Do you know him??

Me and ol' Dave have been ignoring each other for years.... Michael, the responsible one, the ruler of our finances [ ;) ] has followed the Dave Ramsey plan without my full cooperation for a while now. He's told me over and over and over that the plan only TRULY works if both are in it together. Yeah yeah yeah....blah blah blah ;)

Ok...so he might really have something here!

I've toiled with writing this blog for a week or so now. I often am an open book and hope almost everything I share can be used to help others. Not sure if that's true here or if I just need to express it to get it off my chest and also open a dialog for prayer for us. ...I'm at a loss of what to do or how much to say....but here it goes!

I'll take you back to October 2008.....what is now known as the downfall of the our economy as we knew it. Companies closed their doors, docked salaries, eliminated insurance benefits....so on...so forth. Michael made it through with his job in tact while his company was cut by more than 1/2 and they lost health insurance. I'm just going to add....private insurance is expensive y'all!!! Anyway....in the 3 years since, there hasn't been raises. Cost of living has increased...salaries haven't.

All was ok....the Lord was protecting us and providing for us. We were gracious and thankful to have a job, a roof over our head and that we had the ability to go out and get insurance on our own. We were able to live well, have fun, etc. The Lord is GOOD!

This past week we've made some changes / decisions. Michael had a review on Monday, it was good and with it came promise. There will be changes made by all of us in the ol' Doggett family so that we may grow with these promises.

Our dream has always been to build our "dream" home. This is the home that we will be in the day our kids graduate high school...this will be the home I hope to have grand kids come visit me in. This home....has always been and is a very big deal to us. We've always known this was HUGE.

There's always contingencies......always. Our contingency....no credit card debt. Our debt of course grew leaps and bounds the day the kids were born...goodness gracious. We thought we were prepared....HA!

So ok...we've been working on it for years but now Michael has laid some things out for me. Between my "work from home" stuff and my teaching position next year...I will actually be "more" than a stay at home Mom and for the first time in 5 years be "contributing" to our income. NICE! It looks like within the next 2 years, sooner if I get another opportunity lined up, we will be out of debt, finding land, finding a builder and putting our house on the market.

So that goes back up to the beginning of my post...cue Dave Ramsey....

We've taken our "eating out" luxury that went anywhere from 2 to 4 times a week and with the "any time we wanted" mentality to 4 times a month....that's it...4 times. Michael has driven the Corolla for years and God love him...it falls apart more and more each day. He will continue to do that for a bit longer. I'm going to crack down on my grocery bill each week and really try and keep it low or as low as I can and finally....we're going to crack down on "goofy" spending....we're crackin' down y'all!!!

Feels like AA...his new slogan needs to be, "Dave Ramsey....it works if you work it".... ;)

I'm very excited...very excited! Such wonderful, big, huge things in our future. We continue to recognize God's wonderful grace and His protection. We continue to recognize His love and unending blessings for our family. God is good y'all!!