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Financial Peace University – My FPU Todo List
Over the past few months, my wife and I have attended Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University study at our church (of course you’ve breathlessly awaited each post I’ve done on our experiences!). During the process, I’ve been compiling a TODO list of all the things we need to tweak in our financial plan. Now that we are finished with the course, it’s time to put more effort into the actual implementation of the items on my list (I probably should have been working on them all along, but that’s water under the bridge now).
Thus, I will share my original list here and probably do some status updates as we work through it. If you have any comments, suggestions, questions, or just anything to share about any of the items on the list, please drop a comment (after you see the length of the list, you’ll realize that I need all the help I can get!).
Without further ado, here’s the list…
- Plastic surgery on some of our credit cards – we have a lot of credit cards (major credit cards, bank credit cards, retailer cards, etc) and we need to pare them down for piece of mind and ease of administration. Some we have not used in years, so it’s time for most of them to go!
- A cash trial – Ramsey preaches the power of cash throughout his course. We have never tried to use exclusively cash in all our years of marriage, so I suppose it is time to give it a faithful try and see how it works for us. Note: we have actually started this one.
- A workable budget spending plan – Especially with my wife not working for at least a few months, it’s time to get serious about creating a realistic and workable budget and then actually living by it and updating it each month. Note: we have actually created a rough budget but need to tweak it while my wife is off work for maternity leave/retirement.
- Periodically check our credit reports – Leveraging the free credit reports from the three major reporting bureaus, it is possible to view a free report every four months.
- Investigate identity theft protection – We currently have no ID theft protection coverage, so it’s time to investigate and probably purchase some.
- Investigate updating our life insurance – My wife and I currently are a few years into our 20-year term policies. Since having our fourth child, however, we need to evaluate whether that is still sufficient.
- 401(k) tweaks – I need to evaluate modifying my contribution to my 401k plan, specifically should I shift more of those contributions to the Roth 401k portion of the plan? I’d also like to up my overall contribution percentage but that is probably not feasible right now.
- Convert to a Roth IRA? – Is 2010 the year to convert my old rollover IRA to a Roth IRA? I’ll find out.
- Investigate increasing my college savings contribution – self-explanatory.
- Evaluate my current job – Is 2010 the year to change to a different job or even a different company. I’ll find out.
- Decide what to do, if anything, with our current mortgage – If my wife is no longer working, then our mortgage payment is a bit larger than I’d like it to be. But what to do about it? I need to evaluate whether it makes sense to refinance or move or stay put. This gets interesting due to the fact that we owe more money on our mortgage than zillow says our house is currently worth.
- Get title insurance – We did not purchase title insurance when we bought our current house, so I need to evaluate what it would take to get some now. Obviously, if any changes are made to our mortgage or housing situation, that will affect our plan of action for this item as well.
- Sell everything we don’t need – Getting rid of stuff, either by selling or donating it, is really a win-win! I love to end up with less clutter and putting a little extra money in your pocket is just icing on the cake.
So the easy part is done (creating the list), now it’s time to get to work on the hard part! As I mentioned, if you have any suggestions or comments or advice, please share – I’d appreciate the help.
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4 Responses to “Financial Peace University – My FPU Todo List”
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LOVE your attitude and plan John! Here are a few thoughts on some of your items:
Cash Trail: This was tough to get used to for me, but in retrospect it accelerated my success by developing new emotions about spending money. I highly recommend it!
Cut up the cards: Always a win! I did the same thing a few years back and love my new life.
Budget: I’d say this is the highest priority. It will take a few months to get it working well, but if you stick to it you’ll surely succeed. Check out some of my posts about budgeting for some tips.
ID-Theft: Zandar. 10 min. 12.50/month. Done!
The hardest part is getting on the right track and I’m excited for you and your family you’ve got a great plan. This process will certainly have an extreme positive impact on your entire family. So cool!
@Deacon – thanks very much for the positive feedback! It’s inspiring to hear someone who has been down the path already telling you that the path is worth traveling!
John: My wife and I are FPU leaders, currently in our 4th class. We are still working on many things, but are finally in Baby Step 7. It is a road worth travelling!!! Would challenge you on one category. Your Blog is titled “Borrow from None” (which I love), but your approach to CREDIT Cards sounds like “Borrow from Some”. Have you really changed your behavior if you cut up SOME or MOST of the cards? As Dave points out, Debit Cards can do everything Credit Cards can, except run up debt or serve as an emergency fund! We are living debt-free personally and with our small business, and it is the only way to go!! Keep up the good work and get out the scissors!
@Grant – Thanks for the challenge and you make a great point about the credit cards. I haven’t sold my wife on going completely cash yet – it’s something we’re still discussing. Since we always pay them off each month, I don’t think she sees the difference between credit and debit cards. So, although we aren’t all the way there, getting rid of most of the cards is at least a step in the right direction. I guess you could say we’re going in baby steps with it! Maybe the next baby step, since we can’t seem to pull the trigger all the way, would be to at least remove the cards from our wallets. Congrats on reaching step 7 – that still seems like a long way off for me!