Much has changed since my last blog entry over a year and half ago. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,with a lay clergy, I accept various responsibilities to serve in my church. When I began this blog I was teaching a financial management class to our local congregation, called a ward. My duties changed from teaching the class to working with our missionaries to now assisting the leader of our ward, known as a bishop, as one of his two counselors. While I love this opportunity to serve it is very time intensive. In addition to that my wife and I have 7 children so we are a little busy!
Even with all of the changes I haven't lost my passion for personal finances and I am happy to write that my wife and I are on track with our goal of paying the house off (currently only $13,000 remaining). While I had hoped to do it on my birthday, next February, it will likely be later in the year! Either way, not a bad place to be at age 45.
Once the house is paid off we will take that money and put it towards retirements Has it been easy working towards this goal? No, but it hasn't been as hard as I would have thought. I have been very fortunate to have a wife who shares the same goals in life so when I am weak she is often strong and vice versa! Without her we would never be able to achieve our financial goals, especially with such a large family.
Over the years we have used various computer programs, spreadsheets and web sites to help us keep track of our finances. Some worked better than others but all seemed to be missing something. Earlier this year I started using You Need a Budget (YNAB for short) and LOVE it for creating and maintaining a budget. While I am a big fan of Dave Ramsey, and even tried his EveryDollar web site, I found I prefer YNAB's four rules and software especially since it focuses specifically on the budgeting part of finances. They offer free training classes and I like following them on FaceBook. You can even check out the owner's Wednesday Whiteboard videos. If you decide to purchase you can save $6.00 and I can earn $6.00 by buying it here. They will be switching to an annual subscription plan, however the software you purchase will still be usable but you won't be getting all the new bells and whistles. You can read more details about it here.
Happy Budgeting and Just Learn To Grown Debt Free!
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