I have always dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom, and now, with our third child due in April and our decision that I will quit my job even though my husband won’t graduate this year, we are trying to get “gazelle intense” as Dave Ramsey says and make the most of my income. Here are our goals for the remaining few months until the baby is born and our progress:

Save 5 months’ of living expenses. After I quit and my husband takes over as the breadwinner, our income will drop by about 1/3. However, before that happens, we would first have to live off of his assistantship & part time work. I would like a cushion to help us deal with that. Thus far we have saved 49%, which is approximately 2.5 months of living expenses. (I am afraid that we may need to dip into this a bit at the end of the month; I just found out we will owe more for his fees for the semester than I had anticipated.)

Have 2 no spending months. Just based on my salary and our expenses, I do not have enough extra income to save 5 months’ of living expenses. One of the ways we plan to get around this problem is by having several no spending months and putting the difference away. This not happened yet. However, we have had a grocery spending limit one month and this month we are having a needs only month and a pantry challenge.

Pay off 50% of my business debt. Yes, I opened my business 4 years ago before I had every heard of Dave Ramsey. In the first two years, I accumulated quite a bit of debt. I want to pay off 50% (or more, if I can) of that debt. Then when I quit my job, we can use some of my eBay income to live off of instead of to repaying debt. Unfortunately we made very little progress on this this month. E-bay pulled all of my listings because I didn’t have a return policy and I just got them all back up. Without the bulk of my inventory listed, I made very little money. Unfortunately, I have actually lost progress and am now at only 5% paid off. Hopefully sales will start to increase in the coming month.

Sell at least $500 worth of extra household items on eBay. In December I sold $108,(in addition to the $202 I sold in September – November) so I have sold a total of $310, making this goal 62% complete.

I’ll report back every month and let you know how we are doing!