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If big corporations are taking this seriously, the church darn well better be

The middle class is shrinking, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. It turns out that corporations understand what is happening and they are responding.


22 September 2011
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My thumb made a rule

The most valuable things in life have always been given, not sold. If someone has nothing to give, only to sell, what they are selling isn’t that valuable.


6 March 2011
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I love the way the bible combines bright-eyed idealism with clear-eyed realism

Deuteronomy 15:1-11, TNIV At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to another Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the LORD’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt one of your people owes you. However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. For the LORD your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you. If anyone is poor among your people in any of the towns of the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: ‘The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,’ so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your people and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward those of your people who are poor and needy in your land.


10 June 2010
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The final money post

Quite a while ago I started writing the story of us getting on our feet financially as it happened. Turns out, the same thing that got us into the mess stopped me from writing about it: money bores me.

It has been a year and a third since I posted any updates to our story. It’s safe to say this section is dead. Here’s one last update

So, we are a ways down the road to financial health, and we have a quite a way to go.

I got bored typing that.


22 January 2010
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Putting the raisin back into fundraising

I have hated fundraising my whole life. Actually hate is probably not a strong enough word. I have loathed even thoughts of fundraising my whole life. Until today. Today, thanks to Seth Godin, I read Sasha Dichter’s fundrasing manifesto. Now I love fundraising. Now I want to go do fundraising, as long as I get to do it in the way that Mr Dichter describes.

Get the manifesto here. It is about a ten minute read if you take it nice and slow.


28 October 2008
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Coming soon

Coming soon...

They’ve come!

I’m pleased to announce the cutest part of our journey to financial health:

You can hang ‘em up way up high.
You can sit ‘em on your thigh.
You can hang em from your belt.
They are cute and made of felt…

owls.

They will be on sale in a couple days. I’ll let you know.


28 September 2008
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Let's call this one Hope For The Future (because the present doesn't look too good)

Friday was fun. That was the day that I discovered that once again I messed up my tax payments. HM Revenue & Customs sent me a lovely little document explaining how I need to give them £800 now and another £1,000 in January and another £700 in July, bless them.

It’s not their fault. It’s mine. It’s also my fault that we have debt to pay off and that we have a £600 monthly deficit that we are trying to overcome. It’s my fault that my family is facing some very difficult months as we tighten everything to try and get back on track.

Probably the worst thing about this situation is how slow I am to change. I have been actively working on clearing up my financial mess for a year and only now have I started planning and budgeting! (Insert pejorative exclamation here.)

Probably the best thing is that I know it’s all my fault. That fact really gives me hope. I’m not at the mercy of weather or spiteful little deities or a Curse of Finance (Lay your hand on the television and say the name of Cheee-susss and send your biggest cheque to me and you will be fuh-REE-ah, my brother!) I’m just an idiot with money. And I can do something about that.

Here is one of the things I am going to change: in the past, when our income has increased, our lifestyle has always ‘improved’ to use up that increase. I think it is like that for a lot of people. I have known for years that my lifestyle should be beneath my income, but when it comes to what I have actually done my reasoning went like this:

  1. Hooray! More money!
  2. Now I can finally buy ____
  3. Ooh, shouldn’t I start saving?
  4. Yes, but I’ve been so poor for so long. I can’t be expected to keep living like this. I deserve a reward.
  5. Of course I do! I’ll start saving and investing soon.
  6. Yeah, right.
  7. Repeat.

Not this time, buddy. I don’t care how cheap and tight and stingy I feel like I am being, our lifestyle is going to improve more slowly than our income increases.


28 September 2008
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Prodding

1950s electric cattle prod

I realised about a month ago that the only connection between one’s income and one’s expenditure should be that the latter is less than the former.

Well, obviously. Everyone in the world knows that. Come back when you have something worth writing about.

But here is the important thing. In order for that to happen, unless you have more income than you are actually able to spend, you have to have and use a Budget. I kind of knew that I should have a budget, but I was very intimidated by the idea, so I didn’t.

Fortunately, this summer life conspired to make something else more intimidating than having a budget.

All those fun things together mean that right now our income is about £500 per month less than our expenditures. I refer you to paragraph one. Something has to change. Several somethings, actually.

