Dave Ramsey's Pre-Discharge Course

[nervousss]

Dave Ramsey is awesome, especially if you had to file bankruptcy because of your own habits and not because of things out of your control. The fact that he has an official bankruptcy course shows that he knows it's going to happen. He just advises against it. Which, I'm sure most of us would have liked to have not had to do it. I plan to use a lot of his wisdom to prevent myself to falling into the same problem ever again.

I used his bk course and read one of his books. Both really helped me.

From my (bad) memory, here's the short list of goals for financial freedom:

1) Save $1000 in a starter emergency fund now, even while you have debt. This is important because accidents do happen, and you should not have to rely on credit to pay for them when they do.

2) Aggressively pay off all of your debt. This is where the part time jobs come in. Pay off your smallest bills first to eliminate them, working your way up to the big bills.

3) Save up 3 to 6 months worth of living expenses. This is to ensure that you will never be forced into having to use credit, even if you lose your job.

4) Invest %15 of all household incomes into safe investments (he suggests some kinds, but I don't remember what they are, sorry lol)

5) Save up college funding for children if you have them

6) Pay off your home early

7) Build wealth, and give wealth. Invest.


In his courses, he goes over these things a lot, and shows you how to do things.

He says that before you pay any bills, you need to pay yourself. If you dont put money into your savings account before its just "the leftovers", you'll never save any.

He makes a lot of sense, even if he is "radical." His goal is to help people become financially free.

Credit really is a lifestyle lie. If you follow his plan, you can build wealth without any magic tricks, and you can afford nicer things after your life and your spending is under control.

[Mi Bankruptcy]

That is definitely a good start if you never learned it or were taught it. I remember my dad making me read "the richest man in Babylon". This taught some of the basics. It sounds like Dave's budgeting side does the same..

[debtmonster]

All of the problems today could have been prevented if every high school in America taught this for the past 50+ years.

[nervousss]

I totally agree debtmonster.

My father died suddenly when I was a small child, leaving my mother to raise 4 children alone after being a stay at home mom since her first baby was born. They had not planned for something like this because he was only 34 when he died, and they never imagined she would be left alone without any real skills to care for their children. Credit cards were a way of life for my family. Growing up, I just assumed EVERYONE had them. Because you can't get, like, you know, stuff without one, right??

My mom is awesome, and did a great job raising me. She blames herself a lot for my situation, because she knows that life forced her into a situation where she couldn't be a good example of how to deal with finances. She actually is a success from the Dave Ramsey program. She payed off her 30 year mortgage in 15 just last month!! She still has about 5k in credit card debt, but she started using his methods with about 30k, so that doesn't seem so bad.

I am going to try my hardest to make sure my children, when I am lucky enough to have some, learn from example and from my teaching how to live without being indebted to anyone or anything.

Here's to fresh starts and learning from our mistakes

[kathy4530050]

ME TOO. It is so, so important to me that my kids don't use credit cards. My youngest two are still in college, and don't. But my oldest is out of college and, I have learned, has several credit cards and carries a balance on all. She's very independent and strong-willed, but I am going to sit her down and tell her to STOP IT NOW. I can't bear the thought of any of my kids going through THIS.

[cursedbycc]

AMEN!!! I feel like I've failed at being an adult! I want to learn new ways to be a better person "financially" and pass that on to my children. My husband is much better at controlling the urge to use credit than I am (I am filing bk7 alone without my husband)... I know I can... I know I can.... I know I can....

[debtmonster]

They need to make it very difficult to get credit. At first, I would have been pissed off at the turndowns when I first got credit, but look at the heartache it would have saved me today if I had to live by cash only my whole life.

[kathy4530050]

AMEN!!! I feel like I've failed at being an adult! I want to learn new ways to be a better person "financially" and pass that on to my children. My husband is much better at controlling the urge to use credit than I am (I am filing bk7 alone without my husband)... I know I can... I know I can.... I know I can....

Of course you can!! And I will share a thought with you that has helped me.

I hate the I idea of going without--you know, those things that are fattening or expensive, but I love the idea of achieving something. I can achieve weight loss and physical fitness. I can achieve strong savings and future security. I believe that when this is all over I am going to work hard to put away as much of my income as possible to maximize my opportunities to earn interest and protect my future. I've successfully budgeted and saved before so I know I can do it.

My mistake was putting my business before my own financial well-being. Big, big mistake. I put every cent I earned back into the business and when the business struggled (looking up now), my personal finances just hit the skids. I will always pay myself first from this point forward and won't let this happen again. We are all learning from our mistakes, right?

[cursedbycc]

Yes we are and we shall overcome the burden of credit. I am so thankful for this forum and I don't think that I could go through this process without the support and wisdom I've gotten here....

