This article sounds just so, so great to me. We’ve solidly reached step 1 and are not too far from finishing step 2 (though I don’t know what the Debt Snowball method is, it seems self-explanatory). Hurray!

But as I was listening to my mother talk about her car payment, which is more than my husband and I make per month combined, I couldn’t help but cringe. It sounds profound to say that buying a Lexus is like buying a happy meal to some people, but I just can’t comprehend how that shift in perspective is justified.

To some people, money isn’t relative. To some people, money is worth a certain defined, absolute amount. Once a person is making enough to have their basic needs, and secondary needs, and even their comfort wants provided for, money plays a different role in life. It just makes me sick to my stomach thinking about how much money some people waste and waste and they don’t feel the waste. It doesn’t matter to them.

Well, I feel it. And when we’re on our feet solidly, I am not wasting our extra money. We’re giving it away! Away, away, away!

I get excited about giving along the way. We have always tithed and felt good about that being our giving, but even to tithe + contribute small amounts for micro-loans and that kind of thing is exciting to me. Recently my kids and I found some things to sell at a children’s consignment sale, with the plan of using some or all of the profits to donate to Haiti relief funds. In the past, I don’t think we would even have considered this a possibility because I felt like we were barely making it. If anything, we have less money to spend now that we are more in control of it, but the control makes it easier to be able to give, somehow. I feel blessed to have learned about Dave Ramsey’s plan because it has really helped us in this way.