Sunday Musings 1/24/10
Another sermon by Dave Ramsey on getting your finances in order. He's a very good speaker and makes talking about finances as enjoyable as it probably can be. :) Ben and I have been talking about the next step in getting our finances in order. We don't have any debt other than our cars and home. We save for retirement. But we don't have a 3-6 month emergency fund. So that's our next step. Then we want to pay off our vehicles. Then we'll start working heavily toward paying down our mortgage. Also, I think it's safe to say that we don't ever want to borrow money again. Even for a vehicle. I'm hoping we can save and pay cash next time.
Not long ago, I found a credit card bill from the year we were first married (yes, my husband keeps EVERYTHING) and I was shocked and dismayed at how much money we blew on frivolous things! And we made far less money back then! We calculated that once we start making extra payments toward our mortgage we'll be able to pay it off in 12 years. If we'd started that 12 years ago we'd almost be done by now!! Lesson learned: even if things seem big and impossible, it's best to dig in and start chipping away at it now. Because, God willing, tomorrow WILL come and you can either look back and be glad you started (whatever) back then instead of looking back and realizing you are still in the same place. Now THAT would be depressing!
A lot of this is very much in line with a book I've been reading lately; Your God Is Too Safe by Mark Buchanan. Very good book. Very challenging. He quotes Annie Dillard "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Or how we spend today is how we spend our life! Tomorrow I'll spend more time with my kids, be a better spouse, go on a diet, spend more time reading the Bible/praying, make more friends, become active in my community, get plugged in to a good church, save more money.......Why not today? Doesn't today count? Isn't today a part of your life? We think that we'll get it together when our present circumstances, our pressing sin, our duties, our obligations, our disappointments, our health problems our fill-in-the-blank-here abates, but maybe we need to press onward and press upward in spite of those things, because, as far as I can tell, life always throws something at us that can be used as an excuse to sit still and stagnate. So sit there and stew or make a plan and get on with it already!
Not long ago, I found a credit card bill from the year we were first married (yes, my husband keeps EVERYTHING) and I was shocked and dismayed at how much money we blew on frivolous things! And we made far less money back then! We calculated that once we start making extra payments toward our mortgage we'll be able to pay it off in 12 years. If we'd started that 12 years ago we'd almost be done by now!! Lesson learned: even if things seem big and impossible, it's best to dig in and start chipping away at it now. Because, God willing, tomorrow WILL come and you can either look back and be glad you started (whatever) back then instead of looking back and realizing you are still in the same place. Now THAT would be depressing!
A lot of this is very much in line with a book I've been reading lately; Your God Is Too Safe by Mark Buchanan. Very good book. Very challenging. He quotes Annie Dillard "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Or how we spend today is how we spend our life! Tomorrow I'll spend more time with my kids, be a better spouse, go on a diet, spend more time reading the Bible/praying, make more friends, become active in my community, get plugged in to a good church, save more money.......Why not today? Doesn't today count? Isn't today a part of your life? We think that we'll get it together when our present circumstances, our pressing sin, our duties, our obligations, our disappointments, our health problems our fill-in-the-blank-here abates, but maybe we need to press onward and press upward in spite of those things, because, as far as I can tell, life always throws something at us that can be used as an excuse to sit still and stagnate. So sit there and stew or make a plan and get on with it already!
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