A Ramsey No No

For those of you that are fellow fans of Dave Ramsey and becoming debt free, I have a confession to make.

In order to keep from going further into debt (We currently owe tens of hundreds of thousands on our happy home) and to avoid making payments we simply could not afford, we decided to save up for our next automobile.

Unfortunately, our previous automobile refused to cooperate with this plan and we were forced to look around for something different last year.

They say that if you have to get some sort of financing, you should get pre-approved from your financial institution. So, we dutifully took care of that.

But, when we found the vehicle we wanted at a lot run by the Serbian mafia, we ran into a snag. Our credit union wouldn't give us the funds until they had the title in hand. The car dealer wouldn't give up the title until they had the money in hand. They went back and forth and were at an impasse. We had to find another solution.

So, we used one of those check offers from a credit card company that they keep sending in the mail. Apparently you can just write the amount of the car you want on a check, they cash it for you at the bank and you have interest free money for a year. As long as you actually pay it off in a year. Otherwise, you will have to pay interest, not only for the money you still owe, but for all the money you borrowed too.

We paid that thing off this month. Now that is worth celebrating. Now, if we could only find a little money in our monthly budget to start putting some away for the next vehicle. These things seem to wear out on a regular basis.

***********Warning*************

Do not actually try doing what we did. If you do, you are probably an idiot and will end up paying tons of extra money in interest that you never would have had to if you just waited and saved your money.

And you will offend every Ramsey acolyte in the world, which is why I didn't make this confession until we paid for our knowing blunder.