In conclusion, I am grateful that the government decided to stop giving back some of my money. It turned out to be the pointy tip of the cattle prod which drove me into the livestock transporter called Budget, so that I could get moo-ving down the highway of Financial Freedom and one day arrive in the green pastures of Fiscal Well-Being*; i.e. I am making my sure my expenditures are less than my income.

I’ll let you know how it goes.



*I’m on a budget now, so I can’t afford good metaphors.



22 September 2008
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The ongoing journey to freedom

Are you reading Paul and Sonya Armstrong’s blog posts about how they are getting out of debt yet? Start now!

We tried numerous times to curb our spending; sell things we didn’t need, look at our budget (bought books on budgets and management of money, software and programs). And it came in spurts. When the bills piled up and we felt like we were breaking, we got “real serious” about our spending. But we’d go right back to our pattern. I’d get something at McDonald’s or Chick-Fil-A or Wendy’s for lunch, I’d buy a CD, something for my camera, get office supplies; Sonya would buy inexpensive shoes for the kids, clothes at Target, we’d eat out every now and then (to be with friends, etc). Little things. None of them wrong, but it gave us a small excuse to avoid real change. Change that went beyond numbers. We resisted a first step in a real direction toward change.

At the heart our problems was fear…


27 August 2008
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The Mustang 2 (2 as in Part 2, not the crummy 70s version of the car)

Here is the ‘Word of Faith’ version of how I got my Mustang.

My dad used to restore and sell Ford Mustangs, so as a young teenager I loved Mustangs and wanted one for my first car. I wanted a 1966 Honey Gold Fastback (2+2). I found a photo of one that looked just like what I wanted, and I hung it up in my bedroom. I asked God for that car, and I began to thank him for it every day.

My dad was pretty sure that I couldn’t afford a fastback for my first car. He said that I should buy and restore an ordinary six cylinder ’65 or ’66, sell it, take the profit, do it again, and then get my fastback. He knew what he was talking about too; Mustangs were the way he made a lot of his money.

I wasn’t having any of that. I hated working on cars and wanted to do as little of that as possible. Also, a year before I had given my life savings (about $500) to a friend to help pay for her Teen Mania mission trip. I had a claim on God for a lot of money. I could see the car, and it was mine.

Before too long my dad came across a 1965 fastback that looked pretty rough, but had a good body and engine. Almost simultaneously, he came across a wrecked 1965 coupe with a nearly new interior. Both for a reasonable price. To top it off, when we looked at the VIN code, we found that the original colour of the fastback was Honey Gold!

I prayed. I believed. I confessed. I got my car.

This is the appropriate place to insert ‘HALLELUJAH!’

Now here is the rest of the story.

1. I was claiming a 1966 Mustang. I got a 1965.

2. I was also after the oh-so-desirable styled steel wheels and fog lamps. I didn’t get those.

3. It didn’t just happen. Even though my dad didn’t think I could afford the car I was after, he was still looking for it.

4. My dad is very generous. He gave me the $1,500 profit from another car he fixed and sold.

5. He and I both put a huge amount of hot, greasy, sweaty time turning those two cars into one really great first car.

This is the point I want to make.

It is easy to tell a story like it is a triumph of good confession. It is easy to call something a miracle. It is easy to reduce all the hard work and human ingenuity that goes into a success to a breezy little sentence that no one notices. It is easy to get the impression that all you need to do to get what you want in life is to think the right thing and say the right thing.

The truth is that most ‘miracles’ involve an awful lot of hard work and sacrifice.

Finally.

I am very grateful for my time with that car. I am very grateful to God for making a universe that somehow responds to our faith. I am very grateful that my parents taught me to be bold and go after the things that I believe God wants for me. Most of all, I am grateful for my dad’s love and sacrifice that made my confessing and claiming look so good.


26 August 2008
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Stupid, evil credit cards 3

The credit card has to be sorted and not with little minimum payments that are half interest, so I took advantage of Barclays kind offer of a year of no interest on balance transfers. We now have three credit cards – imagine the trouble we could get ourselves into! But we won’t. We haven’t made a single credit card purchase since I posted this, and in 11 months (not twelve) we will be free of credit card debt.


14 June 2008
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Money inspiration

If you are struggling with debt and money and all that, please read this post by Paul Armstrong and this post by Sonya Armstrong. You are not alone, and there is a way out, even if it isn’t quick or easy.


