Recently our small group has had the opportunity to pilot the "Dave Ramsey Financial Freedom Study" for the church. Let me give you some background how this came about. One of our small group members asked if I thought we could do the Financial Freedom study with group. I'm the leader. My first thoughts were "Yuck!!!!! money stuff..... I'd rather have a root canal" Well, God had some work to do with me.

It was last November we were planning a trip to Savannah, Georgia for Frank's niece's wedding. I handled the money in our home and was so stressed because, as usual, I had no idea where the money was going to come from for us to go. All Frank kept telling me was "Sherry, just leave everything behind. Let's just go and have fun." Frank had no idea we had no money for the trip. He had gotten really stressed over our finances to the point of having a panic attack. So I took them over and didn't burden him with the details. I'm really good at denial. We ended up borrowing money from friends and went on our trip. It was fun, but the best part was God had been doing some work on my way of thinking.

The good friends we stayed with in Georgia, had been doing some sharing. They had their house 2 payments from being payed off. WOW! They had investments. They were frugal with things. For instance when I used their washer to do some laundry it was LOUD. Why didn't they just get a new one I thought? OHHHH maybe that's why their home was just about payed for. I kept thinking their our age, what do we have to show for all our hard work. NOTHING. Ouch!!!!!

Then to find out they even listen to that Dave Ramsey guy, my small group wanted to do. OK God, I hear you loud and clear. I get it. So we came home from Georgia and I planned to get serious about money. Surely I could figure this out once and for all. So, I contacted my small group friend and said let's do the course. Our debt trip began.