^^ Thanks for the offer you two.
I'm hopping off for a bit, but I'll message you later.
For the rest of you, I want you to imagine something.
I want you to imagine that you wake up one day and you're tired of the way you're living.
You're tired of whatever it is that's causing you to live that way so you set out to change.
You Google a few things and it leads you to a website that shows you how to fix the problem in your life.
You find that this website has a message board where other people who had fixed the same problem you have, are discussing how great life is now without that problem.
So you join.
You spill your entire life to them. Your family, your finances, where you live, etc.
You're brand new to this and you dont understand a lot of the things they're telling you.
You try to grasp the concept but these are people who fixed the problem you are having years and years and years ago.
It's second hand nature to them.
To you, it's brand new.
You're a child, walking for the first time.
They are adults, running, doing marathons.
When you ask questions, you get sniped at for not knowing the answer.
For being so stupid to not understand.
For not realizing the intricacies of what you just learned 3 days prior.
You're called a troll. A dumbass.
How would you feel?
How long would you stick around?
Some of you are great people. But many of you, you're so used to this life that you dont realize that there are people who don't know the first thing about it.
The fact you take the time to thoughtfully respond shows a lot about your character.
I think it's impressive you're open to changing your entire worldview to make a better life for your family. I think a lot of times people use language that gets the point across, rather than as if we were having a conversation with each other. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and can have the opposite effect of helping inspire someone.
To ME you are living a very typical American lifestyle. So yeah, this is a huge mindshift for you to come here and be open to a different way of living.
The first time I was exposed to MMM's ideas it was a link a thread on the forums sent to me by a friend. I've always lived fairly simply, more from a hippie-ish social group than from being good with my money, and I was so turned off by the judgmental attitudes from a few people I clicked out and didn't come back for years until I ran across an actual MMM article.
This pretty much sums up my feelings too:
"Thanks Swick. Mr MM deals out brutally honest facepuches, but he is never a jerk about it."
One thing that took me a long time to figure out when I've looked for ideas about something in my life is that you have to sort out what works for you and what doesn't. Take the parts that make sense to you right now and apply those, then slowly add to your changes as you develop those new money skills. Some of the things I tried in the past to 'fix' my finances didn't work and some things that seemed impossible are pretty easy for me to do now. You're on the right path already by just researching ideas in the first place!
I also agree that you should start a journal.
:)