I like Dave Ramsey in general, but I think people with some financial knowledge can do better than his program. I don't use debt, and I write a budget, but I think his advice is for those with little to no financial understanding. I'm not going to work like this forever, but I am in a rapidly expanding start up. It is a sacrifice for now, and the 80 hour weeks aren't a constant. In actuality I have a great work life balance. I just landed a few big deals at once that demanded my full attention. By the end of the year I will have worked about 2500-2700 hours which is only 500-700 hours of overtime. And most of my overtime comes in the 5-8 AM window. I will take a vacation or two, and when I am on vacation I do my best to totally disconnect. I also coached a baseball team and a swim team for my kids. Stress level is pretty near 0 right now. If this thing went south tomorrow I'd have savings and plenty of jobs I could walk right into.
I used to do the same thing but I haven't done it in a long time. After reading @LSUsupaFan s post I now carry a couple of empty cups from Circle K. Next time I want some water when I'm out I'm going to use one. Some clerks will even let you fill them up with a soft drink and not charge you. The store charges for the cup, not the beverage. A friend of mine who has plenty of money drinks lots of Diet Cokes. He never has any cash and the stores he goes to end up giving him the drinks for free because they don't like to run a credit card for such a small purchase
I usually always have a few dollars on me but I pay for almost everything with a debit card. Right now I have about $15 on me and its been over a week since I broke the $20 bill. There is one store i stop at almost every day whose credit card machine is always breaking but it hasn't broke for over a week. Not too long ago I stopped at one of those independent convenience stores for coffee. I didn't have any cash on me. I had already poured the coffee. I think it was about $1.29. When I got to the counter the clerk told me they didn't accept credit cards for any purchase under $5.00 but he let me have the coffee for free. The chain stores like Circle K or 7-11 will run a card no matter how small the purchase but the independent stores are usually owned by Arabs or Asians. Almost all of them have some limit. One time I went to a small Chinese restaurant that had a lunch special for $4.50. They refused to take my card until I bought an extra egg roll to run the price up over $5.00
Me, either. I'm also not always in search of something free. I don't mind buying something if I find the price reasonable. That's the key with pretty much everything I buy. The house I live in, the clothes I wear, etc. It's assinine to me that people would spend $500 on a pair of shoes. Whatever. I won't be doing that. They can if they want to.
Ahh, balance. More people should have it. I agree. It's also asinine to spend $25 on a pair of shoes. I will pay whatever it costs to get a pair of shoes that don't hurt my feet and are made to last. But I won't spend a dime on status. You won't see me in $650 Gucci dress shoes when a $120 pair of Rockports I bought 20 years ago still look good and feel good. I don't wear them much anymore, I'll probably have them for the duration. I no longer own a suit and only a few ties for nostalgic reasons, I suppose. My main dress shoes these days are $45 Chuck Taylor monochromes.
My feet hate those kinds of shoes. Most uncomfortable things ever made. Remember the old Birkenstock shoes that used to be popular back in the 90s? Yeh a nightmare for feet like mine. I usually spend the $150 for a good pair of asics, then wear them for the next yr. And 99% of my wardrobe is LSU shorts and LSU t'shirts. I'm 39, been with my girl for 6 yrs... I don't have a need to dress to impress. As for water, the Bossier City water has a nasty almost sulphur smell and weird taste to it with a light yellow tinge. It's disgusting, we have to buy 2 cases of bottled water a week. I will not drink our tap water.
The odds are that you have fallen for the most successful marketing campaign in history --Time and time again http://observer.com/2015/05/which-was-the-best-and-most-successful-marketing-campaign-in-history/
I don't drink bottled water in Baton Rouge because our water comes from deep wells and it tastes great. I drink bottled water in cities where the tap water tastes horrible (like Winnfield or Dallas) or from places where they get their water from a river or reservoir and they must put so much chlorine in it that it is foul with a chemical smell.
