Starting again!

Last September Tim and I began on a new journey. We had decided to give the Dave Ramsey plan a try. We had gotten to a point where we were living paycheck to paycheck and constantly worried about the 'what if'. Tim has been listening to Dave's radio program for a few years, but it took a lot of convincing to get me on board. We tracked ALL our expenses for a couple months and I was totally shocked. A big part of my motivation to get on board, however, came from the desire to be a SAHM. I wanted to see if we could 'make it' if I didn't bring in a regular income.

What has happened since Semptember is a total surprise to me. It's been working. We've had a written budget every month, tracked all our expenses, followed the plan, and have been aggressively been paying off debt. Even better than all of that is the improvement in our marriage. Our communication has improved significantly and we're no longer worried about when the other shoe would drop. There are still a lot of unknowns in our lives, but we feel a lot better prepared to handle them now.

I've decided that a blog would help us along the way. I'm going to track our debt paid, savings (through coupons, rebates, etc), and get back in to accountability. I'm also a BIG list person. I love making lists and crossing things off. It makes me feel accomplished. I plan on this blog serving 2 purposes - our journey to financial peace and our on-line home notebook.

Inspired by my dear friend, Kara, I'm going to be creating a home notebook. The basis of the notebook is a cleaning plan. I've developed 6 zones for the house (it may expand as things go on). Each week I'll focus on a new zone. I'm not naive enough to think I'll accomplish every thing on my list or suddenly have a clean house, it's just my attempt to make things better than they are now. As I go through each zone, I'll be developing and modifying things. I'm not sure how I'll track it on this site, but I'll try to figure that out as I go. Like I said, it's a work in progress. This blog is mostly for my own good at this point, so I appologize if it is confusing. Bear with me as I figure it out.

I'm going to use this main page for tracking general goals, accomplishments, savings finds, etc. You can find my notebook at www.ourzones.blogspot.com (link is in the sidebar). I'm going to try to maintain both. This will still be my main page. Truth be told - I'm just too cheap to buy a host/server so I'm trying to manipulate the system. LOL!