Hope for your financial life and beyond

Every Job Teaches a Lesson

Lifeguard Tower“In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty.” – King Solomon, Proverbs 14:23

All labor brings a profit, as it should. We use that profit to provide the basic necessities for living, to purchase items we want and to create more profit by investing in the marketplace.  The desire to take care of ourselves and build wealth is a huge reason we work each day.

However, the term “profit” can convey more than just financial gain. We also use that term to describe how something is beneficial or will give us an advantage in some way. For example, it would not be profitable for me to drive in the wrong direction on the freeway. It would be deadly!

So in relation to work, personal profit could mean more than just money. Through work we can also learn about ourselves. We learn about relationships. We learn about influence, perseverance, and sacrifice. We learn, in many ways, simply how the world operates.

I’ve had eight jobs in my life and each one taught me a different, valuable lesson. So here are the life lessons I’ve learned from work, from my first job to my present one.

[Read more…]

Students Comparison Shop for Generics and Save Big!

comparison shopDoes your child ever groan when you buy generic brands at the grocery store? That’s what happened recently on one of my shopping trips. I was trying to comparison shop when I reached for the generic brand peanut butter.

“Dad, do we have to get that?” whined my 12-year-old daughter. “We always get Jif.”

“You don’t even eat a lot of peanut butter,” I replied. “Besides, your sister is the peanut butter connoisseur of the house. Let’s test it out and see what she thinks.”

Much to her chagrin, her five-year old sister loved it! Oh, did I mention our food budget also liked it?  There’s a $1.80 difference between comparable jars of Publix peanut butter and Jif and a $2.50 difference between the Publix brand and Skippy or Peter Pan.

This led me to do some field research on food prices, using my high school personal finance class as data collectors. I gave them a list of about 20 items and asked them to comparison shop the difference between name brands and generics at their local grocery store. They were then to calculate the difference they would save by buying the generic brand.

The result was a real eye opener for them.

Comparison Shop Data: Name Brands vs. Generics

[Read more…]

Can We Ever Step Off the Gas With Our Finances?

Sit at home or enjoy lifeI love competition. Better yet, I love to win. Doesn’t matter if it’s a marathon, a card game, or playing Horse with my 10-year old son in the driveway. (He hasn’t beaten me…yet.) I want to come out on top.

This competitive spirit also works its way out when I prepare our monthly budget. I love seeing if I can reduce the prior month’s spending amount for each budget category, thus being able to save more. I know, it’s a little sick. I’ve made budgeting into my own personal can-you-top-this contest.

Some may like that I’m this intense. After all, isn’t this level of passion necessary to win with money?

Well, yes…but not when the kids go naked because you haven’t purchased clothes in six months. That’s a little too intense. (Disclaimer to grandparents, family and friends and DFCS: Just using hyperbole here. No kids are actually going without adequate clothing in our house.)

The issue though is valid to consider.

When can we loosen the reigns on the budget? Do we have to drive hard all the time? When can we take our foot off the gas just a little bit? We free spirit spenders want to know.

My answer may be frustrating and seem like a cop-out. [Read more…]

Hey Parents…It’s OK to Create Cheap Memories

Honor Guard PTC ParadeI’m a parent…four times over. Like anyone else, I love seeing my kids enjoy themselves. And I’ve spent a lot of money the past 12 years in an effort to create plenty of fun and lasting memories for each one of them.

We’ve done Disney and Sea World – several times. We’ve rented the condo at the beach. We’ve booked the Royal Caribbean cruise. We’ve done the day trips to the Georgia Aquarium, the Atlanta Zoo, and the Coca-Cola museum.

All were awesome experiences with great memories. However, they all required major budget planning sessions. The vacations forced us to save for months.

Recently my oldest son reminded me in an interesting way, memories don’t have to bust the bank. They can be created with very little money leaving our wallets.

[Read more…]

How Do You Create Time to Blog?

Disclaimer: This post is part very calm rant (over my predicament), part probe (asking advice from you the reader), and part self-help (just getting this out of my mind and thinking it through so I can move on).

HourglassHello. My name is Brian. I’m a part-time blogger.

(I’ve actually never seen standards for what classifies someone as full or part-time. I just assume that because I’m not posting every day of the week that makes me part-time.)

This July 3rd, I’ll celebrate my one-year blogging anniversary. I’ve consistently posted twice a week for the past year. (Which actually was my personal goal.) On a great week I can sneak in an additional post or maybe compile a weekly roundup of awesome posts I’ve read.

I haven’t done many additional posts and no roundups recently because I have lacked the time. That’s frustrating. I LOVE reading what other people write and sharing comments in their blog world. And I love passing on what I think is good content to my readers.

I’ve seen an even more disturbing trend happen in the past month. I’m really having trouble keeping up with my writing schedule. I learned from John at Frugal Rules the importance of putting a blog calendar together. That’s been a ton of help. I’ve got a slew of stuff planned out to write on for months to come.

