catholicsphere

I’ve been reading Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover”. I’m up to the point where he talks about “Baby Step Two: The Debt Snowball”. All in all, its been a thought-provoking read. I’ve seen a few websites that take exception to what Dave has to say, but I find his words squarely aimed at the 75-80% of the population that sorely need it. His simple plans make it easy to follow. Sure, there are exceptions to some cases … but those are really for the 20-25% who think about money and read about money and work with their money most of the time. I’ll let them be … I have more important things to do than think about money — and that’s why I like Dave’s no-nonsense approach that does go into all the tangents and if-this-then-that scenarios.

Ultimately this coincides with something I mentioned awhile back about this blog aiming to address “the issues of life and work and family and technology and faith, from a faith-filled perspective.”

There’s a lot of reasons people give for not attending church on Sunday, but the one that I hear that really gets me is “I don’t have time”. My guess is that these people are too busy chasing down the money to pay the bills they’ve racked up; so they spend 50-60 (or more!) hours a week working, plus commuting and they say “the weekend’s my time to relax.”

As I took a look at my own budget I decided it was time to make some changes. I’m just starting, and still reading and learning … but the reason is not to get rich.

The reason is so I can stop worrying and start living. And, I want and need to teach my kids the same thing. I want to be able to live out my faith and have the time to do so. The only way I see that happening is by getting out of debt, and staying out of debt. And I think we owe it to people to tell them how to do this too. In fact, that might be recognized as “helping the poor”. I believe its possible to “get rich” by getting out of debt. I’ve done my own calculations of how much I could do if I didn’t have certain bills and the money adds up fast. And, in turn that will free up all kinds of time that I currently spend elsewhere — time that I can spend on what’s really important.

Folks will spend all this time and energy and money, to look good either physically or financially, but they’ll neglect their spiritual life. Yeah, “the body is a temple” so we need to take care of it; but most people don’t take care of what’s valuable on the inside. And we need to take time to teach our kids this important lesson too.

Find the time, eliminate the debt. Discover what’s important.

[tags]dave ramsey, total money makeover, christian, faith, catholic, catholicsphere, debt, finance, budget, family, parenting[/tags]