I've been hearing this week from a lot of people that they were following the baby steps, felt they had completed them, and then went back into most of their old habits, if not all.
Where were you going with that?
This lifestyle is really difficult, and means that you need to maintain your vigilance.
There's financial stupid at every corner and it is being pushed on you - hard!
If you don't complete baby step 2 (eliminate all non-mortgage debt) and then move on to baby step 3 - a cash emergency fund parked in a savings account of 3 to 6 months of expenses - you will likely have something come up and you will most likely experience the reflex to borrow.
You must follow the steps in order. Kind of like real steps.
You sit today as the sum total of the financial decisions that you've made.
Are you satisfied? If you are, great!
If you're not satisfied, and you're still breathing, there's opportunity to improve.
There's no such thing as having worked through the baby steps. You'd be on baby step 7, which is where you're building wealth, giving, and having fun with money. It's still a step, and you would still be doing all of the same things you had been doing; allergic to debt, keeping that emergency fund high and dry, investing, saving for kid's education - you're never done the Baby Steps.
If you're doing something else, you're following another program or making your own up.
It's fine if you're making your own thing up, just don't be deluded. I don't think you can hope for the same results that you could experience if you just submitted yourself to a system that works.
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