Our story

It’s no secret that my wife and I are big Dave Ramsey fans. We spent 15 months paying off $21,521.66 of debt on a combined take-home pay of about $39,000/year, which doesn’t really work mathematically, but somehow it worked when we started keeping track of our money and living on an extremely tight written budget every month. God did amazing things to bring us to where we are today with a completely funded emergency fund and now savings for our kid’s birth in August. Soon we’ll start saving for a down-payment on a house, too. Because we no longer have any payments, we’re able to securely drop my wife’s income so she can be a stay-at-home mom when our child is born. Exciting! (A video of my wife and I sharing more details about our financial story can be found here.)

Since Dave Ramsey’s teaching has alleviated a lot of stress and pressure on me and Dana and our marriage, we thought it would be something important to teach high school kids as they start getting jobs, earning an income, and saving for the future. Me, Dana, and two other high school small group leaders have all made a lot of financial mistakes and wanted to help some teens avoid those same “normal” mistakes by having a biblical perspective on money and how it works. Naturally, we looked into Dave Ramsey’s Generation Change curriculum for youth groups and decided to try it out.

Generation Change

• At $169 for an 8-person start-up kit, it’s definitely pretty expensive. If they dropped the tshirts and charged half the price, I think the value would be more reflective of the kit’s contents.
• There’s 4 lessons total in the kit, each with an accompanying two-part DVD. Every lesson is supposed to take about an hour, but we found that with all the discussion, questions, stories, examples, and everything else that came up in the group time, each lesson really took about two hours. We ended up spreading it out over 8 weeks comfortably.
• At first our high school kids were a little leary of talking about such “grown-up” stuff, but after we got into the series, they really started appreciating it and were very thankful for it by the time we finished.
• Although the curriculum is laid out very clearly and is very easy to follow, it’s not something that could be given to just any youth leader and expected to go well. It definitely must be taught by leaders who agree with Dave Ramsey’s principles and are actively following them with their own personal finances. In fact, that’s where most of the value came for our group, as me, Dana and the other leaders put real-life flesh on the principles being taught with examples from our own mistakes, misconceptions, and even greed. All of us leaders were very transparent about our personal finances, which really helped the kids a lot. Without a passionate leader, the curriculum will probably have little to no affect.
• The DVD sessions are very well-done and professionally recorded. Most of it consists of Dave sitting with a group of teenagers, teaching one of the 4 major principles for about 7 to 10 minutes.
• The curriculum isn’t really as anti-debt as what you’d probably expect from something that comes from Dave Ramsey. Of course credit cards and school loans are addressed, but the emphasis is clearly on changing teens’ perspective of money. Themes like materialism, personal self-worth, giving to others, and saving are much bigger issues than debt.
• It would be easy for a curriculum like this to be really heavy on the nerdy stuff and really light on scripture, but fortunately it is not like that at all. Every lesson digs through scripture in addressing the financial principle and raises discussions from those passages. The curriculum does not really address the mechanics of money and how it works, but it is easy for the leader to include that kind of teaching if the kids are interested, like they were in our group.
• Generation Change is clearly geared toward high school students. I wouldn’t even attempt to do it with jr. highers.

Since it is over-priced, I recommend that you not purchase a student kit for every person going through it. Take the 8 student kits that are included with the leader’s kit, of course, but purchasing additional kits for each teen is not absolutely necessary. Give them a pen and legal pad instead if you really want them to write things down. The leader’s guide and DVDs are sufficient to teach the curriculum.

Oh, and remember, you can’t purchase Generation Change with a credit card. Debit cards only!

Summary

Generation Change is strong on helping communicate a biblical perspective of money to high school teens and it does so in a very practical and engaging way. It’s very well done, very professional, and very easy for any leader to follow and teach. However, it only gets three stars because it feels overpriced for the content, even when you stretch four sessions out to be eight.

Interlinc is giving away one free ConGRADulations 2009 set to any church who asks! You’ll have to part with some contact information to get it, which might not be worth it if it was just another compilation CD, but the ConGRADulations 2009 box contains a lot more than just music.

Of course the music CD comes with a bunch of music tracks from various Christian artists, but it also has a 48-page booklet containing some great stuff from Dave Ramsey (on financial issues) and Francis Chan (about avoiding the spiritual status quo). The set also has a media DVD containing videos from the two aforementioned guys, along with clips of other advice and wisdom for the big transition in life.

I personally have never given these sets away as graduation gifts, but I’ll be happy to take a free copy to check it out. Use the link below to get your free copy and evaluate it as a potential gift for one or more of the seniors graduating from your ministry this year.

More information about the ConGRADulations 2009 CD/DVD/Booklet set

Order your FREE Interlinc ConGRADulations 2009 CD/DVD/Booklet set

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details.

I have been waiting to write this post for a LONG time. I can’t believe it’s actually here! As of 9:00 AM on Tuesday, November 9th, 2008, we paid off our last debt, Sallie Mae, and are now officially DEBT FREE! This video is our story about how Dave Ramsey encouraged us to take control of our finances and the resources that the Lord entrusts to us.

My wife has a better blog record of our financial journey than I do, including the day we met with the financial adviser from church and started this process, the day we finally paid off the credit cards, and her debt-free post from this week. Now, here we are and we don’t owe a dime to anyone. Instead of sending our paychecks to other people (with interest), we get to use what God has blessed us with to bless others and our future family.

It really is an amazing feeling to be in control of your money, to eliminate financial stress, and to be good stewards of the resources God provides, no matter how large or how small they might be.

The process was very difficult for me, especially since Dana and I live on a youth pastor salary. Our bare bones monthly budget hardly balanced with my income! But as we started they journey in obedience to Him, the Lord really honored that and blessed us beyond our dreams. Over the course of the year, a got a raise at church and a health insurance situation that increased my income by $10,000 per year. Plus, the Lord provided work for Dana, prompted random people to give us financial gifts, my website started making money (even though it’s all free), and He gave us discipline to live on very tight budget: no eating out, no seeing movies, limited travel, and saying “no” to things that normally would cause us to splurge. It was tough, but as Dave Ramsey says, “Live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else,” and that’s exactly what we did!

A lot of people criticized our plan. Debt is unfortunately such a normal part of the American psyche that most people never consider what life might be like without it. Many “smart investor” people also told us that’s it’s foolish to pay off debt for many different reasons. The funny part is, they’re all broke! I’ll never take financial advice from a broke person! If they lost their jobs, they’d quickly start missing payments and within months would be filing for bankruptcy. Owing different companies a lot of money does not make you rich nor financially secure. In fact, this entire world would be a very different place if people followed this simple plan: Spend less than you make!

Dana and I paid off $21,521.66 in 15 months. When we started we estimated it would take over 2 years. Obviously, we did it in about half that time, not because we have a huge income, but because God blessed us once we started getting on track with our finances.

Our next steps are to save an emergency fund of 3-6 months worth of expenses. Once that is complete, we’ll start investing, saving for retirement, and especially saving for a down-payment on a house. Mathematically it will take us 2 or 3 years until we’re in a position to buy a house, but God has already proven that math doesn’t work right when He’s involved with the finances — He blesses like crazy!

I know he’ll do the same for you! Start by reading Dave Ramsey’s book, Total Money Makeover and checking out his website at DaveRamsey.com. I also HIGHLY recommend subscribing to his free podcast in iTunes and listening to 40 minutes of his radio show (commercial free) as your time permits. It will change your life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:04 — 93.1MB)