Journal Entry 6/20/19 DA Success Story:
On 3/1/19, I decided to get healthy around money. Getting healthy habits about my money became a priority. It came easy because I had the tools of DA, Dave Ramsey, and my parents as mentors.
Birthday Gift for Wife Success! I have for the last 5 or 6 years been really bad at gifting for Meagan. I either only produce a cheap card with a note or actually buy something unwanted, not-so-relative, or random and she really doesn’t appreciate it….and I can always tell. This year, it was a different story. I sold four solar panels for $97 each. That was great because my wreckage from the past decreased and the free-space in my yard increased. The income for the four panels was $388. Somehow, I turned the project over and asked God for help coming up with a nice present for Meagan’s 35th birthday gift. Ah ha! Private shag lessons for the two of us. I called and a company in Cayce had a package “Buy 5 lessons and you get one for free” – well the lessons were $70 per 50 min session. $70 x 5 sessions = $350. Realizing that that is a lot of money and more than I wanted to spend. I reached out to my action partner in DA, Debtors Anonymous.
He suggested that I should shop around to see if there are other prices available and that yes, “that seemed oftly pricy” for a birthday gift. I looked up one company, didn’t like their stuffy website. I found another that offered private dance lessons, and I called them to check prices. They did not have the package available as the other company but said that lessons were $75 per hour. Ok, now we were getting somewhere. When I went to get the gift certiciate from the dance studio, the gentleman already had the gift certificate printed out and in an envelope because I told him I was coming.
I felt bad actually telling him that I was on a budget and only wanted to get three sessions instead of the package. He surprisingly said I’m on a budget too and sure! Its not problem, I can reprint this real quick. So I spent 3 x $70 = $210 and had $178 left over to pay towards my debt snowball. As I was leaving, I could tell that he liked me. He gave me two business cards and on the back of each card was one free dance lesson. HA! So I ended up getting 5 dance lessons for the price of 3. This was my higher power doing for me what I could not do for myself.
Major lessons
- Paused and reached out and called about major purchase
- I actually took the time to shop around for prices
- I took what I needed and not $140 more just to get one hour free
