Crap on a stick! I just realize at 38 I’m grown up. I’ve gone from being carefree and silly all the time to mostly serious, thoughtful and (dare I say it?) almost responsible. Ugh. My evil twin, SINthia, calls it straight-up boring. Carefree rip anyway… She gets everything she wants. Which is where my current, recurrent issues are coming from. Just once I would like to throw a fit and get my way. Dave Ramsey says there is a grocery store kid inside everyone of us.

If I could feed that child within I would say this: I want new furniture. Waaahhh. Not the kind on sale, the expensive kind, with faux leather that’s soft and downy and recliners on each end and a whole room to match. *SINthia on the floor–thrashing about shrieking* I don’t want another piece-a hand-me-down, craigslist crap. Early garage sale is NOT a decorating style. They call it vintage cause it’s old…not she-she. Shabby sheek is just another way of saying ‘my husband won’t give me the freakin’ credit card or the keys to the damn-it emergency fund“.

(As my boys watch in wide-eyed wonder I would continue banging my head against the floor screaming…)

There’s a TV. I wanna TV. I ate all my peas, now give me my TV. I’m tired of that ten-year-old albatross in our living room. I’m sick to death of stomping across the living room to tell the kids for the fourth time to clean their rooms, messing up the TV because of a loose internal connection, then jumping up and down in front of it until the ding dong dang damn it thing stops buzzing and hissing like a giant cockroach…If I had a high def skinny TV I could do my workout DVDs better. Waaaah.

Sniff. Okay. Sniff. I’m done.

Please tell me this sounds familiar. You know what’s even worse? I’ve brainwashed Ben into buying all this Dave Ramsey stuff is a good idea. He now thinks saving money is sexy. He just asked the other day if had enough money to write a check for a new (angels singing) TV and furniture?

Yes.

Where is it?

In the emergency fund.

Oh, so we can’t touch it?

Not unless it’s a true emergency. (Car explodes, natural disaster strikes, someone dies, etc..) Or if we both agree…(Eve dangling the apple…)

Get behind me, Satan, is what he was thinking. Sounds like we need to make an envelope for TV and furniture, is what he said.

*Gah*

I wanted to holler, “Run! Run! As fast as you can, before you get sucked into being a responsible grown-up. Turning 21 was fun, the rest is overrated. Please, run. I’ll martyr myself. Take SINthia with you. Don’t look back, damn it run.”

But alas, the fox had already eaten the gingerbread man and in this story Adam didn’t eat the apple. I was left with the faint smell of bedtime, a hand-me-down fairy tale and a grown up for a soul mate. Shite!

With the child within– without, I went over to our money envelopes and with a sigh, wrote TV/Furniture on one and said to anyone who would listen, “Some days it sucks being a grown up.”

What does your child within want need. A new truck? iPad? A new gun? Banjo? A vacation? What’s your poison? Here’s your chance to whine, you best take it. Thanks for listening.

Simply,

Sis

If you are like 75-80% of Americans or the Jones, you live paycheck to paycheck  and haven’t saved for a rainy day or invested for retirement. The top two reasons you haven’t is sitting in your driveway, in your stomach (or on your hips) in the form of eating out.

That was certainly our reality a few years ago. We had a brand new pickup sitting in the garage, but could hardly afford to put gas in it. Ben was constantly worried about providing for a family with one average paycheck.  My how times have changed in our wheat field.  Ben still works his same job, but when it comes to money our behavior is different. We just got done making a whirlwind trip to Oklahoma to pick up a pickup that we paid cash for. (The third vehicle we’ve done this with.) We used the principles we learned in Dave Ramsey’sFinancial Peace University class to track down, dicker for and finally drive away with a new truck. New to us anyway, everyone knows a car’s value drops like a rock. Right? I mean faster than granny can lose her falsies playing poker.

Cash for clunkers was a waste. As with ever other government program, in the end it hurt the tax-payer, hurt small businesses and gave more power to the government. According to CNN 17% of the participants who followed the socialist Pied Piper of Washington to the car lots in August had regrets of  trading in perfectly good vehicles and signing up for a payment, higher taxes and insurance. The big surprise was more gas money gets spent driving their nice new car. Tell me. How was that a good idea?

