When I first dreamed of being debt free, I imagined myself paying off my debt and then celebrating by doing my “Debt Free Scream” on the Dave Ramsey show. I listened to the show religiously during the day at work and would imagine my own debt free celebrations. Honestly, listening to the Debt Free Screams kept me going on the rough days.
When Andy and I first got married, we discussed doing the scream together. Andy was a little uncomfortable with the idea of doing the scream with me. So we put the idea on the back-burner to re-discuss once we were actually debt free.
Now that we’re finally debt free, strangely, I don’t feel the desire to go onto the show anymore. There’s a number of reasons behind that decision that I just want to briefly touch on here.
I don’t agree with some of his advice, such as not using credit cards. (We pay our credit cards off in full each month, which allows us to travel for nearly-free. You can use credit cards, but you have to be responsible with them!) In fact, you can’t even go on his show if you used a credit card while on your debt-free journey, so that automatically would disqualify us. I also disagree with his more “advanced” financial advice, like investing. (I much prefer David Bach’s investing advice.)
Additionally, you have to have paid off your debt within the past 6 months to be on the show. Since we just moved to Iowa this summer and are going home to Kentucky for Christmas, there’s no way we could plan another trip so close to home so quickly (the Dave Ramsey headquarters are in Nashville.) Neither Andy nor I would be able to get the time off from work to make the trip; Andy will be going on an extra-long TDY this spring which just reinforces the fact we wouldn’t be able to make the trip.
So instead, we decided to film our own “Debt Free Scream” here at home. I watched some clips of Debt Free Screams on the Dave Ramsey show to generate some questions that Dave would probably ask us if we did go on his show as talking points for this very exciting vlog. In fact, this is the first (and possibly the last!) vlog I will ever film with Andy. He’s a little camera-shy, but happily joined me for this one because it meant so much to me 🙂