Give me one good reason why MONEY wasn't in the curriculum

I'm not that old. In fact, in 21 days I will be 27, which most people would consider quite green. But I really wish someone had taught me how money works when I was younger. I would certainly be far ahead in this game.
I received a decent education, and had teachers who were quite competent. However, I am of the strong opinion that I was jipped. I can diagram a sentence like a pro, recall important historical facts, quote the laws of physics, and perform simple mathematical functions (hated math.) I was even taught and given the tools for spiritual success. But I was NEVER taught how money works; how to save, spend, invest, avoid debt, etc. (I might add that this plays a part in one's spiritual walk. God's Word talks alot about money.) I know some would say that those things are common knowledge. I submit to you that if those items were so common, we would not be experiencing record numbers of foreclosures in our country right now. So I ask you, if you are on such a high horse, to come down and join us in real life- where Americans are making stupid and even mediocre money decisions every day because of a lack of education in our schools.
Had I been taught in school (mine being a private Christian school) that debt of any kind should be avoided, that a credit score is unnecessary, and NOT EVERYONE has a credit card, I would have avoided about $2000+ of school (and misc. other) credit card debt and the car loan I am now working feverishly to pay off. Not to mention house debt. I'm sure I would still have a mortgage, but I would be MUCH closer to to paying it off today.
Had I been taught in school how to save, I would have known a long time ago that a good rule of thumb is to keep 3 to 6 months of expenses in the bank for emergencies, and that I CAN save and pay cash for things including cars- if I'm patient.
Had I been taught in school how to invest, I would have properly funded not only my 401K, but also be knowledgeable enough to manage my funds. Of course, I'd most certainly be funding my Roth IRA as well.
I wish I could go back to my alma mater and tell them what I know now. I wish I could go tell them that "debt is dumb and cash is king and a paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice." (Thanks, Mr. Ramsey.) I wish I could tell them that Normal is broke: BE WEIRD. I pray that someday the opportunity to help young people start off equipped with the money knowledge they need will present itself to me. Especially after I am debt free.
Sharing this with young adults- now that would be fulfilling.

I like where I'm sitting

Evenin' all! Just got done with a lovely 1 hr. massage, gifted to me by Hegazelle's parents for Christmas.
And, of course, Christmas was great. We spent the morning quite lazy at home, ate breakfast burritos and enjoyed a nice fire on a no-burn day. (I figured it was a fine worth paying ...the jerks...what kind of power hungry air quality official makes Christmas day a no-burn day?!) My family came over around noon. We exchanged gifts, made Christmas cookies, played games and then made dinner. One gift in particular that I was glad to receive was a new envelope system! My old envelopes had been taped a few times over and we're a bit tattered. Anyway, we enjoyed a Honeybaked Ham, mashed potatoes & gravy, greenbean casserole, and rolls that took all day to rise (I guess it wasn't very warm in the kitchen!)
This week I'm reflecting a bit on the past year. Things certainly have changed, mostly for the better. At this time last year we were searching diligently for a new vehicle. We sold our lifted F150 in October and drove a borrowed Mercury Cougar while we went through the process of finding the right car. After nearly 4 months of looking, we found our Volvo S60 in a town about 1.5 hours north of us. It was a very exciting day when we brought it home, and the car has been a delight to drive. Of course at that point we had no idea we were a month away from a Total Money Makeover, and the car was financed through our credit union. To date, we've paid off over half of the loan on the car. We would be much farther ahead in the game, but vehicle maintenance and a couple replaced parts took up some of our funds.
Needless to say, I'm optimistic about 2008. We have financial goals and plans with completion dates in our sights. I'm certainly looking forward to not having a car payment EVER AGAIN. The opportunity for that Hawaii vacation with friends is growing closer. And with foreclosures all around, I still own my house.
I'm not NEARLY as well off as some folks, but I like where I'm sitting right now. It's a very comfortable place that I start 2008 in.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Readers:

Hope you have a great Christmas. And why wouldn't it be great? No Visa bill to haunt you come January right??
Enjoy your family and give thanks for the Reason we celebrate.

Sincerely,

Shegazelle

I got a great new phone- FREE

I'm not a cell phone junkie by ANY means. I actually avoid talking on the phone if I can. Strange for a chick I know, but I'm just not into it AT ALL.
But I've got a new phone that I'm in love with and I haven't even owned it for 24 hours. No, I don't do iphones or smartphones of any variety- if I need something with a full keyboard and all the features of a computer, I'll start carrying a laptop. I do, however, dig my new Samsung Juke. It's a lot smaller than it looks in pictures (size is best described as an oversized lighter) and comes with everything you need for a great music phone experience- color coordinated ear buds, built-in 2GB of space for all my music, and the sync cord to sync my Windows Media Player with my Juke. I had a music phone for two years and never played any music on it. Never paid to download the music software (the Juke comes with the software preloaded a.k.a FREE,) never bought the memory card necessary to store the music, and never bought the ear buds.
What does this have to do with personal finance? My phone was free. That's all. :-D
$99.99 is the current retail price for the Juke. They are offering a $50 rebate, and gave me $50 credit towards a new phone thru the New Every Two Program. Ok, so it wasn't totally free, I had to pay the $17 in taxes, but it was as close to free as you get.
$17 for a phone I'll use for 2 years is not a bad deal. Smooches to Verizon!