Before you use every excuse we used to use to drive a new car like… “Car payments are just a way of life. I need something reliable. I need something safe to haul kids around in.”..watch this video about how to drive free cars the rest of your life.

Get what your car is worth by selling it privately. Don’t trade it. Period. Dealers are experts at making you think you got a good deal. Remember they are in this to make money and they buy at wholesale and sell at retail. Learn their tricks and use them when you buy privately.

Research your next vehicle while your waiting for your car to sell. We used Consumer Reports, Edmonds, Kelly Blue book, and others to research reliability, market values, and safety ratings.

Buy gently used.Let the first owner take the huge hit on the depreciation for the new car smell. According to Dave Ramsey “it’s like throwing a hundred dollar bill out the window of your new car every week.” Doesn’t that thought make you want to hurl?

Find your car by searching Craigslist, newspapers, Ebay, repo auctions, bank parking lots, word of mouth etc. We have even talked to small dealers about finding what we want at auction and paying them $500-1000 over what they can buy them for. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box, that’s usually where you save money.

Have a mechanic look at it and drive it. Even if it costs you $30-50 dollars, it would be better than buying a lemon. While they’re looking ask questions and pick their brain. Do you work on these much? Is that engine a good one? Do these transmissions last? What vehicles do you work on the least?

Never pay asking price, dicker. I love doing this. I wrote about how to do it and not do it here. Ben usually lets me dicker because it’s not his forte. While we are doing the good-cop/bad-cop thing he has been know to say, “I know, Man, you ought to try to live with her.” It’s all in fun and part of our evil plan, but it works. So let the dicker er er in the family do it.

Getting a different car is time consuming and frustrating. It takes focus and perseverance, but in the end can save you big time. We figure we saved $3000 in the month it took us to sell one and buy another. Since I don’t work much outside the home, I figure that is my paycheck. For the time I put into it, I madesaved hundreds of dollars an hour. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. With savings like that, we can afford to do recommended maintenance and fix problems once in a while.

Simply,

Sis

(Thanks to BlogHer PicApp for sharing this photo.)

Growing up an American, in a family that lived at poverty level has had quite an affect on me. I’ve learned a lot from my parents about money. My Dad, was a cowboy and didn’t ever make much more than typical cowboy wages. A dollar a day, beans and hay. But, he always came home happy. My Mom, also a cowgirl, was a college educated stay at home mom. She (like me) chose to stay at home despite money struggles, to raise her family. I wrote about my choice here.

What I learned from them was this. Money can’t buy happiness or build a loving family.

Fast forward 20 years to Ben and I raising our family. We say it this way…he makes the living, and I make it worthwhile.

As you know, we live debt free except for our farm house. (Thanks to the teaching of Dave Ramsey.) We feel rich even though our paycheck is very average. Yet, my question (up to a few years ago) was this. What is the difference between us and some first generation millionaire? Is it our smell? Do we not have that look?  Will we ever have the Midas touch? The surprising answer came a few years ago when we met Marlin, a multimillionaire.

We had no earthly idea Marlin was wealthy. As far as we knew (or cared for that matter) he was just a great guy, with a nice family and a small business. We have grown to be great friends with him and his family and found he is an open book. He mentors anyone who will listen on life and living successfully.

Through all this, I’ve been blown away about people’s misconceptions of wealthy people. So, I’m writing a series called Confessions of a Millionaire based on our conversations, other books on the subject and my observations.

I would love to know what YOU would ask a millionaire if you had a chance? Leave a comment below or email me at sis at reclaimsimplicity.com. I’ll ask him and start to share these confessions Monday.

You won’t believe what I’ve found.

Stay Tuned,

Sis

Don’t tell Dave Ramsey, but, we just got back from an awesome Black Hills South Dakota vacation.

Actually, you can tell him that. While your gossiping, tell him since we don’t have credit cards, we paid cash for the whole thing AND had $150 left over.

