Success Warrior: The Blog That Embraces ADHD

This week I have noticed another good thing about the plan

Two things have combined here that I have really noticed this week.  The first thing factor is that my wife and I have paid off most of our bills.  The second factor is that my wife registered us on some kind of list that keeps people from sending us credit card applications.

Until this week, I never realized just how many applications we get sent.  There are days now where after I throw away the grocery store ads, the "have you seen me" ad, and the Scientology garbage, I have nothing left in my hands. 

Our post office is kind enough to keep giant garbage cans on hand to collect all the junk mail.  Those things get pretty full and it seems awfully wasteful.  On one side of the PO Boxes, they put the junk mail in.  On the other side, we take it out and put it in their garbage.  Then they empty the garbage a couple of times a day.  If we want to start saving the forests, we need to put an end to this cycle.

My wife found out about the credit card ad cancelling thing in her study for her research paper and signed us up.  It's been great.  Truly, does anyone need to get ads for credit cards when you have the internet.  If you need a credit card, all you have to do is google "credit card offers" and sort through the 40,200,000 listings (actual number I just received from my google).  With 40 million options at your fingertips, who needs more junk mail?

An improptu finance meeting

My wife and I decided to suspend our weekly finance meetings for November and December and just kind of go with the flow.  We've been following the plan long enough that "going with the flow" doesn't pose much of a threat to our plan.  We just want to enjoy the holidays and not stress much about the money.  We talk about it, and read articles about it still.  She is still doing her research paper on personal finance and I am still writing this blog so it's not as if we have completely banished all thoughts of the plan from our thoughts.

She was in the mood to look over our finances for this month so we sat down and did it.  We didn't follow our normal pattern but just sat down with paper and a pen and looked at how the month is going to play out.  We were a little surprised by what we saw and in a good way.

So we projected it out for the next few months to see what it would look like when there were no holiday expenditures.  It looks very promising.

When we started our plan in April, we set some goals that seemed nearly impossible.  Our thinking went like this. 

This is what we would really like to see happen.  We set our goals as a best case scenario even though it didn't look possible.  And if we missed a little bit, we would still be so much further along that it would end up being a good thing anyway. 

If our goal was to pay off a $30,000 loan in one year and we only paid off $27,000 of it, we just can't feel too bad about that.

Looking at it last night, we might achieve our first *impossible* goal on time and our second one ahead of schedule.

And from there . . . Wow!

The Good War by Studs Terkel

I finished reading The Good War and have nearly finished the book report.  I have to submit the rough draft to the writing center by tomorrow.  I just need to do that last paragraph.  I got to that point yesterday and couldn't think of the right words to wrap it all up.  I thought I would take a break and come back to it today.

The book is a collection of interviews of people that were involved or affected by World War II, supposedly the good war.

It was great to read these first hand accounts and most of them agreed that even though it wasn't a good war (no war is good), it was for a good cause. 

A hypocritical cause but a good cause. 

It was an excellent book that showed what people thought about the war and about the US government.  There were so many things pointed out in the book that are just so messed up about war.  It really makes you wonder why we keep going to war. 

Should I call DCFS about the child abuse to my son?

I'm torn because the perpetrator is my father-in-law.  Still he knew what he was doing was wrong.  I heard him say, "Your dad is going to kill me," right before he struck. 

He had entered the house with his hand behind is back and moved over to where my son was sitting on a chair next to me.  He hesitated because of my close proximity to my son but it didn't stop him from the dastardly deed.

He moved quick and the next thing I knew my son was wearing a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat. 

I reeled in horror.  Stunned.  Shocked.  In disbelief.  How could he be so cruel?  What made him do such a thing?  What was going through his mind?  Is it something that his dad did to him when he was small?  Was he stuck in the rut?  All these thoughts raced through my head. 

"That's yours now," he said to my son. 

I fought back the urge to vomit right there.  It was almost too much for me.  I've seen some bad things in my life but 12 years of police work couldn't prepare me for this travesty. 

My son must have the innate ability to know good touch/bad touch because he took the hat off and threw it on the floor.  I resisted the urge to jump up and stomp on the hat like it was a venomous snake threatening my son's life.  Barely resisted.

The Beauty of Money

My wife and I talk about this often because of the path that we are on.  Once we have money working for us exclusively, once we have stepped across that line, we are going to help those around us.  We have family and friends that could use help or just our thanks.  There are charities that we would like to help. 

Right now, we are working on our situation.  We need to be in a position of financial strength so that we can help others to the best of our ability. 

A lot of people probably think of money in a negative way because there never seems to be enough.  Money equals stress.  Really, it's debt that equals stress but people transfer the feeling to the money. 

