What Dave Ramsey has done for us.

That's our "new" van.  We paid for it in cash and still have a paid-off Camry sitting in our garage that blue books at $10,500 that we're about to sell FSBO.

We're about to have our third child, so our little beloved Camry isn't going to cut it anymore.  We've been looking for a van for awhile now.  It's amazing that I was excited to get a van.  Me?!  The girl who swore I would never, ever, ever have a minivan!  

A year ago, we would have either traded in our Camry for a more expensive, low mileage van and probably acquired another car payment, or at the very least we would have sold our Camry FSBO and taken the inheritance we recently got and used both of those funds to buy a relatively nice, new van.

But then we took Dave Ramsey's FPU.  While we aren't the perfect students (I admit that we haven't done the cash envelopes on a few occasions), we've made huge strides and already paid off a ton of debt.  In a few months time.  

And amazingly, we're about to pay off well over $10,000 in debt.  All because we decided to sell our Camry FSBO and buy an old, used van.  It's not the most glamorous van in the world.  It has some dings and scratches and less perks than we're used to in our newer Camry, but I love it.  I love it because it is bringing us financial peace.  I love it because it was DIRT CHEAP but came with the mechanic's seal of approval (unlike all the Siennas we took to get pre-inspected that were literally double the cost and had tons of mechanical problems).  I love it because we were patient and waited for the perfect deal instead of rushing to buy the first one we saw, which would have cost us double what this one did.

When we started FPU a few months ago, we mapped out a course to becoming debt-free that was going to take us about 2.5 years.  Now, thanks to decisions like the above one and saying no to new clothes or that Starbucks I want so badly, it's looking like we are going to cut that 2.5 year timeline in half - if not more.

Imagine if we're debt-free before this new baby reaches his or her first birthday!  Thanks to some really stupid ideas and decisions on my part as an 18 year old naive girl, I haven't been debt-free since before the age of 19.        

Because of Dave Ramsey, we also put our old car payment that we no longer have into a savings account each month so that when we drive this Odyssey into the ground, we'll get to pay for our next car in cash, too.  

It's literally blowing my mind that we're getting so close to being debt-free.  The freedom that will come on the day we have only our mortgage left will be unreal.  It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

Thank you, Dave Ramsey.  You're sort of my hero.  :)

And seriously, if I can do this, literally any person walking the face of this planet can.  I have one of the most disastrous and irresponsible financial pasts of anyone I've ever met.