Car Weirdness

Just thought I'd share this presentation with you. Whenever I see it I just get the urge to sit there and clap like a child.
This is why I'll not have another car payment:

Why Car Debt Makes No Sense

QBQ! The Question Behind The Question

I just finished reading a book titled QBQ! The Question Behind the Question. It's a book about personal accountability and how to ask the right questions. I found a lot of the book to be relevant to work life. The tendency of most is to ask questions such as, "Why doesn't management give us the resources we need?" or "When will that department start doing their job?" QBQ's are questions that that eliminate the Who's, Why's and Whens and the They's and You's. QBQ's are What and How questions that should contain pronouns like I or Me. How can I be resourceful for this client? What could I do to complete the project on time?
I must admit, this book was a needful read for me. Irresponsibility, unreliability and inconsistency can really send me up a wall sometimes. Then I usually see the need to find a way to point it out to the offender when I feel I've been taken for granted.
I think QBQ's help you not to get your blood pressure so high. Asking the other questions just feeds the frustration. This doesn't mean I believe in being a doormat. This is about making things happen.

I guess that's why when I'm finished with my lunch here I'll be back outside helping the guys in the warehouse with their big project.

Where work is concerned, I have a goal to not be an employee forever. But I've created another goal for myself that makes every working day worthwhile. I want to make things simple for the person who follows me, but I want to make myself difficult to replace.

So the point today was not a book report, or to tout my goals in personal development, but rather to give you a reason to ask good questions. Give the stress up and make it happen.

The Quest Continues

Remember what I said about living like no one else so later we could live like no one else? I had to apply that principle to a temptation this past week. How could I pass up a girlfriends trip to Disneyland? Take a couple days vacation, stay at an old friend's house and in general have a great time- I tried to make it work. I got the vacation approved at work. I didn't spend any money from my "blow" envelope all weekend. But any way I looked at it, the only way to make the trip happen was to temporarily abandon my current financial plan. Skip a mega payment on the car.
So, the short of it is that I faced the facts and decided to accept any displeasure my friends may have at my decision. Not bragging- just telling of the "teachable moment" I had with myself. If I start making trivial exceptions to the plans I have now, I'm sure to make dozens more in the future; causing me to reach my goals later than I anticipate. Discipline- it is a rough thing to impose on one's self. I am NOT very good at it. But I guess if I can manage to conquer myself like this once in a while, I might just get better at it.

Dave always says that maturity is the ability to delay pleasure. I feel a hundred years old today.

On another note, I just finished listening to the audio book of The Millionaire Mind this morning. This is an official recommendation.

Our Quest for "Weirdness" Part II

So as I said in my last post, we've been on Baby Step 2 since the end of March. Baby Step 2 is to pay off all debt (except the house) using the Debt Snowball. The snowball is basically you paying minimum payments on all your debts but the smallest, and then putting any extra money you can find on that smallest debt until it's gone. Then when it's gone, you take what you were paying on the smallest and put it toward the next smallest and- you get the picture.
Thankfully, we had never had much stomach for mass amounts of debt, so we only had one item in our snowball. We had just bought a car in January. Or should I say we had just FINANCED a car in January, which we plan on owning very soon. So in the last 4 months we have paid off over $5,000 on that car. To say I'm excited would be an understatement. We are well on our way to turning a 5 year loan into 1 year. I will NEVER finance another car. EVER. Toldja we want to be weird.
The thing that is so great is that we really haven't felt it. I mean, we aren't eating beans and rice to make this happen, although if we had had more debt, I'm sure that's exactly what we would be eating. The thing that's made it work is getting a plan- a written budget. I'm not going to go into the whole budgeting thing in depth, I'll just say read the book.
More on our quest for weirdness later. ;-)

So the DOW lost 311 points yesterday and 208 at the close today. And everybody's in a tizzy over it. I don't get it. Did we not just hit a record high of 14K??? Get a grip people. Go see your broker, buy something and have a good weekend.

I leave you with a passage of scripture. It explains the name of this blog and gives insight to what the Bible has to say about debt. (Note: Surety is a Bible term for debt.)

Proverbs 6

1 My son, if you become surety for your friend,
If you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,
2 You are snared by the words of your mouth;
You are taken by the words of your mouth.
3 So do this, my son, and deliver yourself;
For you have come into the hand of your friend:
Go and humble yourself;
Plead with your friend.
4 Give no sleep to your eyes, Nor slumber to your eyelids.
5 Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, And like a bird from the hand of the fowler.

Our Quest for "Weirdness" Part I

I overheard my mom talking about him. I overheard my uncle and aunt raving about him. I heard he had a money plan. Dave Ramsey, whoever he was, had my family talking about his plan. Somehow, I made the mental note to check him out online sometime.
One day, I remembered that mental note and Googled Dave Ramsey. I found out he had a book called The Total Money Makeover. So I picked up the book on CD from Amazon.com. I left the book on the kitchen counter with plans to listen to it on our next road trip. It was January 2007. Presidents Day weekend was to be spent at Disneyland, with lodging at my good aunt's home. Friday, February 16 was the day it happened. It was the day we saw the light- never to return to the darkness...they day we decided to "shave our heads and drink the Kool-Aid". We listened to that book all the way to Orange County, and finished it with 30 minutes of travel remaining. We talked excitedly about it for that 30 minutes. We now knew if we would live like no one else, then later we could live like no one else.
We walked in my aunt's home TOTALLY fired up because we now knew we would be wealthy people. We found my aunt listening to the archives of The Dave Ramsey Show at her computer. We talked the rest of the night about it. Things they were a-changin'!
We came home from that trip with money to spare. From there we started Baby Step 1- Save $1000 for a beginner emergency fund. For people who could never find spare money before, we surprised ourselves big time when we scrounged up the money in a month! We were excited, on fire and on a roll. With our emergency fund in place in a money market account, it was onward to Baby Step 2 at the end of March. We're still on Baby Step 2 and what an awesome journey it has been. More on that later.

We'll see how this goes...

I'm not likely to be as intense a blogger as I am a budgeter. I am only trying this because at times I get so excited about our achievements that I want to tell everyone I know. Since I know not everyone is interested, I refrain. So this way, I can tell people one thing- I have a blog, read if you wish. I think this will help me release the excitement I am utterly bursting with.

Anyway, one thing I must get out of the way first and foremost is the rules. Don't use my name. That's all. Easy, eh?

I'll speak shortly today as I am short on time at the moment. Later I will elaborate on our "story." Cool thing of the day: we got a recall notice in the mail for an item we already paid to have repaired on our car. All I had to do was take my receipt in to the dealership and wait for the manufacturer to mail me the check. That means a bonus $618 buckeroos comin' my way!! You gotta love it when something besides bills show up in the mail.

More later.