I’ve had a lot of people come to me interested in doing this Financial Peace University business and I commend you! 🙂 It will be a life altering experience!

Some things I must share as you get started:

Take the class. Take the class. Take the class. Are you listening? I highly suggest you take the class! Find one in your area and sign up asap! 

Here’s the link to search for classes near you!

–I’m highly suggesting this from experience. Do NOT make our mistakes! When we first heard about FPU we had a couple of friends that had gone through the class and had the envelope system implemented in their family. I had my friend tell me bits and pieces about the program and tried to implement my own system of it. Here’s where we made our first big mistake. We paid off our credit card with one of my savings accounts. Sounds like a great idea, but WE FELL BACK INTO THE SAME ROUTINE. We still had no idea how to handle our money. We were making the same mistakes and we didn’t have the discipline or the drive or the DIRECTION. I know Dave Ramsey is not the first person that has done all this. It’s out there!! BUT he lays it out for you, he motivates you, and he shows you a plan. The 7 Baby Steps outline your path! So after we paid off our credit card, we racked it right back up to where it was and my hard earned savings account was drained and for nothing!

When that same couple (our friends) decided to teach the class at our church we were really interested… but we ‘didn’t have that kind of money for that’. Somebody should have slapped me right then. That $100 is the best $100 I’ve spent… ever! So we asked our neighbor if we could borrow their book because we knew they went through the class too. First class came around… we went home and not only ordered the book, we ordered the whole teaching kit! We knew we wanted to share it with our family and friends. The kit was just over $200. Conflicting schedules prohibited us from taking all of the classes (I think I may have taken the 1st and 3rd one) and we decided we would just watch the DVDs on our own time. Well, life happens and we actually never got around to watching them. That same person should have slapped me again. We still tried to stick to some sort of budget but yet again… we kept failing. ‘If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.’ I was no exception to this!! September came around and I decided we HAD TO GET SERIOUS. No more playing around. We needed to do it all the right way. We had played around since March! 7 months wasted because we wanted to do it our own way. Sometimes you have to go backward to go forward. So here we went… going forward. We watched the whole 13 week series in probably about 2 weeks. One video a day. And October 1st is when we started FPU hard core. 5 months later and we have paid off $10K.

-Have your zero based budget. This part is explained if you take the class, along with every other thing you may have questions about. So just take the class. We are going through the class again starting Wednesday at our church. (childcare provided) We want the class interaction and the added motivation. Even though, I must say, we are in this for the long haul and there’s no turning back now.

If you ABSOLUTELY cannot take the class in person, he has an online class!! If that will not work, try to find the audio CD’s on amazon, or the whole kit if you want…something. Even if it’s NOT Dave Ramsey, find something that will give you all this information. I just push Dave Ramsey because he speaks so well and I know that it works. Find something that works for you!

I don’t mean to sound pushy, but I want you to be successful! Sometimes we just have to make our own mistakes, but if I throw mine out there maybe someone will be smarter than we were. 🙂