Maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a kid.  If you look at the very basic foundation of their society, they don’t work for a paycheck and go home at the end of the day and try to forget about what they do during the day.  They all work at a job that is enjoyable to them and is a challenge to them, and in exchange they are provided with all of their “needs” and their reasonable “wants.”  Look at the crew in Engineering.  Sure there are days where things break and things don’t go according to plan, but the overwhelming majority of their time is divided between general upkeep of the systems, and research into bettering those very systems.  They figure out a way to attach the sensor array to the warp drive to exponentially increase the range and accuracy of those sensors.  Sure that attracted an alien race from another dimension that wanted to experiment on crew members, but the point is they were working to better the equipment so they could increase the learning efficiency and potential for their society.  They don’t go home at night wondering if what they did is going to make a difference, and by the same token they don’t expect get rewarded with physical items for major accomplishments.  The drive is in the pride of the work they perform.

The unfortunate reasons that our society can not support true socialism at this point is primarily because of two main points, the first being corruption.  When you get leadership (or even middlemen) that find ways to cheat the system and siphon off their own resources, that creates a drain on the society.  As they gain more and more resources, their power to drain even more grows and creates a vicious cycle.  The rich get richer, and the society gets poorer.  This also applies to literary works.  Copyright was originally designed to allow a performer or author to sell their works without competition for the first (approximately) decade, after that their work would move into the public domain so that the entire society would be able to benefit.  Unfortunately we have corrupt leadership in place that has taken the intent of copyright and extended it to allow a media cartel to run the show.  No longer can a budding author take a book from 10 years ago and change key elements in the story and re-write it into a new work based on the original.  This is a prime example of taking a socialist idea and killing it with corruption.

The second reason is there are way too many people in our current society that are more than happy to freeload off of whomever they can, and do the least amount of work they can to get by.  Why work when they can get whatever they want anyway?  Our society even encourages this behavior right now, with government “assistance” programs designed to take the benefits away if a person even tries to get ahead and get off of the program.  A person receiving a disability (or SSI) payment every month will lose that money if they try to work extra in order to get ahead.  Even worse, they are not allowed to save any money.  The SSI payments are designed to help with basic living and medical expenses.  If the person were allowed to save up $5-10K, they would be able to afford the medical expenses out of their own pocket and would no longer need SSI every month to play catchup on the medical debt.  Instead, they are told they have to spend every dime they make or they will lose the assistance.  It is no longer an assistance program to help a person get ahead, it is a full time job designed to keep them from getting ahead.

Capitalism isn’t all bad either.  When people work hard and save their money, ideally they are able to use that money to help society by donating to charities, building community centers, and things along those lines.  The problem is too many people don’t understand this and hold onto their money so tightly that it doesn’t do anybody (including themselves) any good.  For a good example of the way to do it, take a look at Bill Gates.  This man has more money than anyone could ever possibly need.  He set up a non-profit organization (Gates Foundation) that he funnels his money through to do amazing things to help the citizens of our little planet.  Even though the company that made him his money has a reputation for being money grubbing and heavy handed, he still chooses to take his own share and use it for good.

There are so many problems in this world today, but rather than working together to solve them as a group, we tend to pick our own little slice and try to make sure it is given the priority.  Until we all learn to work towards a common goal as a society and move all of our actions in line with that goal, we will never progress beyond where we are now.  Unfortunately we spend too much effort on propping up the failures rather than emphasizing the successes.  All I can do is raise my children to work at something they enjoy and to be proud of the work they do, and maybe someday we’ll be ready to become a true socialist society.

When we were going through our rough times, I started listening daily to Dave Ramsey’s radio show. I’d heard him off and on over the past couple of years on XM, but his message really started to hit me. People were calling in with situations 1000% worse than ours, and he was giving them hope. This in turn gave me hope because if they can recover from where they are, there is no reason we can’t do it too. Up to that point I was slightly cynical, thinking “Wow, that is a dumb person to be in that situation. How could they let themselves get into that mess?” I had realized at that point that I was now one of those “dumb” people. Intelligent people make bad decisions too, and sometimes certain circumstances beyond their control can put them into situations they would never have planned to be in. That was a profound lesson I learned about myself that day.

I went to the library and borrowed his Financial Peace book, and started reading it. I read it in a couple of days and started telling Cristi what I had learned. I told her let’s start by taking our day to day expenses out of the bank and spit it among envelopes for the budget categories and stick to it. She reluctantly agreed, but later she admitted to me it was only in order to prove to me it was another one of my hare-brained projects that would not work and be abandoned after a few weeks. Fortunately it worked, and then she became more interested in the rest of Dave’s teachings.

