I have been reading a lot about Dave Ramsey on blogs and watching videos on YouTube of him, or people who follow him. One of my New Year’s resolutions this year is to spend less money so I can save more. I have been trying to figure out ways to do this. After listening to Dave Ramsey’s advice, I am going to work toward his 7 goals. You can read more about his goals here, but I am only going to talk about the first one because that’s where I’m at … step 1. Oh boy.

Goal #1 he says before anything else is to get $1,000 into a savings account as quick as you can. This is a small emergency fund as you start your debt reduction and savings journey.

A little background on me, we are definitely in debt. Not a huge debt, but enough to where I have had it with credit card bills and we have had a few VERY close months. My husband and I bought a house and began renovating it even before we moved in. It is a fixer for sure, but we love it and it is becoming more and more comfortable. I will share about some of our do-it-yourself renovations in later posts. Anyway, we have a pretty big (for us) mortgage payment. We have also acquired credit card debt from buying furniture, building supplies, and decorations to make our house a home. I will admit… I compulsively buy things online that I really don’t need, but I’m going to stop this habit. We also have been eating out A LOT since we moved in because I am not the best cook, but I’m working on it. All of these small purchases have amounted in several credit cards with a good amount of debt on them.

I REALLY want to start a college fund for my son, invest, and save for retirement some day. In thinking about these goals I really need to get rid of this debt because we are throwing our money away in interest payments. That is were my google searches led me to Dave Ramsey’s advice. So here I am… at goal #1… trying to figure out where my cool $1,000 is going to come from when things are so tight already. Here are my ideas:

1. I have some extra chromebooks that purchased with my own money that I had previously used in my classroom and I no longer need now that my school is providing chromebooks for all the students. I could sell these chromebooks maybe for $100 each? That could be $500 if I’m lucky right?
2. We have some extra furniture that we decided we don’t need in the house that I could sell on those neighborhood apps.
3. We had a bunch of crushed soda cans that we had been collecting since we moved here that we turned in last week. $40 came from the recycling of the cans, but hey… every bit counts.
4. I recently downsized to a plug in Prius which I mentioned in my post here. This brought my monthly car payment down quite a bit and should help my gas expenses as well. I could dump the extra money that would have gone to my car into our savings account.
5. Meal planning- I spend SO much money on groceries for my small family and honestly a lot of food goes to waste. I can be more intentional with my shopping and meal planning to make budget friendly meals my boys will actually eat. I will post about any successful meals in a later post. I said above that I am not a great cook.
6. Eating Out- Done. Over. No More. At least for now. We blow a lot of money on eating out. We don’t even go anywhere great, just fast food, but WAY too often. If we don’t go out, we should have some extra funds at the end of the month.

That’s all I got so far… but that is ok, it’s a start. I am going to try these 6 things for the rest of this month and see if I can get that Goal #1 accomplished. $1,000 emergency fund is my end of January goal. Let’s see how it goes. I will update at the end of the month how it went and if I was able to reach Goal #1.

Do you have any other tips to help save money in a pinch? I would love to hear more ideas. What works for you? Anyone else dug their way out of debt and have some tips for the rest of us? Anyone need a chromebook?? :0)