The stimulus package has been approved by Congress which means in 12 weeks or so we should be receiving up to $1500 of the government’s borrowed money! If we were good little consumers we would go out and spend it but unfortunately for the politicians and economists, our family will be applying it toward our debt. See, we already spent many years feeding the economy. We were good little consumers… a little too good if you ask me. We spent money we didn’t have and now we are being responsible little adults and paying back what we owe. No worries, once we are freed of those stupid monthly payments we’ll have more cash to play around with!

Congress Votes for a Stimulus of $168 Billion

Here is an interesting piece to the plan:

 ”In a nod to the housing problems, the stimulus plan will increase the limits on home loans that can be purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored finance companies, and on loans that can be insured by the Federal Housing administration. The one-year increases will make it easier to refinance loans or obtain new mortgages in expensive markets.”

There has been a lot of media attention on the crappy housing market and all the foreclosures. I don’t know how real it is in other states but in Michigan it truly is crappy. People are losing their homes to foreclosures because they bought houses they couldn’t afford. Here’s a solution! Let’s up the limits and make it easier for people to buy homes they can’t afford!!

What is with our bonehead government? Geesh. I think we need to send them all to Financial Peace University.

The first piece of good news is only good news to Mike. I am still not thrilled. In fact, I’m still a tad bitter but I’m working on it. We bought a new television. It’s a big screen projection HD something-or-other. All I really know is it’s bigger than me (65″, I am 61″) and we had to upgrade our cable. The cable upgrade actually worked out because Mike finagled a deal so we could upgrade and get a home phone line and it’s only costing us $13 more a month. We had been wanting to get a home phone line so I’m okay with that. Mike saved up his bonuses to buy the tv so we paid cash and I’m okay with that too. The thing I’m bitter about is that it is such a luxury item and I don’t feel like we had any business buying it when we still have debt to pay and emergencies to save for. Most of this is the nerd inside me wanting to hoard every dollar we can and not have any fun until 2012, but I think even Mike will admit it was a *little* over the top. But what does any of that matter? What’s done is done. To quote one of my FPU students, “Mindy, you agreed to it. You need to just get over it and move on!” So here I am, folks. I am moving on. Let’s try this again:

The first piece of good news is that Mike was finally able to buy the tv he’s been researching and saving up for. He worked extra hard at selling stuff and saved up his bonus checks and found a great deal thanks to Pre-Super Bowl sales. I don’t know much about the tv (I am still learning how to use it) but he is really excited about it. It’s a wide-screen HD. It has such a great picture it makes golf interesting.

The second piece of good great fantastic news is that Mike quit smoking!! He has wanted to quit for such a long time and has tried and failed several times. This time he got on the Chantix program everyone has been talking about and it is working! He hasn’t smoked since Thursday. His attitude about quitting has been so different than in years past  and when he talks about it you can really hear the dedication and resolve in his voice. It’s hard for me to get my hopes up about this because of his past failures but I really do think this could be it. I am extremely proud of him!

I don’t know what to blog about. My boss says I should tell everyone that Kohl’s has some great sales going on right now. While I’m mentioning that I’ll mention that Fashion Bug is having great sales too. I bought a couple things online (don’t worry, it was in the budget) and I saved so much money! Actually, I spent $30, so I didn’t really save anything.

That reminds me of a conversation my dad and stepmom had when I was a kid. She had just been out shopping and brought home a beautiful wool coat. I think she was nervous about telling my dad because the way she told him was by saying, “I saved 50%!” I will never forget how my dad responded: “How much didn’t you save?” I don’t remember how much she paid for the coat but I do remember she wore that thing forever. So she definitely got her money’s worth, whatever she paid.

Another great question my dad used to ask us all the time that stuck with me through the years: “Is it a want, or a need?” Even as an adult I find myself saying I need this or that. Then I stop myself and ask that question. There are so little things we truly need in this world. I don’t think there is anything wrong with going out and getting the things we want but I think it’s important that we make that distinction between a want and a need.

My new mantra:
“I don’t need a laptop, I want a laptop.
I don’t need a laptop, I want a laptop.
I don’t need a laptop, I want a laptop.“

I’ve asked this before but I’ll ask it again - why do we buy our kids toys? Note this photo of my friends’ children cleaning the cat hair off of my kitty condo. I wish I had it on video, because they were actually arguing over who got to clean which spot. “No, I want the bottom!”