[fltoo]

I attended one of Ramsey's seminars. Although his ideas are common sense, the seminar was good for motivation.

One thing he said really hit me. I spent a small fortune, in cash, to send my 3kids to big name, private colleges and did it as a single mother. Dave said that even though he can afford to send his kids to private schools, he is only paying for them to go to the state university. The education is as good and the cost is minimal. Although this had nothing to do with my BK, I could have educated all mine for less than 120,000 and our state school is excellent. Wish I had attended his seminar years ago just for this rude awakening.

[2live]

As for my only child who I raised alone and turned out pretty darn good....except for the credit card trap, both she and I are learning a pretty hard lesson. My current health situation forced me to go on leave and now 6 months later and short term disab. maxed out and going on ssdi which is 1/3rd of my regular pay. This has necessitated filing the BK.
So now I tell my daughter "see, all these years I have worked hard just to buy stuff on credit since with my good pay I could afford the payments and after all, I WANT it NOW. Look at me now, 52yrs old, ill health now getting a fraction of what I used to make, mortgage and car payment and credit cards out the behind!!"

I plead with her to pay that stuff off and instead pay herself, build up savings and get off the notion that you just have to have it all.

[2live]

...and oh yea, I also saw Dave in person and that 4 hours went by so quick as he was interesting and everything he said was simple to understand and made such sense. His books are great too, couldn't put Total Money Makeover down until I finished it.

[2live]

I attended one of Ramsey's seminars. Although his ideas are common sense, the seminar was good for motivation.

One thing he said really hit me. I spent a small fortune, in cash, to send my 3kids to big name, private colleges and did it as a single mother. Dave said that even though he can afford to send his kids to private schools, he is only paying for them to go to the state university. The education is as good and the cost is minimal. Although this had nothing to do with my BK, I could have educated all mine for less than 120,000 and our state school is excellent. Wish I had attended his seminar years ago just for this rude awakening.

Reminds me of a very good doctor I used to work with in the ER, he told us he had gone to some social function and ran into another dr. that had taken some earlier premed courses with. This dr.had his nose up in the air bragging about how much he was making when our dr. asked "so where did you end up going to medical school?" and he says "I went to Harvard". Our dr replies "oh yea, I went to the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Isn't it funny we both end up working in the emergency room making the same money??"

[kathy4530050]

I attended one of Ramsey's seminars. Although his ideas are common sense, the seminar was good for motivation.

One thing he said really hit me. I spent a small fortune, in cash, to send my 3kids to big name, private colleges and did it as a single mother. Dave said that even though he can afford to send his kids to private schools, he is only paying for them to go to the state university. The education is as good and the cost is minimal. Although this had nothing to do with my BK, I could have educated all mine for less than 120,000 and our state school is excellent. Wish I had attended his seminar years ago just for this rude awakening.

fltoo--

I made some financial decisions with my kids that I regret tool. Their father and I divorced when they were little and when they were in elementary school, I went into business for myself and those were some pretty lean years. Not a lot of extras, that's for sure. The kids' dad, who is actually pretty wealthy, always really overdid it come Christmas and birthdays. While I knew I couldn't compete with him, I never wanted the kids to feel that I didn't at least WANT to give them as much as I could so I always overspent. It would take me a whole year just to pay off Christmas.

Last year, (my kids are 19, 20, and 24 now) I said something to my kids about how hard it was for me back in those days to give them a nice Christmas and how I always took on debt in order to do that. I got the same response from all 3 of them: WHY DID YOU DO THAT??? They said they wouldn't have cared one bit if I just gave what I could afford to give. They always got a lot of presents from relatives too. They all 3 said they never needed all of those presents . . . and they probably got too many. WOW. Was I ever DUMB. I hope my kids learn from my mistakes and make different decisions around spending on their kids than I did . . .

[JRScott]

I had already filed by the time I heard of Dave Ramsey. However I took his FPU course while going through bankruptcy.

It has been a great tool for budgeting and preparing for crisis.

I recently bought a new dell computer, I paid in full for it without touching my baseline emergency fund. (One of my debts was with Dell as well when I went bk for a comptuer that was 3 years old at that time...they never came and got it).

Since building the emergency fund I've had to replace the brakes on my car, replace the fuel lines on the car, and invested some in home repairs.

In reality the course reminded me of how I lived before I had credit cards. I did not have any cards until 2000, before that I was a cash and carry guy. I did not use credit responsibly and ended up in major trouble after some back injuries and major sinus problems. So now I'm back to how I lived before I had credit cards. I don't buy new stuff the day it comes out, I wait for the price to drop....you know 6 months to a year. If there is something I need or want I'll go check on the price in the store then start saving towards it.