About

My husband and I both are CPA’s with master’s degrees, and we believed that financial management was second nature to us.

We did not spend a lot of time on our own finances. If we needed something, we generally used credit cards, car loans, etc. to buy them. We were comfortable with our personal finances and using “Other People’s Money”. After my husband lost his job, things started to change for us. After months of many job prospects that fizzled away, he was fortunate to become a self-employed contractor and an adjunct college instructor.

We then decided to develop passive income sources and invest in rental real estate. The “No Money Down” philosophy for purchasing investment real estate was appealing. We bought 2 rental houses in one year using credit cards for the down payments and had 2 mortgages for each rent house.

We then decided to open our own accounting business and rented space in a commercial office building. We invested money into starting the business, and supplemented the shortage using credit cards. My husband was working the accounting business and I was staying employed in industry. At this time, I started to really worry about the sizeable amount of consumer and real estate debt that we had accumulated and what could we do about it. I prepared spreadsheets listing all the debt we had, but my husband was only giving lip service to our financial crisis. We were fortunate to have decent credit, so I used credit card balance transfer offers to keep interest payments low. I was only moving our debt around and I called myself the “Balance Transfer Queen”.

One day I was intrigued on how a business associate was able to avoid a financial crisis because they had an emergency fund. I searched on the Internet on this topic and discovered Dave Ramsey. In the fall of 2008, we attended Financial Peace University (FPU). While we enjoyed watching the DVD presentations given by Mr. Ramsey, it did not fully take root at this time. In January 2009, Dave Ramsey was speaking in Houston and we listened to Dave intently. It finally made sense to us. We became fans of Dave Ramsey and actively pursued working on the Baby Steps.

At the live event, a brochure had a page on Endorsed Local Providers and a few months later my husband became an ELP for Tax Services.

Slowly and surely, we paid off all our consumer debt including our house. Baby Step 7 is great, and Dave Ramsey helped us achieve it.

I am sharing our story to show others that we have learned from our financial mistakes and how the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps allowed us to successfully manage our personal finances. I want to help others discover how the Dave Ramsey financial program will allow them to discover their financial freedom.