Okay, whoever said “The earlier bird gets the worm” ought to be shot! Getting up early is way over rated. I started riding DART this week to save some money on gas. When I started putting $60 a week in my fuel efficient car I said somethings gotta change and it’s not going to be the gas prices. My commute to work is 50 miles a day, which isn’t horrible compared to some but when you add driving to and from Dallas 4 or 5 times every weekend it starts to add up. So I decided to ride DART. I get a HUGE discount through my work on an annual Dart pass. I only pay $36 a year for my annual pass, compared to Jonathan’s pass that we pay double that each month. Well, in order to get to work on time, I have to get up at 4:30 in the morning–4:30 . That’s EARLY…granted I only got up 30-40 minutes later when I drove, but still. So I catch the bus at the Glenn Heights station at 5:45 and ride to Union Station in downtown Dallas and then ride the TRE rail to market center and walk a mile to our clinic. Not too bad, and I get some more exercise–especially when I have to run to catch the train because the bus is late (that’s another story). I don’t mind riding the bus/train and I don’t mind getting up early for it, but I do not like being tired because of it. I’m sleepy! All to save money–geeze.
The reason behind all that is this -> Jonathan and I have decided to do the Dave Ramsey pay off your debt, live debt free thing. My suggestion was to sell Jonathan’s truck and live with one car until we get it all paid off…I dont’ think he went liked that idea. So that’s why I decided to stop driving and the money we save on gas may offset the car payment on his truck and in return give us more money to pay off debt. So if we tell you no when you ask us to go out to eat with you, it’s not because we don’t like you or want to…we are just trying to save some money to live debt free. It’s not like we have this huge amount of debt but more than we want to live with or are at peace with. So if becoming debt free means riding the dart bus, running in downtown dallas at 6:00am with 10 pound clogs on to catch the train and standing on the bus the whole way home because there are no more seats, I’ll do it for a while.
Good for ya’ll! There are very few people who have the guts and discipline to live debt free. That’s been our motto since we got married and we’re so glad we stuck with it and God has seen us through it. We were talking about the Ramsey series the other day and we’re both interested in hearing what he has to say to see if we could take our finances to the next level…to find out if there’s anything we’re not doing but could be… Did ya’ll read a book or listen to cds or what? Recommendations?
By the way, that is definitely an ungodly hour to get up! =)