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  • Budgeting Works!

    To gain financial freedom you must take control of your money, plan for the future and Stop Borrowing Money!
    Two families striving to gain financial freedom share their experiences.
    Blog Author Mona Weathers (monawea)


    Co-author, Manda C.

  • Time To Budget News!

    Manda C. is our new contributing author. Welcome Manda!

FPU- motivation, edification, and accountibility.

J and I have paid down enough debt since starting FPU in June to equal our yearly income. The first thing we did was to sell our van. Financial Peace could really be renamed the “sell your car to prove that you’re serious about getting out of debt” plan. We traded down J’s truck for a more affordable truck. In the end, we decided to be totally rid of any car payment, and have sold that truck. We have a small balance left over for the upside down credit that we owed from liquidating these assets. There is definitely something to be said about not having a car payment. We aren’t even debt free yet, yet, I feel like an enormous burden has been lifted from our shoulders, because it has been.

When we first started FPU, we talked briefly about selling our van, and then made excuses, plans, about how we could keep it. We still believed the great American myth that “everyone NEEDS a car payment”. We didn’t totally accept this as a lie until another couple in our FPU class sold their Lexus. Reading about Financial Peace, and being a first hand witness to Financial Peace are two different things. This is one of the reasons I suggest that even if you believe that you can’t afford the $93 to take FPU, that you sell something and get involved. There’s no promise that you’ll have the same source of motivation, but the class will be filled with people, just like you, from whom you can garner support. It’s hard doing it alone. The doing isn’t so hard. Maintaining focus and motivation is what’s hard, for me, especially after the first few weeks when you plateau.

We are wonderfully made social people by God. Yes, Financial Peace has a religious component to it without shoving religion down your throat. Even if you aren’t religious, the Bible contains smart common sense about money. Proverbs alone contains mountains of financial advice, particularly about not being a surety (cosigner of a loan). Proverbs 11:15 says that “One who hates being surety is secure”. Being at stay at home mom, I have plenty of time to watch Judge shows on TV, granted my 2 year old doesn’t have other plans. Most, if not all of these “small claims” concern defaulted loans. Don’t loan out money. If you are in the position to be giving out money, give it. Do a good deed without expecting anything in return. If you can’t give out the money without taking out credit, or being a surety, don’t. If asked why, tell them that God tells you that being a surety isn’t a good idea. Dave uses a verse in Proverbs (22:7) to illustrate the relationship once money is lent… “the borrower is servant to the lender”. Think it’s silly, have you ever owed anyone money? Has anyone ever borrowed money from you? It puts a strain on the relationship. At our onset of FPU, our van was nearly repoed. My MIL got a loan to keep the van out of repossession. We could have kept the van and made payments to her, but I did not want to be her slave. We sold it and got out from underneath the remaining debt as quickly as we could.

Financial Peace University gives you a syllabus of finances in the Bible. God doesn’t want you to be in debt. Why? Because it creates stress. Someone that I look to as a mentor is going through a very tough time in her marriage right now. It’s been hard for me because it has been reflective of my own past problems. There are a lot of differences between the two, but the primary is that she and her husband don’t have the debt adding the extra dimension of stress to her marriage. She’s able to focus of God and her husband and her family in order to heal. Financial Peace University gives you partners that- whether intentional or not- whether they know it or not- encourage you, to “comfort and edify each other” as 1 Thessalonians 5:11 offers.

I’ve written a couple of times about the couple on FPU group that attacked their debt with gazelle intensity. This is the same couple that we modeled our behavior after they sold their vehicle. I could see the physical difference in them just in the freedom from that debt, and it motivated me to do the same. I’m happy to write that last weekend, they became debt free. They’re going to try to call the Dave Ramsey show tomorrow and scream that “They’re debt free”, so listen out for them. If there is a local FPU meeting in your area, go, get role models and peers in the same situation as you, with the same motivation as you, and the same goal as you. If you don’t find someone with which you can compare, perhaps you can serve as the good example in your class. There are too many reasons to go to FPU, I can’t even begin to enumerate them here. But, I hope that my successful experience is just one of the reasons to go. I couldn’t have done it without the 14 weeks of accountability we received at FPU.

~Manda

October 16, 2008 | Filed Under Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University (FPU), Financial Freedom Journey Pep Talk 

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