davidNprogress

I am a long-time listener of the Dave Ramsey show going back to when I first started getting fired up about being out of debt. We hit that milestone several years ago and thanks to his show being available 24x7 now on iHeart radio, I still listen often for motivation and information. After more than 20 years on the radio, Dave is consistent with his message and his method. Quite frankly, I wonder at times if some of the people calling in with questions have ever actually listened to the show. There are certain callers that every time are ensured to get blasted as they tell about the money mistakes they have made and their non-Dave approved strategies to fix them. Most recently I was listening when a fellow called in that was asking about what do with his car debt. As a recall, he was making less than $60,000 a year, had little savings, credit card debt, and payments on a $40,000 truck that he had purchased new. Through the radio, I could almost sense Dave’s blood pressure rise ...

I still remember the day I realized that my daily diet coke habit was stealing my retirement dreams. At the time, Coke was running a promotion using a code from a bottle cap to get prizes. You would save your cap, enter the number on a website and points would add up for something fabulous. I kept these caps in a desk drawer and it did not take long for these to really pile up since I had a long time frequent habit of visiting the machine at work several times a day. There was the before work Coke, mid-morning Coke, lunch Coke, mid-afternoon Coke and usually something towards the end of the day. One afternoon I looked at the pile of caps wondered how much in cost that represented. Next, I began to think about cost over time and if I continued this pattern what it would mean in the long term. The final kicker was when I plugged in my average monthly diet coke spending into a savings calculator and considered how much $5 a day applied to retirement could mean if saved for the ne...