Give the Gift of Common Sense

I seriously lack the qualities necessary to be a decent personal finance blogger. But I continue nonetheless. If nothing else, mom will always read and think it's dandy. :-)
If this has been your year of a total money makeover, I encourage you to share the gift with someone else. Of course there are good ways and not so good ways to gift people with personal finance books so be careful how you present it.
Giving the gift has been made VERY easy this year thanks to Dave Ramsey's deep discounts on his books and audio books. I bought several copies of The Total Money Makeover on CD yesterday for $10 each. I'm not sure who they will be gifted to, but in the course of conversation with people you can just tell when they're likely to be receptive of these ideas. People all around me have too much month and not enough money, but I can tell a personal finance book from me would not be well received. I'm too young to be handing out pf books to these people I guess. But every once in a while a door will open in a conversation- someone sees my envelope system and the questions start. That's when things get fun. And now, I have a gift I can give them. How cool is that?
Stock up on those books, give them away and know you've possibly changed a family tree.

Christmas Card Surprise

We got a Christmas card from Dave Ramsey! Yeah, we're pretty tight with the Ramseys...

Hegazelle and food: the bad and the good

My husband has NOT lost weight because of an underfunded food envelope!

Hegazelle has lost 20lbs since the beginning of the year. While I know some think our weekly food budget is low (I contend it could be cut significantly since we still eat out,) the truth is we eat well. We share meals when we eat out, but we are always full when we leave a restaurant- we even take leftovers home sometimes. But we both want it to be clear to our readers and especially to those who know us- Hegazelle lost the 20lbs due to a year of constant stomach sickness not because of Dave Ramsey!
We have not been able to nail it down to any particular food item or food class. It could have been Crohn's Disease or Celiac Disease. We don't know and neither do the doctors. But when food hurts you, you tend to eat a whole lot less.
I don't know how many readers are "believers" or believe in miracles at all, but it seems one has occurred for hegazelle. We were at church last Sunday night, as usual. Of course our services are anything but usual...but I digress. After the preaching, the minister called for anyone who needed a miracle to come to the front and pray for it. Of course with hegazelle's yearlong, undiagnosed and seemingly untreatable sickness, he needed a miracle. So he went to the front and prayed for his need and then we left. About Tuesday night of this week he realizes that he has eaten almost 6 meals with NO SICKNESS! It has been nearly a week now, and he is enjoying his food like a normal person. It may sound small or coincidental to some, but not to us.
It's no fun eating with someone for a year who fears food for the pain it causes and often declines the foods he used to love. Now it seems eating will be fun again! Hegazelle states he has no interest in gaining that 20lbs back. I don't care- I'm just glad he's had a normal week.

I can't wait for my day...

I love a good "I'm debt free" story. I'm a few days late in sharing, but in case you're not a regular reader of the Get Rich Slowly blog, JD has officially achieved debt-free status as of Monday! Enjoy the story- it certainly inspired me.

Just for the record...

Periodically I list a personal finance blog under the Currently Featured Link item in the left column. I read a TON of PF blogs, but I don't always agree 100% with the philosophies these people tout. The same goes for my Featured Link area. For example, Five Cent Nickel is featured this week, and one of his "best of" posts is titled "Dave Ramsey is Bad at Math." Obviously this references Dave's snowball approach to paying off debt (smallest to largest) as opposed to paying them off highest interest to lowest. Nonetheless, I read these blogs and feature them anyway. I find useful content on them all and you will too.

