As a whisker-come-lately and a fan of Dave Ramsey, I'm curious as to how these two GooRoos match up from beginning to end.
Well, maybe more at the beginning, the stage my wife and I are in at the moment.
To get up to date, since I last posted in this thread, I have put in my notice at the OR job and accepted a position in CA that pays about 130k, more than double the OR job. My wife has accelerated her game and is now raking in 700-800 per week, a drastic increase from the 1200 per month she was making when first I posted in these hallowed halls.
The LandMonster and Sentra still exist in our portfolio as basically debts on wheels, because though the LM is paid off it drinks gasoline like it's going out of style and we still have a loan on the Sentra.
The Sentra shows a blue book quote of 11700. We are asking 10900 but owe 10853 as of today. We are willing to go as low as 10500 to get rid of it. I showed the Sentra to a potential buyer yesterday and will show it today. We had one offer of 10000 cash, but that would mean putting in 853 of our own dollars to get rid of it...just a little too painful. I'm leaving in a week or 10 days and hope to get rid of it before then, so if nothing else comes along we might take that offer.
We plan to sell the LM when we have enough saved up to pay cash for its replacement, as I refuse to get another car loan at this juncture.
I know Dave Ramsey is more of a get out of debt guy, while MMM is a FIRE guy, but what about at first? Is saving up 6 months of wages FIRST the way to go? If that's true then I don't see how we could begin getting out of debt for 9 months or so. Perhaps saving up a few thousand would be the way to go first, as six months of wages for us would be about 50k now, which takes a while.
The next step, after putting away this emergency fund, would be to save for buying the LM's replacement, correct? After all, it is a ticking time bomb of repairs that sucks down gas at 8 mpg.
When this is done, start snowballing the 19k in CC debt, followed by an all out assault on the student loans. Then debt free. Then FIRE.
But I'm really curious as to the first goals and am asking for the Wisdom of the Mustaches.