DiscipleGeek

Dave Ramsey.

Many people used his name in many ways these days. Some people use it reverently, some as a curse, and some as a bludgeon to try to control others. When my friends first attempted to share what he teaches with me, I was skeptical. I thought it was just a get rich quick scam, where the quickest way to get rich is to write a book about how to get rich.

I was not ready to hear what Dave was saying.

You may not be ready to hear what he’s saying. But let me tell you, in a country where the government is closing in on $17 trillion in debt and the average household owes ~ $7000* in credit card debt (and this doesn’t include car loans, which are just as bad,) we need his message.

His message is pretty simple, live on less than what you make. Get out of debt. Save money. These are all things that as he says is “…the same financial advice your grandmother would, only we keep our teeth in.”

The most important part of what he teaches, however, is that he lays out a road map for how to do all those things. He gives you a plan to follow, and not vague advice.

It has helped my wife and I tremendously. I’ve been laid off in the past and thanks to listening to his teachings, instead of panicking, I knew peace because I was prepared.

At one point, thanks to his plan we had two paid off vehicles and we were only about $4,000 from being completely debt free except the house. Unfortunately, we let emotions guide us into purchasing a van that was way above what we should and we were back in about $18k debt. Once we realized our mistake and paid our stupid tax, we started working again and are back down to about $7,000 left on a different, cheaper van before we’ll be debt free aside from the house.

Now that Christina is working very minimally from home, we’re stepping up our game significantly to be able to support ourselves with the lower income. I have started a web design company, GraceSites, LLC with a focus on designing websites for congregations of the Lord’s church. From time to time I’ve also been fortunate enough to have friends find non church websites to build as well.

Christina has also been finding stuff around the house and trying to clear it out. We had a yard sale a couple of weekends ago that did pretty well. We’re working the baby steps.

I spoke of regret a few days ago, and if I have one regret, it’s that I didn’t listen to all the voices telling me how helpful Dave has been to them.

Do yourself a favor and don’t make the same mistake I did. Even if you don’t use Dave Ramsey’s plan, get your finances in order. However, I must point out his plan is not about getting rich quick, it’s about being responsible with what God has given you, and in turn, finding Financial Peace.

*Stats from Nerd Wallet

You’re never down and out unless you think you are. http://daveramsey.com/

Really? A live action anime of Kiki’s Delivery Service? I’m trying not to get my hopes up here as it was one of my favorite works from Studio Ghibli. I hope it does justice. The only thing that will for certain be missed is the voice of Phil Hartman.

From Anime News Network

Here’s a picture of a pink loveseat. It has nothing to do with this post.

I want to thank you for coming by and reading the blog day to day. It means a lot to me.

It won’t be long now and I will have posted an article every day for a full month, which is a major record for me. I’ve thought several times about giving it up, but I’m determined to stick with this. I’ve had some good feed back from my friends and even from strangers. This is exciting because there are people out there that aren’t reading this stuff because they feel they have to.

If I may ask a favor from you, when I post an article, Like or Share it or whatever to your preferred social platforms. Some of them *cough*Facebook*cough* are designed to lower the chance of a post appearing on peoples’ streams unless they receive a good number of Likes and Shares.

I’d like to see just how many people I can get reading this daily. The average number of views per day has gone up from 23 in May to 50 in June. This is awesome for the short time I’ve been posting.

One other thing…

Please Subscribe via email on the left, Like the Facebook Page, +1 the Google+ Page, or just Follow my Twitter account. This will help you stay notified when I post something. For the record, I’ve been scheduling my posts to publish at 7 am sharp. I’ve decided to move the publish time to 2:30 pm because more people are awake and/or paying attention to notice when the articles go live.

Ok, that’s all, I now return you to your regularly scheduled boredom.

I think I do pretty well at avoiding game hype. However, every once in a while, I get an itch for a game that I just can’t ignore. Usually something triggers it. In the case of my latest obsession, it was this video that was my trigger:

Yup, I’ve resisted the siren call of Skyrim for a good year and a half, and a video that doesn’t even show gameplay managed to spark my interest. The main reason I kept from playing Skyrim is because I know how these games go down. I’ve been playing them since Daggerfall back in the 90’s.

They’re all prettier and have some new feature that makes the game better than the last one, but every time I end up wandering the landscape ignoring the main story line in deference to the billions of side quests and random objects I can steal. It’s always the same. And every time, I end up playing the next one — eventually.

Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.