I was talking to someone awhile back about the Montessori school their child attends. They told me that the school does not allow fiction books in the classroom. They feel it inhibits children’s natural creativity. That could be considered an extreme measure, but I believe there is some validity behind it.

I don’t remember having an obscene amount of toys growing up. My best memories were of writing plays and acting out talk shows and cooking shows with my brother and sister. We were all about make-believe. I remember one summer when Kari and I made up play names and created our own driver licenses. Our grown-up characters lived in Pretoria, Illinois. (We had never been there but I heard about it in a song. “We are marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, Pretoria!”) We had wallets with fake credit cards and we would carry them around in our purses.  Oh, we were cool back then.

The fake credit cards I played with as a child were the paper kind that came with wallets, sort of like the flimsy photos of strangers that come with new picture frames. Now they sell fake credit cards with children’s toys. Dave Ramsey was just on CBS News to talk about this issue. The whole thing really gets under my skin. Here I am every year with Financial Peace University trying to teach grown adults how to stop using credit cards and climb their way out of massive consumer debt, and meanwhile corporate America is spending billions of dollars to raise up more people to get right back into it.

Here are some scary statistics:

• Most teens (51%) agree that it is easier to buy things with a credit card than cash.
• Given the choice, almost one in three (29 percent) teens would prefer buying things with a credit card than cash. This represents a 61% increase over last year (18%).
• Almost three in ten teens (29%) are already in debt.

These numbers make me sick to my stomach. Credit cards are not for play. Consumer debt has destroyed so many people’s lives (if you don’t believe me, listen to ten minutes of Dave Ramsey’s radio show) and yet these credit card companies are making it into a game. Why do they do it? Because they know if they familiarize kids with a certain item or brand early on, when they are old enough they will become customers for life. It’s kiddie branding, it is certainly not a game I want to play.

Technorati Tags: Holidailies, kids, credit cards,  finances, Dave Ramsey, FPU, kiddie branding, consumer debt

Dave Ramsey Live Event in Grand Rapids January 24th, 2008!

I have been trying to go to this for the last three years and this is the first year I don’t have a schedule conflict or the event hasn’t sold out before I got around to buying tickets. I’ve gotta make it this time!

Who’s coming with me???!!!???

The two items that have remained on my to-do list since… well… a long time… months and months:

• Life Insurance
• Last Will & Testament

Today I took some big steps towards completing those tasks. I purchased a template for the last will & testament from uslegalforms.com. I just have to fill it out and get it signed and notarized. I also spoke to the insurance agent who had the best rates I could find for life insurance. I just need to complete an application and physical and I should be good to go within 6-9 weeks (after that I can die in peace). With Mike’s situation (see posts on the brain tumor) it could get a little more pricey so the agent is going to call me back with quotes for him.

Once I get these two tasks completed I can only imagine the big sigh of relief that will follow. No more procrastination!!

Dave Ramsey podcast again. Just listened to a call that really got my blood boiling. A woman called in yesterday - a “stay at home” mom who homeschools her four kids. She also works 40-50 hours a week at night delivering papers so that they can make ends meet with the bills. She and her husband are in Financial Peace University. Her husband comes with her to class some of the time, but his attitude is to just let her handle the finances. “Don’t bother me” is his favorite saying.

The kicker is that the reason she’s calling in is because she is struggling with respecting her husband’s leadership and being a good Christian wife. The guilt in her tone of voice was sad and disturbing. Since she is a Christian she believes he is the “head of the home.” Um, I believe that too, but this guy sure isn’t acting like it. Head of the home is not just a title that’s given to someone because he’s male. It’s a title that husbands must live up to.

Two things anger me about this situation. One, that the guy is just ignoring their money problems and letting his wife bear the entire burden and two, that she feels guilty about it! Far too many Christian wives are afraid to assert their vote in the marriage because they have heard the lie that submission means being a doormat.

Dave Ramsey’s advice to her: stop bearing all the burden. Let her husband see how bad it really is. Let them shut off the lights and the water. Let him see that she is serious about refusing to do all the work and that he absolutely has to step up and be a man. Dave told her exactly what I would have, that being a good Christian wife does not mean putting up with crap from a guy who refuses to step up and be a leader in the home.

Marriage is a partnership. Spouses must work together as a team to deal with major things like finances. If one is better suited to writing the checks and crunching the numbers that’s fine, but both need to participate in making the decisions. Period!

