Our First "Non-emergency" Emergency

Photo courtesy of ultramarineblue

*The names, faces, dialogues, and timelines have been changed to protect the author - er I mean the innocent. lol

Tuesday morning 8:57am
My wife and I woke up, got ready for work, left the house, hopped in the car.... and just SAT there. When I tried to start up the car it seemed like all sorts of crazy things happened all at once and there were all kinds of alien error messages on the display that I'd never seen before. I tinker with the lights, door handles, the key, etc trying to mojo my car to life but It's not happening.

9:20 -- (To my wife) "Well I have that plug-in battery charger in the trunk, let me hook it up and we'll be on our way..."

9:30 -- (To the charger) "What do you mean your batteries are dead?!?" Oh the irony...

9:40 -- (To my wife) "Well, I guess we better just call AAA..."

9:45 -- (To the person on the phone) "What do you mean it's expired?!?"

10:00 -- Thinking...

10:15 -- Still thinking...

10:16 -- At this point *'Husband Panic' sets in. That’s what I like to call it when you know your wife is waiting on you to make a decision but you dont know WHAT to do! And to make it worse, every option you're considering has dollar signs attached to it. * This occurs internally and is completely undetectable by the wife. (Yeah right!)

10:20 -- We do what we must, we use our emergency fund to renew the AAA membership, because well this is a full fledged emergency.

Fast forward to 11:30
AAA arrives. The car is completely dead now, no response at all. He gives us a jump and we decide to try to drive the car for a while to see how it's performing.

12:30pm -- Obviously neither my wife or I are going to work today so we focus on the issue at hand: making sure our car is alright, it's the only one we have... and right now, though it's running, it's not letting us get out of first gear which makes me very very affraid. (My 'Husband Panic' is saying, "$ Please $ don’t $ let $ it $ be $ the $ transmission $!!")

12:45 -- While eating lunch in the car - which has been running since 11:30 and wasting our precious gas away and is now down to 1/8th of a tank - we decide to pray for guidance on what we should do next, and that this not set us back financially.

12:50 -- My wife remembers seeing an auto shop that specializes in servicing our make of car. So we drive over there, talk to the mechanic, and I reluctantly agree to let him run the $90 diagnostic.

1:30 -- He comes back and tells us that ALL of the problems are being caused by a bad battery and that he has reset the onboard computer parameters for us free of charge, and that he is also willing to install the new battery at cost! (without any service chages, etc) Praise God!

2:30 -- A family member came over to the shop to loan us their 2nd vehicle if we needed it, which at this point we do. The costs have slowly been mounting through the day and they have now exhausted our emergency fund.

The AAA, the diagnostic charge, and the replacement battery did us in, but our emergency fund did it's job perfectly!On top of this, I have every reason to be thankful that this emergency was able to be contained within our emergency fund at all! I was thinking of electrical damage ($$$), transmission work ($$$) and possibly engine work as well ($$$), but God protected us from those types of financial difficulties!

Equally important through this ordeal was the poise of my wife, and our ability to be of the same mindset in the midst of the storm. We both saw this as a CLEAR opportunity for God to show himself on our behalf, and He did just that. It was beautiful to see our Spiritual Peace working in tandem with our Financial Peace during this situation!

A friend of mine once defined a financial emergency simply as "Anything that happens that you have no financial provision for." So I guess I can't truly call this an emergency at all, we had the financial provision, and more importantly the Devine provision to weather this particular storm.

Isaiah 26:3 says:

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.

Thanks again for joining me,

@W

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The Predator, The Prey, & The Unexpected Protector...

Photo courtesy of Olivier DELAERE

This is my first attempt to put video up on the site. I hope you enjoy this. During my last post I mentioned how Dave Ramsey advises debt-dumpers to be "Gazelle Intense". Well I found this video on YouTube that illustrates that saying, but with a twist. In this clip a cheetah (the predatory lenders of the world) is mercilessly toying with a baby gazelle (you and me) ... but the most amazing part is WHO steps in to protect the baby gazelle from the clutches of the enemy!



After watching that, I can't help but think of how Christ steps in to protect us when the enemy comes around to toy with us. My favorite part is that he doesn't even DO anything, just his mere presence makes the enemy roll out!

Hope this blesses you as much as it did me!

@W

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Snowflakes in June!!

Photo courtesy of redjar

We finally did it, we became a part of the snowflake revolution!

What is "snowflaking", and what's so great about it? Snowflaking is a spinoff of the Debt Snowball concept. Jaimie at I’ve Paid for This Twice Already puts it this way:

"What are snowballs made of? Snowflakes!"... "I also try to collect little bits of money wherever I can, and to apply those to my top priority debt (my credit card)."

As of our last check in June we've decided to try to snowflake as much as we can to replenish our emergency fund. For me this is great, because I was personally already trying to do this for my food money anyway, now I just have the seal of approval from the wife to do it across all of our finances.

Since I've been paying by cash for my food using the envelope system, each day I come home with a pocket full of change. I drop it into my automatic change counter, and at the end of the month take it to a local bank and exchange it for bills. I would then use the cash towards buying a small personal reward like a CD, or I would put it towards a household expense. But now I've decided to make sure that all that change, and any other remaining money from the previous paycheck go towards our emergency fund.

I'm becoming what Dave Ramsey calls "Gazelle Intense!" Cheeetahh!!! (If you dont understand, click the link...lol.)

Unfortunately that's all I have time to post right now.

