Scott Walton
Ramsey Solutions Preferred Master Financial Coach

I grew up in an average American home.  My parents worked hard and always had provided for me and my brothers.  I went off to college, and like most college kids in the mid-late 1980s, I secured my first credit card.  I had struggled with school and I eventually had to pay for college myself, leveraging student loans to see me through.  I mean, I will be making a great salary when I get out, right?  Like many people, I did find the love of my life in school and we actually married with her just graduated, and me with one year of school left.   I earned my degree in 1993, we had a total of about $15K in Student loan debt, but now we were making about $55K in salary, which was so much more than we had ever seen.  We then spent that first year out of school completing the newly-married "trifecta" - We bought a car (using debt), bought a house (more debt), and had a son (hello child care expenses!). Onto living the American Dream, leveraging our ablity to accumulate debt! We spent the next several years blessed with two more boys, moving "up" in house, and buying a new car whenever paying off the previous one.  We were actually making enough money to go through a couple periods with two car payments when "necessary", of course.  We were also putting in maybe some 2-3% away to retirement, which I knew wasn't nearly enough - but hey, I have plenty of time right?  I typically handled the finances which over time which helped me to effectively hide the more and more fragile house of cards we were living in.  I made some terrible choices that severely damaged our marriage, both relationally and financially to the tune of $52K, and my wife was only aware of about $25K of.  The rest I had been hiding from her.  The house of cards toppled in October, 2005. Through our committment to Jesus Christ, holding onto our marriage, and some great praying family and friends, our marriage started to truly heal.  By the late spring of 2006 we were on a good path to marital recovery, but we still had this issue of our finances to resolve and were really struggling to find the best way to do this.  We knew there HAD to be a way, but we could not see it.  While I was on a business trip, a friend let my wife know of a book titled "The Total Money Makeover", and she read it in one day.  She called me that night and said "I found the answer, and you are going to have to sell your car!".  At this point, we were really seeing the benefits of making "drastic" steps to effect drastic and meaningful change in our life.  We were "all in" as soon as I got home and read the book. We were able to map some things out and we set the goal of having all the debt paid in 18 months.  Through a lot of tears, life, and celebrations on each step of the way, we paid off all our debt (Baby Step 2) in December 2007, which was 17 months.   In May 2008, we had our 6 month's emergency fund (Baby Step 3) built up, and one month later, I was laid off from my job.  However, I was blessed with 6 month's severance and we were able to put this relatively new idea of "Financial Peace" to the test.  I knew I had up to a year to find the "right" job, and not just "a job".  Fortunately I found the right position in 4 months so we made money on the deal.   Ever since then, we have been living in Financial Peace much of the time.  It is not always easy, and it certainly has had its challenges along the way, but living this way has enabled us to travel, move away from the city to buy our dream home, and even have the financial freedom to leave my corporate job to go into business for myself.   Living our lives in this financial freedom has been a game-changer in our marriage, careers, home, giving, and community.   I love to teach FPU whenever I can, to encourage others that there can be financial peace in your life.   It takes work.   It takes commitment.   It takes perseverance. But, it absolutely works and it can be such a blessing to your family and others in your world. It is my desire to share this information with as many people I can to guide them to their own version of financial freedom. It works if you do!