Day 1: Creating new habits

Hi, my name is Kevin Willie. I am a husband, father, son, brother, and friend to a bunch of great people. Without all of them, I wouldn't be who I am and where I am today. Now don't get me wrong, where I am is not all that glamorous. I recently ruined my financial life after taking a new job that is actually a better job than I had before. I have had small problems getting along with my spouse recently, and I tend to be a very lazy individual. All of these things I'm not proud of, but I'm working on them and that is the purpose of the message behind these blog posts. I thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy day to read my thoughts.

I'll start with the basics. I was born in Mobile, Alabama. I am one of 3 children to a lower-middle class family. We didn't really miss any of the things we needed and even had some of the things we wanted. However, I always had high aspirations of being wealthy one day. I was very interested in money at an early age and even ran for class treasurer in the 4th grade (although unsuccessfully). My mother always harped on me about the importance of saving money and spending less than you make. However, I've always been a spender. I can just sense it. After high school, I went on to college at a small Baptist university in Hattiesburg, MS called William Carey University. It was a fun 4 years. I was a little bit lazy with my grades. I played on the golf team for a couple of years there and enjoyed that as well. I settled on a business degree simply because the school offered nothing else that I was interested in at the time. Looking back, I should have just gotten a Math degree now that I know that is what I enjoy the most, but I digress. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in....take a guess. YES! Finance. The guy who is writing a blog about being bad at managing his personal finances has a degree in Finance. So just know, that this can happen to people even when they claim to know about money. No one is safe from the capitalist consumer machine that is the United States economy. Therefore, please listen to my advice in this blog and know that being patient and holding onto your money will make you wealthy much more than financing that new car or buying that big house that you've always wanted. Stores of value will outlast any depreciating asset every time. Now that you know a little bit about me, let's begin with my journey to get out of debt and change my family's financial future for the better.


One day, while sitting at work, I came to the conclusion that I had literally no clue how to handle money responsibly. I'd been weaving my way around financial disasters for a few years now while previously leaning on credit cards to get me through the moments where I had used all my available cash. This only worked for so long before I began to feel the pressure and the math no longer came up with positive numbers while trying to determine how I'd pay all the credit cards at one time. Inevitably, I defaulted on my credit cards in 2017 and was forced to begin the scramble to figure out how to start to rebuild and how to begin to pay off what charged off debt remained. I've always been interested in the things taught by Dave Ramsey and his team of professionals. I've read many of their books and never actually put the concepts into practice in my own personal life. Looking back, that feels like a bad move *chuckle*. Either way, back to where I began. Sitting in my desk, I decided it was time to start living these concepts and put his plan into motion. I decided to begin a direct deposit into a savings account with Discover Bank (good APY and I highly recommend them for their online savings account platform and mobile app). I started by just deducting a small amount of every paycheck directly into the savings account. The amount I started with was $25. My first deposit occurred on December 15th and I'm looking for ways to build on that and continue to save small amounts at a time working toward my first $1000 saved and my primary emergency fund. As Dave always says, "save $1000 into a starter emergency fund and then knock out your debts." I am now on my way to rebuilding my financial life and getting out of debt. I know I'm not the first person to experience this type of financial crisis and attempt to rebound from it. I'm sure there are also plenty of you out there who have personal stories that are far more exciting and successful than mine. That is the reason I created this blog. I am looking for the inspiration to keep pushing from those of you out there who have been in my shoes before. Please feel free to share any comments or stories of your own. Your feedback and experiences are much appreciated and will help me along my journey. I definitely believe that multiple minds are stronger than one. Please check back for tomorrow's update to find out just how much I messed up with unsecured credit and what I'm planning to do going forward to get started knocking out every last dollar of it. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a wonderful evening.

                                                                                     Thanks,

                                                                                      Kevin