Dear Dave,
My wife and I are in Baby Step 2 of your plan, and we’ve got our twentieth wedding anniversary coming up in a few months. We had always planned on taking a 10-day luxury trip to celebrate, but now that we’re trying to get out of debt it seems pretty unrealistic. Should we pause the Baby Steps and celebrate like we originally planned, or would it be better to concentrate on paying off debt?
Don
Dear Don,
If it were me, I’d want to pause and celebrate in a smaller way. Then, in a year or two when you’ve reached your goal of being debt-free, you could have a big double celebration — for your anniversary and for gaining control of your finances.
Think about it. Why isn’t the twenty-first, twenty-second or twenty-third anniversary just as big as the twentieth? No reason really. It’s just an arbitrary milestone we as human beings decided on and created. But you can “undecide” stuff like that anytime you want.
If you two, as a couple, are in agreement on that point, then it suddenly becomes easier to delay pleasure in order to win. And trust me, when you agree on things like that, the celebrations become even sweeter!
—Dave
* Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. He has authored five New York Times best-selling books. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 11 million listeners each week on more than 550 radio stations and digital outlets. Dave’s latest project, EveryDollar, provides a free online budget tool. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com.
