The Bippus Total Money Makeover

We're changing it up this week and I (Michael) am posting this blog. This week Lindsay and I have gotten even more gazelle intense on our ongoing Total Money Makeover. If you don't know what that is, I'll give you a little detail. About 6 months ago we were in Alabama visiting Lindsay's dad when we caught Mr. Dave Ramsey on the television. Ever since we have been obsessed with his philosophy of being debt free. We got back from our visit and cut every expense that we thought was unnecessary, made a budget where we spent our entire month's income on paper with a purpose and stuck to it. It's been six months of doing this and we did AMAZING for about 4 months. We paid off medical bills, credit cards and even our car! After the car got paid off we really took a fall backwards for about two months. We still stuck to the budget, but added some unnecessary items each month and could not find that extra money to pay toward debt. This week we got fed up with the last two months of no progress and re-committed ourselves to the plan. We now listen to Dave on the radio as much as possible to motivate ourselves. We are having a garage sale (right now as I write this) and have made a lot of debt money! I'd like to give you an idea of how much debt we have paid off so far.

In six months we have paid off a total $21,341.26. That total includes medical bills for Olivia's ear tubes, credit cards, my car, furniture bought on two years same as cash plan, and medical bills for Grayson's birth. We are still working on finishing the furniture debt, Grayson's birth medical bills and we still have to get my student loans paid off. We have a little over $12,000 left to go but we are well on our way! We had some extreme help in paying off so much in such a little amount of time. We were fortunate enough to have the ability to sell stock, have the government stimulus check, and even use some of our savings! Our biggest help though has been the Lord our Saviour and we always give to Him first and always off the top because He has blessed us in so many ways. He has given us the strength and patience to continue and we owe it all to Him. This is only baby step 2 of the plan and next we get to fully fund our emergency fund, begin our retirement savings, begin college savings for the kids, attack our mortgage, and finally build our wealth and give give give!!!

We love sharing our story and encouraging people to get on the same path as us. This money makeover has completely changed our lives, changed how we perceive our finances and strengthened our marriage greatly! As you can see we're only on baby step 2 of Dave's plan and have a long way to go but we're enjoying the ride and loving "living like no one else" so later we can "live like no one else." It certainly hasn't been easy, and we definitely go through times where we want and want it now. But in the end we believe our struggles will be worth it!

www.daveramsey.com

He's on the radio in the Tulsa area from 1-4 p.m. on a.m. 970.


An update on the kids:
We got the news on Grayson's hip and everything is ok! He doesn't have to wear a brace and his hips should grow just fine! We are grateful and thankful. Olivia is doing great, she came down with a little bug this week, but nothing she hasn't had before. At school her nap mat did have to get moved next to the teacher because she has a slight problem with not being able to stay quiet or stay laying down. What can we do? She's two!! Everybody is doing great!