I grew up in a broken home and the only thing I knew about money is that we didn’t have any while I lived with my mother. After moving to my dad and stepmother’s house, things seemed much better, that is until a man came to the front porch and nailed a notice of foreclosure on the support column. By the time I graduate from high school, we had moved at least twenty times, sometimes in the middle of the night. For a short time, we lived in our van or slept in a garage. Thankfully the garage had heat and running water. When I was fourteen years old, I learned about managing money. A lawyer sent a letter to my dada saying pay up or you are going to court. I didn’t want that to happen, because I knew we just couldn’t afford it. So I went to the lawyers office and negotiated a payment plan. For the next year, I had my dad give me his bills, I listed them and paid on the everyday ones and paid down on the older debt. This worked well until my dad gave up on it. Even so, I later got in debt after buying a car and spending too much money on it. The car was reposed and I compounded the problem by getting into debt with student loans. It took a few years, but being inspired by Dave Ramsey, I was able to pay off all of my debt and now enjoy living a debt free lifestyle. - Eric Hart
Growing up, my parents invested a lot of time and energy in making sure our family had everything we needed. My mom was very frugal and my dad worked countless hours. However, they didn’t teach me about how to manage my own money, they always took care of it for me. While they did shield me from having to worry about thing like finances, the net result is that I didn’t learn much about managing money. As a result, I was soon piling on the student loan debt, bought a car without knowing how to negotiate and maxing out several credit cards. Not long after I had to sell many of my belongings, just to be able to keep my car in order to get to work to pay the rest of my bills. Something had to change and it did after I discovered many of the things that Dave Ramsey teaches. – AJ Jackson