But keeping up with that calendar with all my other personal responsibilities is the challenge. As a part-timer this is what I’m up against:

[Read more…]

Budgeting Series, Part III: How to Make a Budget

Income - OutgoingsYou’ve come to this post for a reason: to get control of your money. You are tired of making excuses and are ready to make a giant step towards being financially healthy. I applaud your courage because the journey you are about to embark on is not for the faint of heart.

The first few real budgets my wife and I put together were a disaster. We had some long “discussions” about how much money should go in each category and we were always changing numbers in the middle of the month for things we had not anticipated. I thought we would never get it right. But we stayed the course with it, through the trial and error, and eventually we figured it out.

The best part is – now that we have figured it out – doing a monthly budget is pretty easy. So there is hope.

In this post, I’m going to walk through the steps of how to set up a budget. By the time I’m done, you will have the basics to begin setting up an effective budget.

But before I get to the nuts and bolts, there are a few ground rules about budgeting. A budget’s effectiveness will be lessened if these principles are not followed:

[Read more…]

Two Shall Become One: A Case for Financial Togetherness

two shall become oneI’ve been planning this post to come out today for a couple of weeks. Then, lo and behold, Grayson at Debt Roundup wrote a post on Monday entitled “Love and Money – An Internal Debate.” So I used his post as a springboard for what I was going to talk about anyway – how two shall become one in marriage.

Thanks Grayson!

In it, he propositioned that he would NOT pay for his wife’s debt under most normal circumstances wherein people incur debt (car loans, student loans, credit card loans, etc.). His main reasoning for this stance was so that a lesson could be learned and responsibility taught to the spouse who had been reckless in running up debt. After all, marriage is about making each other better people.

Grayson and his wife sound like they are completely on the same page in regards to how they live out their financial life. They have set themselves up for success by communicating their values and beliefs to one another and then agreeing to move forward together based on what they believe. By all accounts, that’s a winning formula!

The great thing though about personal finance is that it’s personal.

[Read more…]

Budgeting Series, Part II: 8 Reasons Why People Don’t Do A Budget

$1000 Budget PigIf you are reading this it’s most likely because you have at least a passing interest in this financial tool we use called a budget. That’s a good thing because, as I noted in Part I of this series, even though money is an inanimate object, it exercises tremendous power in our lives. So it’s crucial that we utilize a budget to help us gain the upper hand with our money.

Even though budgets are vitally important to our financial well-being, most at some point in their working life have lived without one. Seems silly doesn’t it…that we would willingly choose go budget-less if they are so helpful?

There are a variety of reasons someone may choose to live without a budget. I’ll start by sharing why I chose not to have one for many years. I didn’t do a budget because…

[Read more…]

2013 Goals Update – March Madness Edition

Just like Florida Gulf Coast and Wichita State (my poor Buckeyes…) busted many NCAA brackets, so was my Time Bracket busted this past month. March roared in like a lion and brought with it extra family activities that included:

MFF_2013_FINAL_LOGO

Image courtesy of CBSSports.com

After school basketball league for my son,

County rec-league soccer for my youngest daughter,

Easter church cantata play practices for my two oldest,

Renovations to be completed by April 1st on one of our rental houses, and

School poetry recital for my youngest son in K4 (that was a hoot!).

While extremely fun, all these activities ate into much of our down time spent at home. And while this past week was Spring Break for the kids and I, that didn’t cut down on the busyness. I had a ton of work around the house to catch up on, including several awesome manly activities.

So here is my update on where I am at presently with my 2013 goals…

[Read more…]

Ten Awesome Manly Activities

All right men…it’s manly activities time. What type of tasks, encounters or impossible endeavors make you want to give a loud Tim Taylor style grunt?

I’ve compiled a list of manly activities for some fun on this Spring Break Friday.  I may even do a few of these today. So read on and add to the list in the comments below. In no particular order here are…

My Top Ten Manly Activities

1. Running a chainsaw

It’s the ultimate in manly activities…destructive, hand held power equipment. Plus, you get to yell “Timber!” and feel like a pioneer clearing the land. My tool of choice is a 2-stroke, gas-powered Husqvarna 455 Rancher 20-Inch 55-1/2cc (with powerbox carrying case of course).

Legit Get Rich Quick Schemes

I have a confession to make. By nature, I am not a patient person. I would love to cash in on a few get rich quick schemes and have a enough money to be financially independent RIGHT NOW. Wouldn’t it be great to know what’s going to happen in the next 10 years RIGHT NOW and have all the problem issues of my life fixed RIGHT NOW?

get rich quick schemesI have learned though the years to monitor my impatience by reflecting on my faith and what God tells me about it in the Bible. Passages like Hebrews 12:1 have been especially valuable to me. In talking about our life journey it says,

…let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…”

But it’s still really hard to live this way in a culture that stresses immediacy. And we all succumb to the pressure for instant gratification, instant knowledge, instant wealth and instant fame.

Think you are immune? Try living a couple of days without watching cable news, using your microwave and neglecting Facebook. See how you feel.

Nowhere does our culture’s value of immediacy reflect itself more than in our desire to accumulate money quickly. Maybe that is why so many are vulnerable to get rich quick schemes.

Types of Get Rich Quick Schemes

[Read more…]