Jobs and Company Christmas Parties

Friday is my company party. I have yet to hear of a company that throws a better Christmas party. I work for a relatively young company with approx. 20 employees, but many of us have worked here for 5+ years. So, when we get together at Christmas time we have plenty to reminisce about. I've had my complaints this year due to some transitions and the boss moving out of town, but I have to say I have a pretty good job and a pretty cool boss. I'm compensated with more than an hourly wage- 100% of my insurance premiums are paid by my employer, I have a 100% match on my 401K contributions, 2 weeks paid vacation, sick pay, and various other perks that come along unexpectedly sometimes. While it's not a perfect place to work (that place doesn't exist) it's not too shabby, and I'm thankful for my job. Oh yeah- I'm thankful for my Christmas bonus too.
The following Friday is hegazelle's company party, and while he works for a relatively groovy company, it's still not as good as mine! His company Christmas party is certainly not comparable to mine, but we go and we eat out of respect to his boss. Hegazelle's company started a program with its employees about 3 months ago. The program offers service contracts to their customers which includes some great discounts on replacement parts. The employees get a $5 commission for each agreement they sell. Each month they post a list of employees from top sellers on down, and every time hegazelle has been tops. How cool is that?! The crazy thing is he's beating the rest of the crew by a large margin. There are other ways that hegazelle can earn commissions on his job, and I'm proud to say overall he's doing a great job.
Jobs are certainly something to be thankful for. There are too many people without one to take a good one for granted.
And I certainly don't take for granted the food at our company Christmas party! Just to make you salivate unnecessarily, I will share the menu with you: Bacon-wrapped filet mignon, lobster tails, vegetable (likely greenbean casserole), twice-baked potatoes, bread and a plethora of desserts to choose from. Can you tell I'm really into this?
Hope your company party is at least half as good as mine, and be sure to thank your boss for your job while you're there!

Guest Post- The Total Money Makeover Series, Installment 2

• Name or Alias: A.L
• Age: 51
• Marital Status: Single
• # of Children: 1 son (just married)
  
• Occupation: Accounting Assistant
  

My Journey

You’ve heard about the “Grapes of Wrath” people that came west from places like Oklahoma to find a better life? Well, those are my people. My family was some of the people that followed the California harvest, whatever it was, to make a living in the early days of the 20^th century. They picked cotton, cut grapes, picked apples, peaches and apricots and whatever else they could to scratch out a living for the family. As a result we were not a rich family.
My father bettered himself with the best education he could afford. He worked in law enforcement until he retired after 30 years with a nice pension. Working for the federal government was a good job with good benefits in those days. He raised a family of six children on the salary he made and he worked to better himself grade by grade while he was on the job. So we became lower middle class…not dirt poor anymore.
Somehow I never picked up on the lessons that dad taught the boys, to find a trade (he meant an area of expertise that you like) and make something of yourself. I floundered around in mediocre jobs and spent some time in a theological school that was a great experience but didn’t offer me a career. Long story shortened….I drifted along in a job that afforded me a meager living. I was never very ambitious and therefore didn’t get paid very well.
My son was born and money got tighter. Still I kept thinking the raises would come and everything would be all right. Meanwhile, as a typical American I began to use credit cards to “extend” my income. Isn’t that a joke? It’s the same story I’m sure many people could tell…living paycheck to paycheck….a 401K growing very slowly and no savings account. With car payments, rent, expenses and a growing credit card debt, I was on a downhill spiral and didn’t really know it.
I was pushed ahead in my job by natural instincts more than a need to excel. Luckily I was clever enough to do very well at whatever I put my hand to and with hard work I made it to the top of my department…and sat there for years. I worked for a company owned by corporation after corporation with no thought for the employees. Their only concern was the bottom line profit and they “milked” the company year after year until…unbeknown to us…the company was bankrupt. My house of cards was about to crash and I didn’t know it. Then the crash came…
A new company purchased the bankrupt company for the contracts it held and my job was in jeopardy. For a few months it was touch and go, but finally they decided to go out on a limb….20 years of experience in the business and 15 of that doing billing seemed to them to be a good bet and they asked me to stay on with the new company. By this time I hadn’t much to lose so I decided it was time to play hard ball. I guess the years of neglect in a failing company had stiffened my resolve to do better. So I held out for a decent raise and started my quest to financial peace. Things improved some, but not enough.
Then one day I was introduced to the most amazing, simple, common sense way to handle money that there was nothing for me to do but jump on the band wagon. Dave Ramsey “preached” to me about the fact that “children do what feels good, adults devise a plan and follow it”. I had found my plan! With the end of the year bonus (an unexpected gift) I started my emergency fund. My bills were current but there were car payments and credit card debts and that was not good. So, I started working on my “Debt snowball”. The first time I was able to pay off a credit card I felt like shouting from the mountain tops, “It is working!” I’ve knocked off a few more since then and it still feels great every time. The snowball is shrinking and the budget is working. I can’t believe how much better I feel each month when the bills are paid and there is money left over to whittle away at that snowball. I even planned for Christmas before December this year! My son got married in September and the wedding expenses didn’t bankrupt me! I was able to continue on my budget. It feels like I got a huge raise, but the only difference is that I am managing my money and it is not managing me.
I would recommend anyone to listen to the common sense money management of Dave Ramsey and the Total Money Makeover. It changed my life…

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Thanks, A.L. for the great guest post! It's great to hear the stories of others who are traveling this same journey to Financial Peace!