What you can’t tell him is, most of our emergency fund was depleted after we threw that party, and we went on vacation anyway. That breaks his precious Baby Step laws. Tragic isn’t it? I hope he doesn’t send the money police.

If your not familar with his Seven Baby Steps for getting out of debt, here they are…

1. Baby Emergency Fund. One-thousand dollars in the bank for true emergencies.

2. Debt Snowball. Pay off your debts (except for the house) smallest to largest rolling payments together as you pay off debts, until you are debt free except the house.

3. Fully Funded Emergency Fund. Three to six months of expenses in the bank, for true emergencies.

4. Retirement Fund. Fifteen percent of gross income saved in a retirement fund.

5. College Fund.

6. Pay Off The House Early.

7. Build Wealth.

We were on Baby Step 6 until it rained. When it rains and you spend some of your emergency fund, you are supposed to stop everything and replenish what you spent. We didn’t. We already had our cabin reserved and it would have cost us $500 to cancel. (Cabins are different than motel rooms in this regard.)

So what do you do? Tell Dave Ramsey to pound sand and take your vacation anyway…If you’re a sinner like me.

If your not, then you probably aren’t reading this anyway, so never mind.

I’m glad there are only seven baby steps and not twelve.

Stand by for some more money tips and budget-friendly vacation tips.

Simply,

Sis

Right now people are worried freaked out about their personal economy and America’s economy. Sadly, fear makes people do STUPID  things. If you are one of these people, and you want hope for your future, you need to check out this FREE NATIONWIDE EVENT.

This Townhall For Hope is FREE. It’s F-R-E-E. That’s no money. Don’t make fear-based decisions on what all the dramatic media mongers say.  Tune in on April 23, at 8pm to this nationwide event and find out what’s really happening in our economy. Click here to go directly to the website, to find a sponsor in your area or for more information.

You’ll be glad you did.

Simply,

Sandhill Sis

It started back in 1995, right after we were married, living on one income near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Ben was a Marine. We never had money left over at the end of the month. I was the bill payer and was always frustrated when there was never enough. My frustration didn’t do much for Ben, who was working hard at his military career, that he loved. Besides, I was the one who said, “I don’t care what you do, pump gas for all I care…just come home happy.” Which, he did, but, something had to give. So I bought a book called How To Get What You Want Out Of Life, With The Money You Already Have by Carol Keeffe. A book that started us on a budget and put me on a quest to help myself and others become better money managers.

Fast forward to 2007, a new career for Ben, two kids, two car payments, a mortgage and more…later. Our budget still in place, but tight again. Something was missing in our money formula and it was threatening our simple life. Then some friends told us about Dave Ramsey, a personal finance guru. Ramsey, a multi-millionaire who had gone broke and became a multi-millionaire again, but this time for keeps. I liked this guy already, he sounded like he may have something. We started listening to Dave on the radio and checkout every book in the library on personal finance, a total of five. Then we took his Financial Peace University class and nine months later we were debt free, except our house.

I don’t  want to reinvent the wheel, as far as money management goes…Instead I’ll share some real life case studies that you may see yourself in or someone you know…

Choosing to become debt free has totally changed our life and marriage. It has allowed us to put our hopes and dreams at the top of the budget, give more to causes that mean a lot to us, and keeps me at home where I can nurture these precious lives that surround me. I now coordinate Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University classes in our small town and give one on one help anyone who wants or needs simple budget advice. This is sick hobby of mine, I do this for free over coffee or over the Internet, that always makes my simple life richer.

I don’t  want to reinvent the wheel, as far as money managment goes. There are far too many experts in books, videos and blogs. Instead I’ll share some book reviews on money and life and some real life case studies that you may find yourself in or someone you know. If you have questions or comments about personal finances, email me sis@reclaimsimplicity.com or leave a comment. I’ll keep your identity out of it, but share some ideas and tips with everyone that might help. Lawd knows, most everyone is hurting in this economy, but together we can change that and embrace simplicity in the process.

Simply,

Sis