Yesterday Nathan, Dani, and I went and listened to financial guru Dave Ramsey speak at the E-Center. Who knew that this guy was so popular? The E-Center was packed and the line of cars to get into the E-Center went on for a mile. (In spite of this, there were no food vendors at the venue, but that is another issue.)
I had never heard of Dave Ramsey, but I guess I was about the only person who hadn't. He started off by joking that he knew that some of the people there were forced to attend by other people. We all gave a shout out at that point, because none of us wanted to be there, but Marc had thought we should attend. Although we had our reservations about attending, we all learned or at least laughed; he was actually quite an interesting and educational speaker.
Dave gave us his 7 baby steps for financial stability and all of them seem practical and do-able if they are done in the correct order at the correct time. Everything he said was logical, but not always things we think about when dealing with finances. I loved that he connected finances to the scriptures and spirituality. For every baby step, he quoted a scripture that teaches this principle. Concerning spirituality, he stated that it is pointless to work of financial stability if one is not spiritually stable. He also touched on addiction (specifically pornography, gambling, alcohol) and how when an addiction is ruling one's life, one cannot get control of any part of life.
The big hurdle for Nate and me is to make a budget. Budgeting is something I like in theory but I cannot bring myself to implement. Dave suggested an envelope method where you label envelopes with expenses, like "food." Then you place all your food money for a month in the food envelope and when you run out of food money in the envelope, you are done for the month. It seems so much easier than keeping track of receipts or tracking the budget. If you go over the alloted funds, you know without any guesswork.
Even though it was 5 hours without any vending, it was worth it and I hope that we can make better usage of our finances. Thanks Marc!
4 comments:
That stinks that there was no food...maybe he didn't want you to be tempted to spend unnecessary money.
I'm glad you had a good time, let us in on any super good $ecrets-HA! See what I did there, with the dollar sign? This type of brilliance is just always with me, it's a part of me...
When I read that you went to see Dave Ramsey, I first thought perhaps you were talking about Chef Ramsay from that TV show Hell's Kitchen. But then I did some Google searching and found his name is Gordon, not Dave. Also, I read the rest of your post and realized Dave is not similar to Gordon at all. Chef Ramsay wouldn't come to Salt Lake City for a seminar anyway, so everything's all cleared up now.
Anna, this is so funny because we LOVE Hell's Kitchen! Also, before we left I joked, "Hey you think Dave is related to Chef?"
What were the 7-baby steps. Oh, never mind. I see you left a link. I'll go check it out.
Sorry you were starving. Someone lost an oportunity to be financially more sound by selling goodies to the croud.
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