Rock Your Dave Ramsey Baby Steps with Triggator

Love him or hate him, Dave Ramsey has created a pathway to financial freedom that has worked for millions of people. Dave Ramsey’s baby steps were created as a guide to help rid people of the burden of debt while building wealth for the future.

If you’ve started his baby steps, but could still use a little help, Triggator’s online budget app is completely compatible with Dave Ramsey’s process and will help you on your journey to becoming financially independent.

Here’s how Triggator can guide you through the baby steps.

Starting a Budget (aka A Spending Plan)

Triggator is uniquely designed to help you budget each paycheck.

Your budget will be set up as a “spending plan” because a budget is simply a plan for your money.

When you start a budget with Triggator, you’ll be asked to enter your income and your pay frequency. This will allow Triggator to match bills with a paycheck.

You may have more than one income. For instance, if you have more than one job, if there is another member of your household (such as a spouse) that works, or a combination of both.

That’s ok! Triggator will split up each paycheck and you can assign bills to the paycheck of your choosing.

Building an Emergency Fund

Everyone knows that an emergency fund is an essential part of managing your money well. Something unexpected will always come up and you will need money set aside to help pay for the expense.

While later in the setup process, Triggator will help you choose savings goals and will break the goals into bite sized pieces.

Your spending plan will divide your goal amount into the number of paychecks you choose. It will put this small savings amount into your savings plan to save from each paycheck.

You can track your progress on your savings goal and always update the amount saved.

Debt Snowball

Triggator will also build the debt snowball right into your spending plan. This is an amazing tool that will help keep you motivated while paying down debt.

Early in the setup, you will enter all your debts that you want to use the debt snowball for.

You will probably want to enter your mortgage as a monthly expense rather than a debt, per the Dave Ramsey standard method.

Triggator will put your debt payments into your spending plan based on your minimum payments. To start the debt snowball, you will need to complete one more step.

Visit the Debt Plan section of Triggator.

Click on the Debt Analysis tab

From here, you can enter your “snowball amount”, that is, the extra amount you will be paying toward debt each month.

You will also choose if you want to start paying the lowest balance first or the highest interest first.

Related Article: Debt Snowball vs. Debt Avalanche – Which is Better?

Dave Ramsey would have you use the Debt Snowball method, paying the lowest balance off first. Within Triggator, you can choose which method you want to use (Debt snowball or debt avalanche.) We won’t tell .

Compare the two and see which method will work better for your family.

These screenshots below show a comparison of using the debt snowball method vs. the debt avalanche method.

Once you click “Make it So”, your spending plan will be updated to include your snowball payment on the first debt you are going to tackle.

You can track your progress when you visit the Debt Plan section of Triggator.

Sinking Funds

While not technically part of the baby steps, one of the best things that I ever did with my budget was create sinking funds.

This is where you save a small amount of money from each paycheck to pay an infrequent expense.

Here you will find a great list of expenses that don’t happen often, but you might forget about and break your budget when you have to pay for it.

We like to call these sneaky expenses “Alligator Expenses” because they like to sneak up on you and bite you right in the wallet.

Once again, this is something that Triggator can help you with.

• Choose the “Alligator Expenses” that you’d like to save for. Things like birthdays, holidays, car maintenance, etc.
• Decide how much you’ll need and when you need it by.
• Then choose which paycheck you’d like to save from.

Triggator will calculate how much you’ll need to save from each paycheck and add this to your spending plan.

You’ll be able to see what “Alligator Expenses” are coming up and if you have saved enough money to pay for it.

You’re On Your Way!

Now that you’ve established your spending plan and built in your savings and debt payoff plan, you are well on your way to keeping up with your Dave Ramsey baby steps.

After you’ve paid off your debt, you can switch your focus to other savings, like a college fund and retirement.

You can try Triggator free for 30-days and see how much it can help you on your way to financial peace.