I have been downloading The Dave Ramsey Show on my iPod. Since I’m an FPU Coordinator I can download it for free, without commercials. It’s great. There was a great call on the show last Friday that I’ve replayed once or twice already. The woman who called in had 90 credit cards in a lock box. Ninety. Having ninety credit cards is seriously sad, but this woman had such a great sense of humor about it. She had four inches of Discover, three inches of Mastercard…. A listener emailed into the show during the segment and said, “You know you’re too broke to pay attention when you measure your credit cards in inches!” The caller wondered if she should keep at least one or two of her credit cards ”just in case.” If you’re a Dave Ramsey listener you know the answer to that - NO! This woman had totally bought into the fallacy that credit cards equal security, but Dave inspired her to see the truth and to shred those cards. At the end of the call she was saying that she wanted to be weird, she wanted to be “that person that stops the Visa line.” How awesome is that?!

Dates are set for our third year of Financial Peace University! Class is going to be held on Tuesday nights and starts January 8th. Follow the link to find out more.

You need to take this class!

Last week we bought a used car to replace the truck, which has to be turned in in July. Mike had been keeping an eye out for a good used trade-in at work, one within our budget. He found one even sooner than we had expected. We hadn’t quite saved up enough money for it so we did finance the purchase, but the plan is to pay it off as early as possible. Ugh. I hate borrowing money. But, I am happy that the truck payment is going away along with the expensive insurance. This new-used car will save us a load in payments, insurance, and gas. It’s a Buick Century. Dark green, 4 door, rides really nice. It’s what we call an “old lady” car, which is exactly why Mike knew I would love it.

We were recently looking at an opportunity to buy a house in a town near Lansing where we would love to raise a little boy. It’s next door to some dear friends of ours and it’s been on the market for 9 months. They just dropped the price into our price range so we were serious looking at it and looking at ways we could sell our house. Unfortunately, the price drop attracted a few other offers and I don’t think it’s likely we’ll get it.

We know we want to get out of town before Luke goes to school, because we’re not really thrilled with the company he would be keeping going to Lansing schools. The school systems themselves aren’t too bad, but the kids attending are getting more and more unruly as the years go by. The schools are becoming a dangerous place to be. We don’t want to leave the area by any means, so we’ve been looking at the various small towns surrounding Lansing as possibilities to live in. We want to live somewhere where there is a community feel, where people know your name. Like Cheers, but without the beer.

Just in the past week we’ve had some issues with the city. The first is minor - they stopped picking up our grass clippings. We’ve been putting them at the curb in a plastic trash can and they’ve been picking them up that way for years. All of a sudden they stopped, citing that rigid containers are not accepted and we need to use paper yard waste bags. You know, the kind you have to buy at the hardware store. It’s the only thing they’ll accept, apparently.

The second issue is much more upsetting - we received a letter on Saturday notifying us of a code violation with our carport. This stupid carport has been falling apart slowly, and we’ve been trying to save up the money to replace it as well as repair the concrete driveway (it’s better to do it all at once). They gave us a deadline to fix it by July 10th. If it’s not repaired by then the fines are $500 per day. Mike is going to call the city today and see if he can explain our situation and get the deadline extended. With all that’s going on and the changes we are facing, we have not the time, energy, or funds to get this handled in less than two months. Hopefully he’ll be able to talk to someone today. Apparently the only hours you can call about this stuff are between 8-9 am and 12-1 pm. I get the feeling they are really here to help us. All these income and property tax dollars we pay to them and they give us two, one-hour windows to talk to a real person. Ugh.

Both those issues and the house opportunity have got us thinking about moving sooner than we had talked about. If you’ve seen the state of our house you may know it could be a challenge getting someone to buy it, especially in the current state of the housing market. Externally it desperately needs windows and siding and internally it needs a lot of cosmetic work. We have talked about getting a home equity loan to handle the needed repairs, with the intention of turning right around and selling it. The thought of another loan makes me cringe, but I really would like to be done with this house and this city. I wonder what Dave Ramsey would say. Being a leader of his class and all, would I just be a big hypocrite if we did something like that? I think that might be my biggest concern here. Oy. It’s just a big decision and I want to do the right thing.

I’m really struggling with worrying about our finances. There are too many unknowns for me. We don’t know how much this baby is going to cost. If we decide to fix the house, sell it, and buy another, that throws another variable into the pot. Yes, it’s only two variables, but they are big ones and I am not comfortable with variables when it comes to finances. That is one area I like to have control. So it is a challenge for me to relax and leave things up to God. But as He keeps reminding me, He has never forgotten me and will not forget me now. This is definitely a year of faith building for me. Yee ha!