» Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University: Week 2

In review – last week

Last week I talked about our first week in class for the Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” seminar that we’re taking with some other couples from our church. In that post we talked about how if you want to get out of debt and become financially solvent, you need to make saving a priority. The important things we touched on:

Savings must become a priority.
You must save for an emergency fund, major purchases, and wealth building.
Decide and agree with your spouse on what qualifies as an emergency

We also gave an intro to Dave Ramsey’s 7 baby steps, talking briefly about baby steps 1 and 3. Baby step 1 is to build a $1000 emergency fund, and baby step 3 is to save 3-6 months of expenses in a savings account. Check out last week’s article for a full review.

This week – relating with money

This week the topic of discussion in class was the importance of working together in relationships and how we as individuals handle money differently.

How you manage your money can affect your personal relationships, especially those with your closest family members. For example, one spouse may be more of a “free spirit”, and not enjoy budgeting, or looking at the details of a budget. The other person might be a “nerd”, and love looking at the numbers, how they fit together, and have a knack for doing the budget. Within the relationship you need to find a way to work together for your common good.

Some key points from this week’s lesson:

Men and women think very differently about money. For men it is often more of a tool, something to be used. For women it often means security.
The nerd and free spirit must learn how to work together.
If you are single, find an accountability partner with whom to discuss your finances.
Teach your children how to manage money so they avoid our mistakes.

Budget committee meetings

Because of the inherent differences in men and women, nerds and free spirits, we need to lay the groundwork for working together on our finances. Dave Ramsey talks about the need for family “budget committee meetings” where both partners in the relationship talk about the monthly budget, and have a stake in it. It isn’t acceptable for one partner to be solely responsible for the money, it is something that both partners need to be involved in, and have a stake in. He asks in this lesson more than once, “Who is responsible for the money? You both are!”.

In these budget committee meetings there are a few ground rules, but basically it boils down to this:

Nerd does the budget beforehand and brings it to the meeting.
Nerd gives budget to the free spirit for feedback – and shuts up.
Free spirit must make some changes to the budget, and gives intelligent feedback.
Free spirit must not just say, “Whatever you want to do, honey”.

These meetings allow both partners to have a say, and means that you’ll be more invested in your shared financial venture.

A large number of marriages end because of problems that people had in their financial lives, and because of mis-communications that they had in that area. This week really drove home the point for me that you need to get on the same page as your loved ones, and hold each other accountable. If you can’t do that, then your plans are doomed to failure. If you’re single – get an accountability partner. If you don’t, its going to be a lot harder to keep yourself in check.

Next week we look at some of the nitty gritty details of budgeting, and setting up a monthly cash flow plan! Stay tuned!

LINKS:
Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps @ M-Network Blogs

Tagged as: Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace University, FPU