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
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