Gazelle intense...

Anybody doing Dave Ramsey? It seems the entire U.S. is doing Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. We happen to be blessed by going to church that wants 80% of its members to go through it and pays for your babysitting! Andy and I have no trouble finding time for this. I am such a numbers nerd that any budget talk, I get excited. I don't enjoy doing all of the number crunching, but I do like knowing where the dollars are going. One of the compliments I get the most is "you guys are so good with your envelopes"... I think it is funny because truly, people admire people who use cash, but what they don't know is that for the 10 years we have been doing the envelopes, we were believing this subtle lie of , "yeah we are doing well". What I wasn't willing to see was that I wasn't stopping when the envelope was out... I was just borrowing from another one. Some would say, "not so bad"... well it gets bad when you are out of money 10 days short of the next pay check and you eat into your next one and you borrow from that one. By the end of the year, you borrowed too far ahead and you move that little chunk, which now became cumulative to your Home Equity line (that is if you are lucky enough to have one, especially in this economy). So a little too much information about us, but what I am trying to say is that we are NOT good with our money. We don't like to say NO when the money is out. We find strategic ways to work around having to say no, and then we say, "oh we are doing better than others." Sound like comparing...? Not good.

So through only three weeks, I can say I have learned SO much. I didn't realize that Home Equity lines didn't even exist fifty years ago. People didn't even use credit cards years ago. I am loving learning these wise little truths that you can hear your grandmother preaching. We just do it all in the name of "I deserve it!"... it has been a hard day or I just have to get out or I just have to have _______. As Dave says, you have to get gazelle intense. That cracks me up... what in the world does that mean? It means that gazelles outsmart their predator, which is the cheetah (fastest animal around). I think that gazelles typically outsmart the cheetah 93 times out of 100 ( I think I botched that statistic, but you get the point).

Here is a description of what it means to be gazelle intense...
I’ve heard the term “Gazelle Intensity” a fair number of times, but I’d never looked up its official meaning. How it was explained to me was basically that a gazelle has to be very focused and intense to escape becoming a cheetah’s meal.
According to Ramsey, gazelle intensity is a role play exercise. The gazelle has to be smarter, not faster, than the cheetah to escape it. In Ramsey’s world, you are the gazelle, and the credit card company is the cheetah. To escape the cheetah, you must be smarter than it. Just as the gazelle has to bob and weave to avoid the cheetah’s single minded straight line attack (apparently, a cheetah is only super-fast when running in a straight line), we must bob and weave and stay on our toes like a gazelle with never-ending intensity to avoid the credit card’s evil single-minded attack via numerous offers and specials and rewards.

So the bottom line is you list all consumer debt that you have and you go gazelle intense...this could be Andy and me before the study is over.



So it takes an average of 3 years to get yourself out of consumer debt (that includes Home Equity lines.... even additions I ask?). The whole idea is to begin to save up the cash and then pay for all your wants and desires. Who wants to do that? I don't... yet then you can really live like no one else lives because you never pay interest on one thing, you just MAKE the interest. What a different philosophy. Then it begs the question... "well you have to live a little." Do you? Aren't we living a little by having a car, a house, a washer and dryer, heat and water?

I think I could do the infomercial for him at this point, but I will have to say if you don't do his study, read his book "The Total Money Makeover".

I have maxed out our grocery budget and according to Dave, when it is out, it is out... so today I put together "goodie bags" for the kids for snack knowing they would see the drawer had only Ritz crackers and almonds. I threw in five gummy bears, sliced apples, raisins that I had on hand. Bobby says at dinner, "I really liked those bags Mom." Little did he know it was just a disguise so he wouldn't say, "We don't have ANY food." I have no clue what we will come up with Jan. 31rst... 6 more days :).

I don't think I want to be this.