Live Like No One Else - Part 1

For the last few months, my wife has been looking for a new to us car and while we had some marital conversations that weren’t always peaceful, we finally settled on a 2015 Mazda CX9. Not the newest of cars but a car that had a low amount of miles (61,000) and fit into our budget… of paying for the whole thing with cash.

Now some of you will disagree with this approach and that is okay. I am not here to say our way with personal finances is the only way. I am only sharing what has worked for us. For some of you, I will be presenting some “weird” ways that we look at money and I hope that you will challenge some of the concepts. I also hope that what I share pushes you to think differently about your own finances.

About four years ago, I was introduced to a financial “guru” for some people. His name is Dave Ramsey and he is unabashedly honest and unforgiving in his approach to personal finances. He hates debt with a passion, makes people feel miserable about their credit card usage, and has a few million listeners on 600 radio stations and daily podcast. His advice comes across as compassionate and yet very stern. There is not an episode of his podcast where he doesn’t attack one of the callers for their behavior but his advice hasn’t wavered since he started doing this over 30 years ago.

Oh and another thing. He is super religious and ends every show talking about how the only way to financial freedom is to follow Jesus Christ. Perfect advice for a nice Jewish guy who has worked in the Jewish community for over 10 years…

Now, I don’t agree with everything that he talks about (credit cards, mortgages, and following Jesus… sorry not going to change there) but he is the first person that introduced me to the concept of “live like no one else, so later you can live and give like no one else.”

There is something really powerful about this concept. The premise is that financially, you can make sacrifices now to better your financial future. You may have to give the new toys or fancy trips but if you can control your money than you get control over your whole life. And I have started seeing this come to fruition over the last few years.

While I will share more over the coming year about this, the summary is that before listening to Dave Ramsey, my wife and I had car debt, a home line of equity, medical debt, and home improvements that made our monthly paychecks disappear. As a nonprofit professional and self employed hairstylist, we were not rolling in the money by any means but our monthly payments for each of these debts was killing us. We would have money fights about every little dollar. We would make money and then turn the corner and ask where did all of the money go.

It was miserable. It was causing stress for me at work and between my wife and I. I can’t even count the number of arguments that we had over money. (I am sorry to my wife as it was mainly me doing the “questioning… I mean yelling.”)

And then I was introduced to Dave. I began listening to his daily podcasts and listened to his book, “The Total Money Makeover,” and things began clicking. While rough around the edges and disagreeing with some of his philosophies, I began following what he calls the baby steps (find out more in an article coming out later this year.) Things started turning around and in two years, we had paid off over $25,000 in debt.

We had decided to “live like no one else, so that later we could live and give like no one else.”

So yes, we could have bought a new car or even paid for the used car using a loan but there is something powerful being able to write a check yesterday and not having to worry about future payments on the car. We own it and someone else will not make money off of our payments or charge us more than the car is worth. While we had to sacrifice some of the bells and whistles on this car, we were able to get what we could afford and that feels great.

Oh and most importantly, my wife is happy that this whole process is over.

This is part one of a series of articles about how we are living like no one else today so that we can live and give like no one else in the future.