Financial Peace University - What If I'm Doing It Wrong?

Dani and I are getting ready to lead the next Financial Peace University class at our church starting January 28. As I have been reviewing the leadership material, I'm wonder two things:

1. Do the people who have signed up for this have any idea what they’re getting into? I sure didn’t. On the first night that I went to FPU I was terrified of all the stuff I was sure I wouldn’t understand—words like “budgeting” and “allocated spending.” Along with my weird phobia toward numbers and math, I was certain I was going to hate every second of this class. But Dave Ramsey was surprisingly entertaining and he made the whole concept of money management easy to understand. And, thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of math involved, just common sense.

2. Have I created any false hope in those attending? Everywhere that Dani and I have spoken about FPU over the last month or so—newspapers, radio, area churches—I’ve been careful to say, “When you COMMIT yourself to the plan, and are DEDICATED to following the baby steps, this program works.” Commitment. Dedication. This is what it takes. This plan doesn’t work because it’s some magic formula, or because it’s “Dave Ramsey’s plan,” it works because it’s common sense, Biblical-based stuff that has obvious and measurable success when you APPLY yourself to it. I hope I’ve done a good job at making that clear so that people who don’t apply themselves, who aren’t dedicated, don’t become discouraged or upset with me when the plan doesn’t work for them.

We had about 40 people take the class last year. Unfortunately at our one year reunion only about 10 people showed up. I’m sure that in some cases there were scheduling difficulties, and in other cases there was simply a lack of interest, but I fear the biggest reason not many people came to the reunion is shame. I think too many people failed to put any effort into the plan and thus didn’t see much success. Therefor the idea of getting back together with their class to talk about it was probably embarrassing. 

We have almost 60 people signed up this time around, not including anyone who might choose to retake the class, which is very exciting! I’m hopeful that everyone who attends will work to make it just as successful in their lives as it has been for Dani and me. And I hope that at our next reunion in 2015 there’s a bigger turnout with many more success stories.

Keep pinching’ :-)