New on the Menu: Roadkill

Oh. My. GOSH!! I cannot believe what I have just spent the past several hours looking at.

Three weeks ago, I started a financial planning course being offered at my church. It's Dave Ramsey's course, if you've heard of him. He is the supreme advocate of complete debt free living which is definitely in contrast to my 52 years of "debt management" living. Such as it was.

In honesty, I love "kits". Love boxes filled with books and forms and gadgets to create a "system". I'm not much good at keeping the system but I love the toys. The kit I received for signing up for this class appealed to me. It has all sorts of fun looking cool stuff inside. I go once a week and watch a one hour video of a well rehearsed Dave Ramsey lecturing on how to get out of debt and build wealth. It is littered with "good ol' boy" humor which was very entertaining at first but is now wearing thin. Still, he has some very good and interesting things to say and when he's finished, we gather in small groups for 30 minutes to discuss our thoughts, challenges, and progress and then we all go home to do the homework. Well this week was the week we got to go home and play with the kit. I rolled my sleeves up and filled in all the boxes on all the forms with numbers from our checking account, our savings, 401K, and investments using the pen they gave me (and in my best handwriting). Bob called all our creditors and got our balances and double checked our interest rates. I created a budget from the forms in the book they gave me and labeled envelopes and got neat and organized and it was really fun. Then I put all of it in the Quicken program they provide and when I was done, I saw what our net worth really is and what we are really spending (including the one stop at Coffee Bean and a trip to Taco Bell and a cheap movie and a can of paint and...), what our debt really is and how long it would take to pay it off at minimum payments until debt free. So currently I am on suicide watch.

First of all, this started long ago with the "well a paycheck is coming next week so I can afford this" way of thinking. Bob and I have never had a budget on paper. Ever. EVER. And while unemployment has shown me that we were living too large, we felt we were okay. I mean we had a good, six figure income for many, many years. We paid our bills and went on vacations. And saved! (What was left.) Certainly we were not out of control.

I stand corrected.

We had no idea that we had created a financial monster that has been eating our future alive. And it isn't all about the crash (although that certainly played an unfortunately large role).

The upshot is that if we don't get it together, I could be 170 before everything is paid off and if I want the kind of money I dream of having in retirement, I need $432,000 to invest. TODAY! I believe I am in the market for a dream adjustment.

It is what it is. And thank God I'm in this class now. I am depressed but we can get it together. We do have some time to do that. Its just that right at this moment it feels very much as though I can't afford to be alive. Were I to die, my life insurance would pay out and I could instantly turn all those debt amounts into zeros and fully fund the savings to the point I want it to be. But then I'd be dead, and where's the fun in that?

However, as I sit here in a wash of disbelief I am empowered. Why. Because now I know. Because I can affect change on the situation and repair it. Because now I can get control. But this will mean living like a college student for the next couple of years. (Note to self: I say "I" instead of "we" - I have a horrible habit of doing that... but this is my blog).

So I have still more adjusting to do in this period of transformation and reinvention. Not only

must I bottle what I'm good at and lose 50 lbs, I must muzzle the spending, increase the savings, pay off what feels like the national debt and do it all with a smile and a strand of pearls. I will S-T-R-E-E-E-T-C-H every dollar to the max and try to make leftovers from the frozen peas no one ate in the first place (actually, that will be Bob's job). Perhaps I could save on groceries by recycling the critter roadkill in the neighborhood. Lots of bunnies and possum. Just like Granny from the "Beverly Hillbillies" After all, she was a millionaire.