can trust to call you out when you are making poor decisions with your money. We can talk more about this in a separate post as well.

To summarize, make an agreement with your spouse, your accountability partner to stop spending on credit cards, not let your money continue to control how you live and spend. I suggest you write this agreement on paper and sign it, then post it where others can see it. Then, as quickly as possible, get at least a thousand dollars into a baby emergency fund. You can put this anywhere you like, a savings account is my recommendation but the key is to not make it overly easy to get to or you chance spending it when you want that new toy.

Our Experience

Wow, so it took me a bit longer than I thought to find time to post. I plan to get better in the future. Unfortunately, time is precious. Between College classes, Military and Family, this blog has not yet become my priority.  In order to better serve those who may read this in the future,  I will keep this at the top of our priority list. 

I have spent several years studying personal finance, reading many books on getting out of debt and learning to control finances. The one thing I think is most important to mention here, is that I found there is no, I will say again, no such thing as getting rich quickly.  Regardless of how you may get rich, you must devote time, energy, and more time in order to accomplish your goal.

As I said, I have spent countless hours studying personal finances, and how to manage money.  I would not say that I am by any means an expert. I will tell you that I am a financial coach by choice. I have been sharing my life experiences and financial hardships with others.

It all started when my wife and I started noticing an increased collection of credit cards and each was carrying some balance.  I wanted to keep up with "The Jones". I was striving to get the nicer car, the Harley-Davidson, the bigger house.  Why? That's what others were doing. I found myself wondering what others did to earn such a nice house, such a nice car etc... So I fell into the marketing trap of the Banking system. 

We were doing okay for a while, we had nice toys, a nice house, and credit card payments that were constantly a burden on our lives.  We always wanted to get more, but seemed to always be behind.

Then it hit us all of a sudden, without going into a bunch of personal detail, we went from having our own two daughters to gaining custody of three more girls (our nieces). All of a sudden our financial world came crashing in around us. We had to figure out real quick how to get our financial house in order so that we could continue to provide for our family.

In all of my reading and studying, I found a few constants regardless of who the author was.  Pay yourself first, Balance your checkbook, understand where your money is going which of course meant the dreaded B word. BUDGET. I was lucky enough to attend the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University at a local church.  Dave put it all into perspective and in a few short weeks, took everything I had spent the last few years learning and simplified every bit of it.  All of a sudden, I knew what I was doing, I knew what I had to do, and we made a plan to do it.

My wife and I are still working on eliminating the debt we had spent years accumulating together, but we are almost there. 

As an instructor for the Army, I found it very easy to share some simple principles that I had learned, in conjunction with my life lessons and the information I was sharing, wait for it, was working not just for me but for others. Those Jr. Soldier's and my peers were implementing things in their lives that I was teaching. What was most amazing to me was how many people I found who were struggling just like me. If you are not familiar with the military, we have many more than I would have thought. What with all the pay and benefits we receive, who could ever imagine.  *** That was Extremely Sarcastic***

For the next couple of years I continued to share my experience and teach what I had been taught. Now living in Germany, I saw an even greater need to share these teachings with Soldiers here.  The cost of living is much greater, the opportunity to travel and experience Europe is at our fingertips. Deployments have been a way of life for almost every Soldier in the Army and the military in general.  Deployments mean more money in our pockets. You have all seen it I am sure. Soldier's earn a years worth of tax free pay, they receive additional pay for duty inside of a hardship zone, they come home with a pocket full of money and buy that new truck, new car, or motorcycle they have always wanted. Spend more than they have and take on quite a loan immediately after coming home.

Our unit is preparing for a deployment and I was on board early enough to talk to the command, they decided it was in the best interest of the Soldier's to allow me to attend the Dave Ramsey Financial Counselor Course.

Wow, I learned so much there... I learned how to refine all of the tools that were available to me from my research, my life experience, my desire to share with others.  They have provided me with more tools, and even better, a process to use in order to make my coaching sessions more effective.

So, that is the shorter version of where we were, where we are and something about where we are going. 

My goal is to share with you, hopefully in a little shorter form, topics which I come across in life, coaching, or other settings which I feel are beneficial to anyone hoping to succeed in money.

Again, if you want to see something specific included in my later posts, let me know. I will do my best to include any and all topics presented and address any issues which may come up as well. If you present personal finance issues with which you have concerns, your personal information will be withheld for anonymity. 

Lastly, my next post will be a few weeks, as we have to do the Military thing for a bit.

See you all soon,

Dan

Not sure how to start.

So my wife and I decided that we wanted to start a blog.  This would be our first and just want to see how this goes.

I plan to blog about money and life, while she plans to blog about life as a military spouse. 

My name is Dan, I am an active duty service member and have been for a minute or two.  We are currently stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is beautifully distracting here.

Why did I want to start a blog?  I believe in sharing information and that knowledge is power. If even one person can learn something from me then I guess I will be glad I have shared it.

What information can I share?  Well, I can share a lot of things, but my focus is on military life but mostly on money matters from my perspective.  I have run the gambit on finances and have spent a few years researching on my own (I like to self educate) how to deal with debt.  I know as well as many, there are a ton of people talking about how to repair your credit, how to get rich, how to get out of debt and a ton of others.  What many people don't do is talk real about how to repair your financial life and change your future and your legacy.  That is why I am here.

How do I know about these things?  Well, I will say first it is not by profession so you can stop reading here if you are looking for professional advice for free.  I am a professional person however, and I am a graduate of Dave Ramsey's Financial Coaching course. I have also spent several years researching ways to end my drama with personal debt and sought better ways to manage our families finances.

So, next post will be about where I come from financially and where we are headed to share some of my own personal experience.  Please feel free to leave me any comments, questions etc on and financial or military topics you would like to hear/talk about.

Thanks and look forward to sharing with you.

Dan W.