Thanks for tuning in!

@W

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June is the LAST month we spend $500 on FOOD!

photo courtesy of cycrolu

Dont you just love epiphanies? I had one yesterday while preparing for the 'weekly' budget meeting with my wife. (She'll get a laugh out of the 'weekly' part lol.) For what seems like months I've been looking at our budget trying to see what else I could squeeze out of it. I could never see it, but I could just sense that I was missing something that was staring me right in the face. And boy was it ever, it was the $500 we've been spending on food each and every month! $500 as in a car note on a brand new 5 Series BMW... $500 as in a PS3 and 2 games! For the record, right now it's just the 2 of us, no kids and no pets! I know of couples with 3 children that get by on spending less!

I know just how we got in this bind, and sadly I know we're not the only ones. Sure our situation may be slightly different, but the symptoms are completely the same for anyone who is overspending on food or any other area of your finances. For me it's a word called COMFORT, that simple, inviting killer of many other positive C words: conviction, concentration, character, courage, & chutzpah!

It might not be called the same thing for you, but you need to understand that no matter what you're calling it, IT is keeping you from that next level in your debt dumping experience. See there are basically 3 factors that determine the relationship you have with money: Emotion, Psychology, and the Numbers. I was reading a great article over at Zenhabits.net yesterday called: How I Paid Off $35,000 in Debt, and How You Can Too.

In the article the author was debating the logic of paying your debt off in order of interest rate from highest to lowest, versus paying your debt in order of account balance from lowest to highest. Both approaches have their benefits depending on your psychology towards money. And it was while he was explaining this that he threw out a quote that hit me like an uppercut!

"Many experts advise paying your high interest debts first. Obviously, this makes the most sense mathematically. But if money were all about math, you wouldn’t have debt in the first place. Debt is as much about emotion and psychology as it is about math."

When we started this budget back in October, I was eating fast food almost daily, and my wife was on a weight-loss program. Because of this, we made the decision to split our food money into His and Hers envelopes. The deal was supposed to be $50 per person per check for personal food, and another $50 every other check strictly for non-food groceries such as cleaning products, toiletries, etc. This worked 'fine' for us because we could basically expect one of us to be paid each week, so it equalled $50 per person each week. That might not sound like much at all right? $50 divided by 7 days is $7.15/day... But when you look at it on a month to month basis, it works out to about $200 per person just for our food allowance, and $100 each month for non-food groceries.

I never needed $200 just for food, it just a comfortable dollar amount for the types of food I wanted to buy. Everybody knows it's cheaper and healthier to prepare and cook your own food than it is to eat out all the time. And everybody also knows that it's far cheaper to brownbag your lunch each day rather than frequenting McDonalds, Wendy's, Burger King, and Taco Bell and letting them hit you up for $6-$8 per meal!

While everybody (myself included) might have already known this, yesterday I was finally willing to admit it to myself. My Emotion (wanting to be comfortable) was not in keeping with my Psychology (Kill off this debt by any means) or my Numbers (Spend less on wants, and more on needs and debt elimination). The three have to be in agreement for things to work at an optimum clip.

By the end of the budget meeting, my wife and I decided that we could do away with the His and Hers food money, and also do away with $150 of that $500 tab each month. We both feel very good about it, because we both realize not much is being lost, but a whole lot is being gained by the change we just made. We basically just created some extra income where there was none by curbing our wasteful spending and thinking outside of the box.

I'm sure there are ways you can do the same if you take the time to balance the Emotion, the Psychology, and the Numbers to work to your advantage.

So here's your homework till the next time we meet up: I want you to A) Find a name for your emotion towards your money or B) Give a name to the emotion that prevents you from whipping your financial picture into better shape. And if you care to share them, feel free to use the Comments section, we'd all love to hear you perspective!

Be Blessed till next time,

@W

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A few improvements to the blog...

Photo courtesy of nationalmint

"We appreciate the kind that jingles, but we'd rather have the kind that folds."
Lisa McDowell - Coming to America

If you've been tuning in to this blog, over the past weeks hopefully you will have noticed some major changes. First of all I truly want to thank you for even taking the time to scan this blog at all. So many outlets are competing for your time, attention, and loyalty. It's truly a blessing and an affirmation to have you here as a friend of this site! And so again I say loudly and proudly, THANK YOU for being here!

Here's a breif rundown of what's new:

1) I've been working hard to make this site easier on the eyes by adding relevant images to each of the existing posts!

2)You'll notice that I'm diversifying the content to include videos, exclusive interviews, polls, how-to tutorials, and even guest bloggers from time to time!

3) A custom Google search box has been added to help you easily locate other debt-help resources and content.

4) I've added 2 new and important ways that you can directly help us dump our debt in the form of A) Ad content provided by Google Adsense. And B) By adding PayPal donation links to the sidebar, and to the bottom of each post.

Now, I want to ensure you that @W has in no way SOLD OUT by choosing to add these sources of revenue. I'm not out to beg for your monetary support, but I am willing to leave that open to you as an option if you feel impressed to do so.

Furthermore, let me add that I will never ask you to pay for the content provided on this site, nor will I ever seek to sell any goods or services through the use of this site. This site is strictly a vehicle for encouragement, education, and edification of fellow Christians FIRST and FOREMOST and also fellow debt-dumpers of any other creed.

Once again (yes AGAIN!) thank you for being a friend of @Risk Living!

Adrian Wright - @W

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