I’d heard Dave mention his Financial Peace University course several times and decided to check into it. Since Cristi doesn’t learn well just from reading a book, I was hopeful it would help her learn what I just did, and to expand upon my understanding of the materials. I was disappointed to discover it was $200. “We’re already struggling to meet the budget now, there is no way to afford this.” Well I did some searching and found the eBay outlet store had it for $125. Just as I was trying to figure out how to afford it, I received a payment for some contract work I’d done, and even though it would have been useful in other budget areas, we discussed it and decided to go ahead and purchase it.

Once it was on the way I searched for the next class sessions starting in our area, and narrowed it down between a few different choices. In the end we chose a Wednesday evening class because the church sponsoring the class offered free childcare during the class sessions. We would have preferred a weekend class in order to keep the kids’ bedtime schedule consistent, but this took away any hassle in finding a sitter (and having a backup sitter in case of illness) and additional expense for gas driving back and forth.

The membership kit arrived just in time for the first class. I couldn’t wait to get started, so I resisted temptation to read ahead in the book and listen to the included audio tracks of the course. The Financial Peace book I had borrowed from the library was also included, so I was already a little ahead in that aspect.

The location we chose for class was Cathedral of the Rockies. They even have a dinner Wednesday evenings before everybody splits off into their various evening studies called “Wonderful Wednesday.” This includes singing, prayer, and kind of a mini-sermon. We had some very wonderful meals there and we’ve introduced several different foods to our routine (including couscous) because of these dinners. After dinner was finished, we’d march the kids downstairs to the daycare and get them situated, then head back to the sanctuary for class.

Every class session was very entertaining. Dave makes it fun to learn about personal finance, as he is very charismatic and throws in humor to keep the excitement level high. He sets the program out in small chunks called the Baby Steps, which takes a huge hairy goal and breaks it down into attainable short term goals. He not only explains how to do something, but more importantly why to do it. He mentions several times not to go do something just because he said so, but to fully understand it first. He highly emphasizes this point during the lessons that mention any kind of investing. The lessons are also highly motivating. After each session we wanted to go home and do it. After the saving lesson we wanted to put all of our money into savings, who cares about food! Obviously we didn’t do that, but we are making it a point to put some into savings every payday now. After the giving lesson we wanted to go out and give away all of our money, who cares about saving! Obviously that is not how he teaches it (and not what we did,) but he does encourage responsible giving and talks about how rewarding it is to your spirit to be a generous giver.

Each of the lessons we’ve learned are worth more than 10 fold the price of the course. If you take away one point out of the entire 13 week course you will have gotten your money’s worth and then some. Since we had started using the envelope system before we purchased the class membership we had already saved in late fees alone more than the cost of the classes, and now we’re on the right track to change the financial future for our family. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but now we’ve been armed with the proper tools so that the work we perform is in the right direction.

The most difficult part of the program so far has been criticism from family members. Its been tough saying no we can’t go out to eat another time this week. We received negative comments when we were asked how much we spent on the kids’ Christmas gifts, even though it was one of the best Christmases we’ve ever had. When we’ve tried to tell some of them the benefits of FPU, they’ve said its a rip-off MLM and its not worth it, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t make a penny by referring someone to FPU, in fact there isn’t even a referral program.

One of the benefits I’m most happy with is the fact that Cristi and I are now on the same page when it comes to finances. Before it was constant arguing and fighting. I would say she’s spending too much, she would say I’m being too tight and need to let her live a little. In the end we both gave up and stopped caring about it altogether. It was easier to play ostrich and ignore how bad it was getting than to fight trying to change it. Now we still have the occasional disagreement, but we’ve learned to work through it and compromise.

The bottom line is we did it, through the ups and downs, through the encouragement and discouragement from others, and the setbacks and victories. We did it. 13 weeks is not enough time to fix all of the mistakes we’ve made in the last few years, but we’ve learned what to do to stay ahead of the game while we pay for those mistakes. According to the plans we’ve laid out, we will be debt free within 2 years, something that would not have been possible without attending the class together.

Overall her message is great, reduce debt, don’t spend more than you make, don’t spend lots of money on expensive stuff you don’t need, and keep an emergency fund in place. Those are all excellent tips that everybody should be following.

What confuses me though is her worship of the FICO score. On one hand she talks about reducing and eliminating your debt, yet on the other hand she talks about what to do to keep your FICO score from dropping. I was watching an episode last night where she was warning people about paying only their minimum payments, and how that could cause credit limits to drop, thereby reducing the FICO score. This would then cause other creditors to drop their limits and reduce the score even more, and it would continue rolling down hill like a big evil snowball. According to her this is going to cause an atomic bomb to be dropped on the economy when credit cards start to drop their customers because of their FICO scores, the nobody will be able to buy anything.  Has she not heard of using cash?  It only means people will be forced to stop buying things they can’t afford.

