Well, it’s been my first full month of listening to Dave Ramsey and of plan/budget implementation. So far everything’s been going really REALLY well…

My official plasectomy* took place on February 15, but I had stopped using them on January 27. My full-out budget started around the same time I made confetti out of my credit cards, and as I’ve indicated previously, right now my budget is a pretty fluid concept, but is becoming more solid with each passing paycheck. The first 2-3 weeks, I think I was tweaking it almost daily. It has now dropped to a weekly tweak. I’m hoping that in another month I’ll be down to only checking it out when I deposit funds!

I’m also trying to find as many ways to bring in extra cash as possible. This is proving to be more difficult than I would like… Dave’s answer would be to start delivering pizzas or bar-tending. I’m not against those things, but my job is such that I cannot always guarantee being available for that kind of work. Additionally, I can’t be on my feet too much right now thanks to my still-broken foot. I have started selling a bunch of stuff on Half.com which so far has yielded about $100. I’ve also applied to become a Secret Shopper, but haven’t heard back on that yet. Anyone else have extra-money suggestions??

I want to just take a moment to indicate just a few ways in which I feel my life has changed in just these few short weeks…

  1. I’m relaxed. Not that I was particularly uptight before, but I can just feel myself relaxing on a deeper level than I feel I previously have. I’m not checking my bank account each day and breaking out in a sweat out for fear that something might be coming through throwing my entire account into a state of confusion and chaos.
  2. I feel in control. This may sound like an odd thing to say because one might think that, since I’m single, I’ve therefore always had control…and I think that before now, I would have agreed with you. However now I can see how much I was NOT in control. It’s like the quote that I heard Dave give during one of the FPU sessions - “Either you will learn to manage money, or the lack of it will always manage you.” Prior to January 27th, I would definitely say it was latter.
  3. I have hope. Again, it’s not like I felt hopeless before or that there wasn’t a light at the end of my proverbial tunnel, but I definitely didn’t see such a bright light! Nor do I think I realized what might be sitting at the end of the tunnel quite like I think I do now.

I’ve actually gotten to a point right now where I feel I’m no longer questioning some of Dave’s positions as I initially did. I’ve been listening to him so much and heard him explain his position so many times over these past few weeks, the “why’s” of what he teaches are becoming clearer to me. In some ways I feel like George in that episode of Seinfeld where he decides that nothing in his life has worked out for him so going forward he decides that he’s going to just “do the opposite” of whatever his natural instinct tells him to do. If he normally would say no, then he says yes. If he normally wouldn’t ask a woman out, he does it anyway. If he normally gets tuna, he’ll order chicken. I’ve not been so stupid that I haven’t done ANYTHING right in the past, but I did get to the point where I felt that clearly my way of managing my finances has not led me to the place I want to be and so departing from my standard behavior might be just the thing to course correct.

So there you have it… My first month up. Not missing my credit cards one bit and am actually enjoying telling myself “no” to things I want to do but don’t have the cash for.

This is getting fun… :)
*Plasectomy - a permanent removal of credit cards (or plastic) from the wallet and life of an individual.