"A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes"--Guest Post by Amy

Hi everyone! I’m Robyn’s daughter Amy. I’m a mother of 4 and have been married for 10 years. I’m really excited to share our financial journey on my mom’s blog. I hope that as you read this you’ll feel inspired as you have been when reading my mom’s posts.

Let me start by asking you this: “Where do you see yourself (and your family) next year? In 5 years? In 10 years? Are you making steps in your financial decisions to see yourself gaining financial freedom?”

My parents taught me from a young age the importance of being careful in how I spent my money. I was taught to avoid debt whenever possible. They taught us that there were certain times you may need to go into debt such as for school, mortgage, and maybe a sensible car. My parents taught me that money did not grow on trees. I would like to share a story to illustrate this point.

When my sister Mindy and I were young, we so badly wanted a swing set. My parents told us that we would need to save our money for it. For almost 2 years we saved our money - yes you heard that right - and it felt like ETERNITY! Believe me - as a girl of only 6 or 7 years old (and my sister was 4 or 5) that was HARD! We saved almost any penny that came our way - birthday money, Christmas money, money from doing “chores” for our parents…We even asked neighbors if we could do some yard work or wash their windows. Anything to get our desired swing set. And we did it! We had a goal in mind, and we wanted it badly enough that we kept our focus and got that swing set. We had a jar full of the coins and cash we had saved totaling $123. Our Grandma Davis said we worked hard earning the money and should count out our change at the store to pay for it rather than having our parents write a check. Looking back, I now feel horrible for the checker, but it truly was neat for us to see our hard earned money paying for our desired swing set. It was a great learning experience for us that if you want something you need to save and work for it.

Fast forward twenty plus years. My husband and I decided a few years ago to take out a book that we had received as a wedding present, Dave Ramsey’s “The Total Money Makeover”. We realized that we wanted to have more control over our financial future. We decided to ask ourselves, “Where do we see ourselves next year? In 5 years? In 10 years? Are we making steps in our financial decisions to see ourselves gaining financial freedom?” At the time, we were not taking steps to really improve our financial situation—just plugging along on minimum payments.  We realized that things would not get better unless we took action. So we made a plan and decided on our financial goals…which are:

1. become debt free by August 2019. We are using the snowball method suggested by Dave Ramsey (though in a future post I’ll tell you how we made a slight alteration to the snowball method that shaved a few months off of our expected date of being debt free). Original payoff date for all debt making only minimum payments would have been 2022.
2. Have a Fully Funded Emergency Fund by March 2020. We wanted to be covered in the event of job loss or other financial stressor. Dave Ramsey suggests saving 3-6 months worth of expenses (more if only one spouse is working). We wanted to start with 3 months of expenses.
3. Have money set aside for home and car maintenance and for Christmas.
4. Fund our 401K with at least 15% of our income so that when we do reach retirement we will be able to live comfortably and hopefully be able to help others (like our children and their families).
5. Save up to be able to help pay for our children’s schooling.
6. Enjoy more time together traveling by going somewhere with our family every year. We will put money aside each month to do that and pay for it with cash.

We have decided that if we can get our debt paid off before the end of fall, we are going to save up money and go to Disneyland next year. Even though our kids have been asking to go - and they know we really want to go as well - they understand that we have made a commitment to pay off our loans early so we can be in a better state financially for our family. It will also be fun because we are going to do some surprises for our kids as well as have them help us reach our Disneyland Fund Goal. (More on that in a future post.) We knew that if we gave ourselves something fun to look forward to it would help us as we trudge along the process of putting every extra cent toward paying off our debt early.

I’m really excited to share with you more about how my husband and I have tackled our debt in future posts and what you can do to put more money towards paying off your own debt so that you can live your best life! My next blog post will be in 2 weeks and I’ll be sharing my tips for paying off debt early as well as 8 ways I’ve learned to save money.

In the mean time, please work on your financial journey by considering your own goals. Where do you see yourself and your family next year? In 5 years? In 10 years? Are you making steps in your financial decisions to see yourself gaining financial freedom? It's never too late to begin, so let's start today! Your dream, whether for a swing set or financial freedom, can come true!