Did you know the FICO score is entirely based on a person’s debt? I’m thinking she doesn’t know this the way she acts. She encourages people to get out of debt yet seems very concerned about FICO scores. A FICO score is “an I love debt score” to quote Dave Ramsey. Why fight so hard to maintain a good debt score when your goal is to get out of debt and stay out of debt? Outside of debt the only thing a good credit score will help with is employment and insurance. I can promise the additional insurance premiums I’ll have to pay when I’m debt free (and therefore a credit score of zero) will be less than the interest fees I’m paying now.  Seems like an easy trade to me. As far as employment goes, if an employer is going to make a hiring decision on me based purely on my FICO score, without looking at the reason behind the score, then I probably don’t want to be working for them anyway.

I’m going to continue to watch The Suze Orman Show occasionally, but I’ll be taking the information with a grain of salt. I’m getting the feeling that she is trying to appeal to a larger audience by being more entertaining, but unfortunately that seems to be at the expense of giving sound financial advice.

Rather than setting 10 goals that have all year to complete, I’m going to set some short-term goals and revisit them on a regular basis.  This should help keep me motivated and prevent me from abandoning them.  With a regular review I’ll be better able to track progress, as well as adjust the goal if it proves to be unrealistic.

To start with, I’m going to set the following goals, all to be reviewed in one week.  After the goals have been “proven” I’ll adjust the review frequency.

• Maximum of 10 hours of TV per week.  This excludes news and non-entertainment related shows, such as business and financial shows.  I’m also going to add an exception for what I call background shows such as “Cops” that I may “watch” while I’m working on something else.  As long as it doesn’t interfere with the task at hand it doesn’t count against the allotment.  Most of what I watch is semi-educational anyway, but I’m hoping to free up more time to do more constructive activities.
• Read at least 2 books per month, one fiction and one non-fiction.
• Make a minimum of 3 blog postings per week. 
• Weight loss: I’m hoping to lose 100 lbs over the next year.  In order to meet that goal I’ll need to average 2 per week.  As long as I’m careful with my eating this should be “easy” to do.
• Financial: We’ve been a little too relaxed in sticking to our budget during the holiday season.  We overspent some (we underspent on some budget areas and did not put that surplus into savings, and actually dipped into the savings a little too much) but that is behind us.  Now we want to tighten down and make sure we’re following our budget.

Depending on how those initial goals work out, I may replace some with similar goals, or I may add additional goals as time goes on.  The important part is to make sure I am realistic with the goals and that I don’t bite off more than I can chew and wind up forgetting about the whole thing.

This year the kids woke us up around 7:30, we leisurely got out of bed, got dressed, and started opening presents around 8:00.  Normally we make oatmeal for breakfast on Christmas morning, but the kids said they’d rather have cold cereal instead.  Silly kids…  Anyway after doing our own Christmas thing, we headed up to my mom’s house at about 10:30, and my grandparents arrived at about 11:00.  We exchanged gifts, had lunch, and actually got to sit and enjoy it.  Later on in the afternoon we went out to my grandmother’s house (my dad’s side of the family) and had dinner with her, again not feeling rushed.  We left probably a little earlier than we wanted to, but that was because the kids had reached the point of no return with the excitement level and lack of nap during the day.  Even Gillian was developing quite the attitude and normally she does fine (and doesn’t take a daily nap any more.)

Another thing that made it so enjoyable was that everybody cut back on “stuff” this year.  On our side we cut back because we’re working on paying off our debt and decided over-spending on holiday junk was counter-productive to that goal.  We concentrated on picking up a few gifts that we felt would be more meaningful rather a bunch of gifts that would be looked at a time or two then discarded.  Even though we really hadn’t discussed our plans with anyone, for the most part everybody seemed to do the same thing.  I don’t know if it is the economy or just everybody saying “enough is enough” but it was nice.

The kids got a lot of nice things including, an Xbox 360, a VMotion console, tons of books and coloring books, cars, dolls, clothing, etc.  I got a lot of nice shirts (I was getting short on them, ) a hair trimmer set (mine was limping along on life support), and some universal gift certificates.  Cristi got some clothing, a necklace, scrapbooking supplies, and some universal gift certificates.  We got some smaller things this year too, but its is all things we’ve wanted or needed.  What was missing overall was the large abundance of “plastic” from years past.  You know what I mean, the plastic things that people buy to give as gifts that look really neat in the packaging (which itself is plastic that would survive a nuclear blast) but won’t last more than a couple of weeks before they break.  Nearly everything exchanged this year were all either meant to be consumed (coloring books, food) or meant to last a long time (books, electronics.)  That reminds me too, we made it through this year only receiving a couple of small boxes of candy.  Normally we’d receive enough candy to last through Haloween, but would normally be gone within a couple of weeks.

Overall this has been one of the more relaxing and enjoyable Christmases we’ve had in a long time, and I hope we can maintain it in future years.  Feeling stressed out through the holiday kind of takes the true meaning out of it in my opinion.

I had completely forgotten about doing that and a $55 and some odd cents check arrived in the mail.  They pay for referrals and referral’s surveys as well, so here’s a shameless referral link.  If you want to make some extra pocket money, give this link (SurveySavvy) a click.