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Monday, September 7, 2009

Teaching

I'm 3 weeks into the teaching gig at the local community college. I'm still loving every long minute of it! I teach for 50 minutes 4 days per week, so that's the easy part. The planning is something I just was not prepared for. Being a first-timer, I know it takes so much longer. All I had was the official course outline from the school and some example syllabi to go from. I didn't have any previous lesson plans or ideas for class activities. Just me, the book, and the internet! So far, I have been preparing my lesson plans for each day as I go, but I really need to get ahead, so I can be sure that I'm on the right track to make it through the semester. It takes hours to plan a day or two, let alone a whole week! At least this week coming up is only 3 days - that will help a lot, considering that at the moment, I am writing my blog instead of planning... Oops!

I am so glad I got this opportunity to teach. The chair of the ESL Department took a chance on me, and I so appreciate it! I hope to one be full-time someday, whether at this school or another. I am mentoring with the department chair, so he's given me some really great feedback and is guiding me while I find my way. It's a challenge to just jump right in, but at the same time, I'm glad that I'm making it my own, instead of basing everything off of someone else's plan. I can figure out what works as I go and make mistakes along the way. That's ok with me - I like to learn, too.

And while I'm learning and teaching, I'm still working full time. It's such a difference to go from the classroom to the office. I feel stagnant at my full-time job, but when I'm teaching I feel like I'm actively doing something worthwhile and productive. There's really nothing more for me at my full-time job - the job is pretty much topped out, and there's no room for advannowhere else for me to go there. They've got me pigeonholed into my position, and they fail to see what more I can offer, despite my best efforts to show them and remind them. But it will be their loss when I finally am able to leave there and pursue teaching full time. I've never worked anywhere as long as I've worked for this company, so it will be sad to leave when the time comes, but I will be so excited to move on and move forward. I will have a class for next Fall - they prepare the schedules the year before, so I'm in for next year. I just don't know if I'll have a class for Spring - I have to wait and see what happens.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Our Journey to Financial Freedom

I came across "The Dave Ramsey Show" on the radio a couple months ago in a roundabout way. We had a cool station that played a fairly eclectic mix of music, but unfortunately it didn't last (as with all the cool stations). Of course, the channel remains preset in my car, and one day I was flipping through and hit the button, even though I knew it had changed to the FM version of the local conservative radio show. Obviously, this is not a station I would normally listen to. On this particular day, I hit the button out of habit and because there was nothing good on any of the other stations, I figured I would listen to what the conservatives were saying to get a good laugh. Well, interestingly enough, there was a guy talking about money. I like money, so I listened. He was pretty down-to-earth, and everything he talked about made sense. Not just, "Yeah that could work," but real common sense. I'm not usually in my car between 11am and 1pm, but after that day, if I was, I was listening to the money guy.

So fast forward a couple months. After listening to snippets of Dave Ramsey, I finally checked out his website, and Howard bought his book, "The Total Money Makeover" (TMMO) on Amazon for me. I devoured that book in about a day and a half so that Howard could take it and read it while he worked in the field. We talked about it every night that week! And when he came back, we made our plan and prepared for our journey to be debt-free! I won't go over Dave's book in detail, but I plan to record our progress in becoming financially free as we complete the Baby Steps in Dave's book.

Our official start date was September 1, 2009. We got our paychecks and started! This is a really good time for us to start - Howard has been getting a bonus (which will go through the end of this month) and we both received publication bonuses from work for an extra $500. Talk about a good start.

Baby Step #1 - Save $1000
I have been reading saving and debt reduction articles from a long time; like I said, I like money. So we had a small "emergency fund" of $600 already. Dave says $1000, so we're working on it. We wanted to make a start on Baby Step #2 right away, so we're taking care of #1 with our paycheck in the middle of the month. We will have our emergency fund started and can really get moving on the exciting stuff!

Baby Step #2 - Pay off all debts (other than the house)
So, this is the fun (and hard) part. We had 4 small bills that have just been hanging around and we just haven't been able "find" money to pay. So we knocked those out immediately and it felt so good to cross those off the list! We have two more things under $1000 to pay and will take care of those by October. Then we'll get the long haul of debt payment. We have 2 cars, 4 credit cards, and student loans for a grand total of about $65,000. How insane is that?

So Dave recommends paying off your bills from the lowest balance to the highest balance. Ok - that sounds good to me. I've paid off all my bills before, but I had used the system where you pay the bills from the highest interest rate first, then work your way through that way. I see Dave's point about going from lowest balance to highest. You get some quick results at the beginning to keep yourself motivated - that makes such a difference! I'm willing to give his sytem a chance.

Creating a Budget
This is one thing that we already had, but it just wasn't detailed enough. We had the main bills listed, but we didn't really plan for putting gas in the car or for miscellaneous expenses. We always just left some money over each paycheck, but we always used it up and then ended up charging gas or charging all that stuff we "needed" at Target. Not good. So Howard and I set up a new detailed budget where we account for every bit of money coming in each paycheck/month and know exactly where it's going to go before we even have our checks in our hands. We have money that we set aside each month for other expenses, like car repairs, car registration, household goods, or home repairs. It feels so freeing already! We use only cash (or a debit card) and all the credit cards are out of our wallets!

Next Steps
We had a great start out of the gate, but now we wait until our next paychecks. The next step is to finish the $1000 emergency fund and the pay off the next bill on the list. After that, we'll pay one car off 2 months early! The we really get serious to keep our momentum going to get those last bills paid. Goal date (debt-free except for house) = February 2012.