A Sam's Club birthday party

This last Sunday was Wiggy's (my Dad's) birthday. Our family tradition is usually to go out for a nice dinner together on birthdays. Of course, now that there's quite a few of us, dinners out at nice restaurants can start to get pricey. At some point during the meal my Dad will comment "We should have all just gone to Sam's club and got a hot dog for a $1.00!"

So, this Sunday we threw a surprise birthday party for him at Sam's Club. We laid out a tablecloth, a banner, and gave the kids noisemakers. And then we all enjoyed (choked down) a hot dog together in his honor. Best part? All ten of us ate for $17.00 :)

From 100221

Why We Live Debt Free

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law - Romans 13:8 (KJV*)

Let me start with where we were: It's January 2006 - and we're in serious financial trouble. Both Crystal and I are working full time (opposite hours so we don't have to put the kids in daycare). We just got out from under a double house payment (we moved before selling our trailer in Grand Junction so we had to pay on both houses until it finally sold over half a year later). We have well over $15k in credit card debt, plus a variety of other debts. We have very little equity in our new home (less than $10k). Our cash situation is dismal: I'm constantly signing up for new credit cards (to help pay the interest on the old ones), frequently getting cash advances on my paycheck, and hitting up my parents for money on a regular basis.

That's where we were when we decided things had to change. We cut up our credit cards and threw them away. We virtually stopped all discretionary spending. We agreed not to borrow another dime. I then called Money Management International and set up a debt repayment plan. They negotiated on our behalf for lower interest rates on our credit cards and we began the lengthy process of paying them back.

Things got worse. Even with reduced rates on our cards we were still drowning under the interest. It was more than we could pay. We began to fall behind on the bills. Our mortgage went into foreclosure and suddenly we had an additional $3k in legal fees to repay. It didn't look to good. A number of (divine) circumstances occurred and thankfully we were brought back from the brink. But it wasn't an easy time.

Last spring (March of 2009) I made the final payment on our credit card debt. Today, we live debt free. Instead of credit card debt we have savings in the bank. We have no mortgage, our home was bought with cash. I'm not writing this to brag (because we have nothing to brag about**), but only to state that it is possible to live debt free - even with 6 hungry kids to feed!

So, why did we choose to quit borrowing? Here were our reasons:

1. We were slaves to our poor choices. Our whole lives revolved around how to stay afloat. It consumed large amounts of our time and energy, and led to a lot of conflict between us. Being debt free has granted considerable peace to our family.

2. We were unable to give. We couldn't help anyone around us that needed something, nor could we contribute to charitable causes. Thankfully now a large portion of our income can go to helping others.

3. We didn't want to rely on the government. The few times we were forced to rely on government services (primarily medicaid insurance) because of how poorly we handled our money we felt as if we were stealing from the taxpayers who had worked hard for that income. Since we're opposed to government social programs it was hypocritical for us to continue using them.

4. We needed to do right by our children. While I certainly don't advocate that you must first have your finances straight before you have kids, I do believe it's important to get your finances straight in order to provide for your children. During the same time-period God was changing our beliefs on having kids, and we realized that if our family was going to be larger than 2 or 3 children we needed to use our money differently.

Being debt free has radically changed our lives for the better. Yes, it can be tough at times: we aren't able to always rush out and buy whatever we want. We have to save for our purchases in advance - and most of what we buy is used (within reason - groceries and diapers are two things we don't get second hand, lol). But we have tremendous freedom to give, and we don't have to rely on any bank, government agency, or person to make it through.

We recently started taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University course to find even more ways we can save and improve our spending. If you are buried in debt I highly recommend this taking this course, it is well worth the cost.


Footnotes:

*I quoted the King James Version above because most people recognize this verse in that version.

** God alone gets the credit for this. While we have attempted to live frugally we certainly wouldn't be near as far along were it not for a few divine circumstances that radically changed things for us in the intervening years. We also owe a debt of gratitude to my parents for their financial counsel during this time.

My Unified Social Media Flowchart

So...I've made some changes to how I connect with people online. Below I present my "Unified Social Media Flowchart" (click to view fullsize):



Now everything is nicely unified and works together. Essentially (in case the above looks confusing) if you want to keep up with everything that's going on with me you can friend me on Facebook or follow me via Google Buzz in Gmail. You can also subscribe to this blog or my Twitter feed to get most everything.

While I've intended to do this for some time, I've hesitated a bit due to the diversity of my online social circles. My younger progressive hi-tech friends are now confronted with the fact that I am a politically conservative, pro-child, homeschool advocate who takes seriously his relationship with Jesus. Worse perhaps*, my devout Christian friends are confronted with my belief that alcohol is OK if consumed in moderation, and the fact that I run a website where I play Dungeons & Dragons. Ah well, now (despite who you are) you now know how big of a bigot/heathen/hypocrite (pick your favorite) I am**.

Are you up to speed on social media? I'd love to see your flowchart. If you don't have one made up I suggest using Lucid Chart, the one above only took me about 15 minutes. Post a comment with a link to your flowchart once you have it done. I may expand/modify mine over the coming weeks (I just realized I forgot to include instant messaging).

Footnotes:
* Honestly, I expect to lose more face among Christians with this post than with non-Christians, and I'm not sure that speaks well of us as a group.

** I guess we really do have a lot in common (grin) .... just kidding!

EDIT: Updated the flowchart to include instant messaging, and link recommendations. I'm still not certain it is complete yet.

Quick & Dirty Redesign

Blogger.com is shutting down FTP posting, so I migrated my blog to their servers. I took the opportunity to do a quick re-design of the site using a basic blogger template and some handy gadgets. For 5 mins of work it doesn't look bad. I'll probably re-visit the design to add some personal touches in the not-to-distant future.

Corkboard Walls

We have a refrigerator and a full size freezer next to each other in our kitchen, and like most parents our kids cover them in their artwork, hung with magnets just strong enough to fall off every time we open the fridge. We were wearing thin with picking up the magnets and artwork every time we went to pull out the milk.

We bought several rolls of cork at Hobby Lobby this last week, and today I pulled out the highly-toxic adhesive and plastered them to the walls in the hall (inhaling a few too many fumes in the process). Now the kids have plenty of space to hang their artwork right outside the doors to their rooms - and it doesn't have to be on the fridge.

Carcassonne

Crystal and I played a game of Carcassonne
with the kids (Purity, Charis & Emery) last night. I saw this played at our New Year's Party, so when the local game store was going out of business and had it on sale I grabbed a copy. The kids really enjoyed it...Emery particularly had a great time matching up the tiles to make the cities and roads (though it was a bit of a challenge to keep him from knocking around the rest of the tiles in the process of placing his current one). Overall, we had some fun family time together - it's worth trying it if you haven't played it before. Good strategy while still being simple enough for smaller children to play.

Getting Up - Week 2

So, we're on our second week of rising at 6AM - and its getting slightly easier. We'd both find it to be far easier if Nahum would sleep though the night :) but so far that's not happening.

We have really enjoyed our exercise / prayer time and our family worship time at 7AM (when we get the kids up) is going much better than when we were doing it in the evenings. We did decide to take the weekend off, sleeping in on Saturday (well, as much as is possible) and rising a little later on Sundays. I'm not sure I'm entirely ready to part with lazy Saturday mornings yet.

Actually, this Saturday I did get up a little earlier than usual. I told Emery that when he got up he could come wake me up and we would go on an "adventure", just him and Dad. Our adventure turned out to be a trip to Wendy's and the hardware store, and then a walk back from the ranch after we got the van stuck in the snow - but it was good to have some quality time together "just us guys".