Dave Ramsey's 1st baby step...have $1000 in an emergency fund. Do we have this? . . Honestly. No. We don't. . . Why? . . There are different views on this first step. Some financial advisors do not beleive you should have any extra money sitting in an account with an extremely low return rate while you are attempting to payoff debt. They believe every extra cent should go towards paying off the debt. Others say that you absolutely should have money put aside in case something comes up that requires spending money that you don't have. Many financial advisors suggest more like $2500 in the emergency account while paying off debt. . . When we started this journey we had $2500 in our savings account, but our old ways got the best of us and when we have money sitting around, we are prone to try to justify things we need to spend it on...like the beginnings of a backyard makeover *eye roll*. We also found that we were more likely to overspend on our budget because we had "cushion". . . We decided to take a harder look at our budget and build the cushion into the budget with a misc. amount per paycheck as well as a short term spend account. This way, when we have small purchases we don't account for or overspend for the pay period, we use this built in cushion instead of what should be our emergency fund. Yes it takes away from the money we can put towards credit card debt, but ultimately it is what is working for our family and our financial goals. . . We have also decided to continually build our emergency fund during our credit repayment because we feel that the security of this fund for our family is ultimately more important than shortening the time of credit debt payoff. . . If we stick to the plan, we will be credit debt free come October 2020. Tomorrow, I will post about this plan along with baby step number 2. #financialfreedom #daveramsey #familyaffectsdecisions #buildingourfinancialfuture #financialgoals #reachingfinancialgoals #creatingyourownsteps #guidelines #budgets https://www.instagram.com/p/B3YRPM8AzAh/?igshid=7ykbeqxmv4hi