This plan could be called the Success Warrior Stress Reduction Plan.  =)

Think about what it would be like to not have any bills and to be able to give money to people around you that could use a little extra help.  That would be the opposite of stress.  It would be a joy.  Money would equal the warm feeling of generosity instead of stress.

What to do with money

My wife and I have discussed this often.

Right now, we are concentrating on our family.  You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others.  We have a limited number of people that we are going to buy presents for.

Next year, it will probably be different and from then on out.

Once we have gotten to where we are going then we will start working with helping others on a larger scale.  Friends, family, and charities. 

More on this later.  Right now, I'm going to go back to enjoying my vacation.

Here's another good rule that I have heard

If you can't afford it, then you can't afford it.

That's pretty straight forward but most people don't abide by it.

My wife and I have gotten really good at following this rule.  It is actually surprisingly easy to live by once you're out of the habit of charging things.  And like I said in an earlier post, once you get to the point where you can afford things, you may not want to buy them anyway because this plan is so addicting.

My wife said it best yesterday when we were talking about our upcoming trip.  It's going to cost us more money than we would have liked but it's the holidays and we're visiting her parents.  We only get to see them a few times a year so it's important to go when we have the chance.  It's really not costing that much as far as trips go.  Gas and a bit of food and that's about it.  And we are paying cash of course. 

Anyway, she said that it just comes down to choice.  We get to decide what we do with the money that isn't promised to bills.  Many people get themselves so caught up in bills that they have little choice in where their money goes. 

For us, it means that for the next month we slow down on paying off our debts.  We'll use the extra cash for this trip, Christmas presents for Trey, and another trip after Christmas. 

When the holidays are over, all the extra cash starts going back toward the debts.  In 2007, we should have everything paid off except our house.  How cool will that be?

Crossing the Line

It's going to be a short post today because I have to get ready for my trip tomorrow.

I just want to restate that the goal of this plan is to cross the line.  To go from paying interest to earning interest. 

That's one of the reasons the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  For many people, it is possible to cross the line but it's going to get more difficult in the future from the sounds of things.

Start now.

There is a brothel about 40 miles from here

CV Rick is coming out here to visit from Minneapolis in January.  I was telling him what there is to do out here in the middle of nowhere.  Not a whole lot.  I told him about Donna's Ranch.  I told him that what happens in Wendover stays in Wendover unless you take the evidence home in the form of an STD.  He's a regular reader of this blog so he asked if it would be bad to buy sex using a credit card. 

You already know that I don't think you shouldn't use your credit card for anything but I did pass on some good advice that I heard from John Cummuta.  He said that you should never buy on credit anything that will be gone before the last payment is made.  Don't keep spending money on something that you no longer have.  It makes good sense. 

Unless you are going to pay off the charge in the next 2 minutes, charging sex on a card is a no-no. 

Same with going out to eat.  Or groceries. 

Or cars.  I was suprised a few years back to hear that you could now get 7 year loans for cars.  Most people don't keep their cars for 7 years so they have to roll over whatever they owe onto their next car.  They are upside down on their loan before they even get into their car and then as soon as they leave the lot, the value of the car goes down even further.

People are making payments on things that they no longer own and in some cases no longer even exists.  I had never given it much thought before because we have been conditioned not to think about it.  It makes perfect sense though.  Don't spend money on something you don't even own.

Just Out Of Curiousity, I Had To Check This

I like to look at the options that I have for my money.  I think that it helps me keep things in better perspective.  I can't make use of all the options yet but I think I make better decisions now based on what could happen in the future. 

Take for example, our house payment from yesterday.  The one where we would be paying $1,300 in interest a month for the first year.  I had to wonder what would happen if I was investing that money instead.  What would it be like if I was earning interesting instead of paying interest?  What would the difference be.

Well if you put $1,300 into a mutual fund for 30 years, you would end up with over $1.5 million if the market continued to act as it has for the last 50 years.  I could live on that.  And it sure beats the heck out of the hundreds of thousands I would be paying in interest. 

I know that you don't actually pay that much per month over the life of the loan.  Principle goes up and the interest goes down.  Still it's a good thing to to see, at least for me.

Most people could pay off their house in about 5 to 7 years if they wanted.  If you took the house payment and invested it for the last 25 years, you wouldn't make as much money but you would still have $1.1 million.  That's still not too bad.  If you were able to keep making the payments for 5 more years, you'd have $1.8 million.  And the calculator I'm using suggested an 8% return.  Some people say that over 30 years, it would be closer to 10%.

For me, this shows just how important it is to cross the line between paying interest and earning interest.  Life changing.