{"id":166,"date":"2011-09-12T05:59:54","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T10:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/?p=166"},"modified":"2011-09-12T05:59:54","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T10:59:54","slug":"the-baby-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"The Baby Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, you want to be completely debt free? The steps are simple. The execution is difficult because it involves telling yourself “no” a whole lot. You can do it, I promise.<\/a><\/p>\n

I am a huge Dave Ramsey<\/a> guy. I followed his program and it’s done wonders for me and my family. Here’s something a lot of people don’t know or understand about his program:<\/p>\n

You don’t have to buy anything.<\/p>\n

Seriously.<\/p>\n

The first two years I was doing “the plan” Dave got exactly $0 from me. All I did was listen to the radio show, which you can do over the internet<\/a> for free if there isn’t a local affiliate. I didn’t go through Financial Peace University<\/a> until I had already completed Baby Step 2.<\/p>\n

Wait, what?<\/p>\n

There are seven (really, there are nine) Baby Steps<\/a> that walk you through to retirement. Step 0 is to be current on everything.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Save $1000 as a starter emergency fund.<\/li>\n
  2. Pay off your debts, smallest to largest. Pay minimum payments on everything except the smallest, and absolutely freaking kill the small one<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  3. a) Put 3-6 months of expenses away into a Money Market. This is your fully funded emergency fund.
    \nb) Save for a 20% down payment on a house, plus all closing costs and moving expenses, including all that furniture you want to buy.<\/li>\n
  4. Invest 15% of your gross pay into retirement accounts.<\/li>\n
  5. Save for your children’s education.<\/li>\n
  6. Pay off the house.<\/li>\n
  7. Put your former house payment into mutual funds.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Steps 0 through 3b are done in order, to the exclusion of all other steps. Yes, this means stopping the 401K while paying off Visa.<\/p>\n

    Steps 4, 5, and 6 are done concurrently. Step 7 is obviously started when the house is paid off.<\/p>\n

    That’s it. That’s the entire plan. No “buy this software!” or “attend this seminar!” required. I will tell you that there is value in going to FPU, and it’s well worth the money, but if you’d rather take the $199 (or $99 when you catch it on sale) and put that on your Capital One card, by all means do that. That’s pretty much what I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So, you want to be completely debt free? The steps are simple. The execution is difficult because it involves telling yourself “no” a whole lot. You can do it, I promise. I am a huge Dave Ramsey guy. I followed his program and it’s done wonders for me and my family. Here’s something a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debt-free-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}