28 May 2008
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Sorted

I’ve worked one evening a week for four weeks on keeping track of our finances. I’m caught up, and I have a simple system in place that will allow me to keep on top of our finances at a cost of about one hour per week. It’s taken a lot of work, but I feel more in control than I have in a long time.


28 May 2008
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If it was amateurcrastination I would not have to take such extreme measures

The credit cards are sitting unused in a Very Inconvenient Place, but we are not rich yet and the overspend hasn’t been paid off.

I blame it on the lack of a proper budget.

I’d like to blame the missing budget on Alistair Darling, but it’s my fault. Cha-Ching’s sexy factor is not enough motivation for me to sit down and sort out the money once a week, so I have resorted to this: Tuesday evening is now the Sacred Hour of Finance.

That is why tonight, even though I’m tired, even though I have a very busy week, even though I have a logo presentation on Thursday that is no where near done, I am sitting down tonight, as I will every Tuesday night, to Manage My Money.

What’s that you say? Is it possible that my writing this blog entry is a delay tactic?

Impudence!

Cheek!

Maybe just a small delay tactic.


6 May 2008
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Stupid, evil credit cards 2

I wrote before that our two iMacs were on a 12 MONTHS INTEREST-FREE ON BALANCE TRANSFERS credit card from MBNA. Those twelve months ended near the beginning of March. Because I am working hard on managing our money, I set a date two weeks before the 12 months ended, and I paid off the card on that date.

I was obviously not pleased then when I opened my latest statement to find that I have been charged enough interest to wipe out half the interest I earned by the smart thing I did.

When I called MBNA to ask them to clear up the obvious mistake they had made, I was informed that ‘12 months’ doesn’t actually mean 12 months. In my case it turns out that ‘12 months’ meant 11 months and two days.

I said to the call centre person, Doesn’t it seem little dishonest to offer me 12 months with no interest but only give me 11 months and two days? And they said, and I quote: Blah blah blah blah policy blah blah clearly stated blah blah blah nothing I can do blah blah get off of our free phone line, you worthless piece of lichen.

The moral of this story is that credit card companies (and, even more so, insurance companies but you knew that already) are Evil.

Always assume the headline is a lie.

Always read the fine print.


21 March 2008
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Stupid, evil credit cards 1

It starts with a little bit of overspending on Christmas. Not much. Not nearly as much as last year. Then it doesn’t all get paid off in January. Then you buy a couple things online and ‘we’ll pay off the card straight away.’ but you don’t and then the car needs fixed and we didn’t plan for that and a couple times you need petrol but you aren’t sure how much is in the current account because your record keeping hasn’t been so great so it goes on the card too and before you know it there’s your credit card with £700 on it. Dang.

It’s not a crisis. It will get paid off, but it didn’t have to happen. The thing is, you know it will happen again. WELL, NOT TO US. Our credit cards have now been put in a Very Inconvenient Place – we do have some self-control – and that is where they are staying.


21 March 2008
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Cha-ching!

Cha-Ching icon

One think that I haven’t really done so far in our quest for financial health is keeping track of how much we spend and where. That’s about to change. I hope. I have set up all my accounts in a little program called Cha-Ching, which promises a simple, fun and sexy way to manage your money. Let me tell you, nothing turns a woman on like the sight of her husband hunched over a laptop reconciling accounts. Yeah, right.

I will settle for a simple and tolerable way to manage my money. So far it looks promising.


22 February 2008
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Cutting costs

When we decided to get our finances under control (at about the same time we acquired our teenage daughter), one of the obvious things to do was to reduce our expenses. We did this in two places.

We changed telephone companies. We we paying BT about £70 a month for our telephone and internet access. We switched to Orange. Now we pay less than £30 a month for exactly the same thing. (Note: Don’t expect the savings to kick in quickly. BT took six weeks to finally let go of us.)

I changed karate schools. The dojo where I was training had started to feel more like a get the owner rich project and less like a martial arts school. (I blame the organisational structure, not my former sensei, for whom I have great respect.) As soon I got my black belt I started looking around for somewhere else to train. I found another dojo that teaches the same style, has an atmosphere that I prefer, and isn’t all about the money. It costs me £200 less per year!

