The Start of My Blue Period

I took a long break from posting on my blog for one simple reason: I had no time.

A little background.  For about the past year, my husband and I have been paying off every debt we have, following Dave Ramsey’s seven baby steps.  We only had two types of debt, our car and our student loans.  Our car note was about $18,000 and our student loans, combined, were over $100K.  So we got cracking on our car note first, since that was our smallest debt.  A year later, we are down to my federal student loan, which means we’ll be living pretty lean for about one more year.  How have we been able to make such dramatic progress in only one year?  Work, work, work.

My husband works a salaried position (meaning he works a lot more than 40 hours per week), and he travels a lot for work, so there was no practical way for him to get a second job.  I therefore took it upon myself to find creative ways to generate more income.

My first moonlighting job was working for an attorney, proofreading briefs and filing them.  The work wasn’t so bad, but the hours were too sporadic for my taste.  I would work ten hours for her one week, then have a month off.  I needed something steadier.  So I turned to Dave Ramsey’s radio program for inspiration and found myself taking the ultimate “gazelle intense” job: pizza delivery woman.  My husband was not crazy about the idea, but since we live in a pretty safe area, he did not stand in my way.  I promised him I would only work three nights a week, and that once he saw how much progress we made, he would agree it was a good decision for me to take on another job.

My experience with pizza delivery turned out much differently than I originally envisioned it.  Stay tuned for more posts about my experiences as a delivery driver, as I cannot possibly fit it all into one post. 

As a side note: I sometimes reference Dave Ramsey in my blog, and I feel I need to clarify something about his influence on me.  Anyone who googles Dave Ramsey or already knows a bit about him, knows that he is an evangelical Christian.  His message of living debt-free and building wealth is peppered with biblical references.  Although my husband and I do not share his religious point of view, we have benefitted a great deal from following his financial advice.  If you’re looking for a get-out-of-debt plan, check him out, even if you’re not religious.  He’s kind of like Suze Orman, but even more conservative (i.e. he does not advise taking on any kind of debt, save for a fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgage, while Suze says it’s ok to take on car debt provided you pay it off within three years).  Like I told one of my friends who asked to borrow my copy of The Total Money Makeover, if you’re not religious, just insert the name “Shakespeare” every time you see a reference to “God” or “Jesus.”

I hope you enjoy my pizza diaries!