Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Updates

Mowing Day #3

I learned yesterday that I can only get three mowing's on a tank of gas. I had skipped my mowing last week due to the Never Too Young Jr High event at IWU. I stayed up late, rushed home on Saturday and Wesley and I went out to do our other mowing jobs. Good news on that front we may have picked up a third house. So here's the commercial: if you are needing your yard mowed, flowers planted, flowerbed weeded and maintained, please call 3 Hollands Mowing and Landscape for a quote.
So my yard needed a trim. I knocked that out yesterday afternoon before class. It is as if I haven't mowed yet this year, so cool to see nature in action. I cut it down, God grows it up. It's a cool system.



Election Day
Jaye is working at the polls today. She had to wake up really early to be on the job by 5:00 am. Joseph must have sensed a disturbance in the force. Mom was not in bed sleeping so he needed to be awake today at 4:00 am too. So we were downstairs enjoying election day bright and early. As you can see the excitement wore off quickly and about 7:30 he went back to sleep, kinda. Tip for those of you on the run all the time, sleep with your feet on the floor and when you wake up you'll be ready to bolt at a moments notice.

Financial Peace University
We haven't reported our progress in learning financial peace since day one. Let's review, step one is to save up $1000 for an emergency fund. As far as it goes most of us in the class feel like that $1000 will be hard to come up with, thousand---million it all looks out of reach.
That's all we gave you in our first report so here is step two, prepare a budget on paper and spend every cent on that budget before you earn it. The lesson is to see where all your money goes. This is an on going step. We keep finding things we forgot to budget like, ah, Mothers Day is this month, kids lunches that kinda stuff. So we have had to bring the budget committee (Jaye and I) back together and rework the budget several times. Dave Ramsey said it will take 3-4 months to get good at this budget step. Step three start a debt snowball. The idea is to start paying off your bills starting with a bill attack, we need to attack the debt! So that means you all will be invited to a Holland yard sale in a week or two. It will be our "Get out of Debt Clearance Sale." EVERYTHING MUST GO! Including the two go-carts I bought last year, the mini bike I built in Jay County, my project Jeep CJ5 and most everything else. I like Dave's thoughts on this point, he said sell it all now to get out of debt. Once you are out of debt you can start investing, make tons of money and then buy new stuff. I'm ok with that.

That's it you are up to date. It is going to be a beautiful day today so tell your boss I said you should take the day off work to enjoy the sun.

5 comments:

Jess said...

We just paid off a line of credit in as part of our debt snowball attack!:-)

Keetha Broyles said...

So, did you really WEDD your flowerbeds? I mean, flowers ARE the reproductive parts of plants - - - - just wonderin'

How DO kids manage to sleep in just about every imaginable strange position possible????

Tina said...

Those pictures of Joseph are cute. Those were the days when you could fall asleep anywhere...

Bette said...

RE: Financial Peace U. - I listen to Dave Ramsey too sometimes. I paid off all my debt (except the pesky student loans :( and the thing is this: Once you DE-CRAP (or De-stuff) then you need to not RE-CRAP (or re-stuff) - sell stuff, give it away, donate it to charity and then don't REACCUMULATE - less is MORE!! :)

Sis

Keetha Broyles said...

Greg had mowing day 4 today - - - did you?