Those two simple changes are saving us £700 this year without affecting our lavish lifestyle even slightly. There are probably some places where you could very easily cut your expenses too.


16 February 2008
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A smart thing I did

Some of the debts that we are repaying with the £8,000 loan that we took out are on interest-free terms until March (iMacs) and July (Christine’s camera).

Instead of paying them off in September when we got the loan, I put the money in a tax-free cash ISA (individual savings account) and a high-ish interest savings account. The interest won’t amount to a whole lot – less than two hundred pounds – but it will either give us a little more to spend or give us a seed for further savings.

(Yes, I know what the smart option is.)


6 February 2008
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How we started climbing out of the mess

If you are new to our ongoing money story, you can catch the first two episodes here. Enjoy!

Escape the Clutches of Financial Slavery

In April 2007 our pastor (and successful business owner) Steve Houghton did a finance workshop for our church (short Sunday morning version here.) It was very good. In three hours Steve clearly laid out the exact steps that I needed to take to get things back on track.

Being the highly motivated and disciplined person I am, I almost completed the first step – tracking our finances for a month to find out exactly how much we were spending and on what.

Then I didn’t do anything until August and HMRC started getting tetchy. When they demanded that I give them a definite date (preferably yesterday) when I would pay the entire amount that I owed them or they would come and take away my car and my shiny iMacs, I found renewed motivation.

The only workable answer was a loan. I learned that from Steve.

In September about the cheapest you could buy money for was 6.1% – not bad. I couldn’t get that rate. I’m still technically an American, so I’m not on the electoral register. Also, my credit history, though good, is rather short. I didn’t do too bad though. I borrowed £8,000 at just over 9%, repaid over five years.

I paid back HMRC. I paid back the rest of the Tax Credit overpayment. And I reduced my monthly repayments on stuff to about £168, over £100 less per month than before. Hooray!

The most important thing that taking a five year loan did for was to help me finally discard the idea that there is a quick-fix to my money problems. I am now committed to a long-term, no-shortcuts journey to financial health and happiness.

That’s the backstory. From now on you are on the journey with me in nearly real time.


5 February 2008
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Thou shalt consume!

How hollow are western economies? President Bush and the American Congress are going to rush through emergency tax cuts for individuals and business. The numbers I’ve seen are rebates of about $800 for individuals and $1,600 for families.

The reason? The thing that will save the economy is people spending money. Here’s 800 bucks. Go buy some more crap to stuff into your house. We’re depending on you!

Encouraging people to buy more stuff may be good for the economy, but somehow it seems very bad for people. Am I the only one who thinks this?

UPDATE: I am not. A thousand times no is thinking this way, and cleverly.


23 January 2008
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How we got into the mess

This is part two in our money story. Part one is here. Feel free to add your own stories if you like.

In January 2007 through some marvellously big and unknown error in my design studio accounting I only set aside enough money to pay my VAT*, not my VAT and my income tax. Also in that month Christine and I went to work full time for our church. The financial transition went badly.

By spring I managed to get the VAT side of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs off my back, but the Income Tax side were getting a bit twitchy and generously adding interest to my bill. I owed them about four-and-a-half thousand pounds. I was dealing with it using my trusty method of Ignoring It And Hoping Something Would Come Along To Save Me. That method worked when I was self-employed. The next big job would always show up just in time. It’s not so good when one is on a fixed salary.

Tax wasn’t the only thing we owed HMRC. The Tax Credit people overpaid us by a lot, about three grand, thanks again to my accounting (lack of) skills. So we were giving that back at a rate of nearly £300 every month.

In September and December 2006 we acquired two shiny iMacs (20 and 24 inch versions. Mmmm!) They were meant to be paid for in cash, but the tax miscalculation in paragraph one prevented that. I put them onto a 0% interest credit card in January 2007.

The finishing touch came in June 2007 when the flawed shutter in Christine’s out-of-warranty camera stopped shuttering for good. In July we acquired a Nikon D200 in a buy-now-and-we’ll-take-your-children-in-a-year arrangement.

All together we had £7,700 of debt, no assets of any real value and a nearly-enough salary.

Then in August we the family grew. We were blessed with our wonderful 15 year-old daughter, and we discovered that teenagers are not cheap. About this time the kind folks at HMRC started becoming much less kind. Their letters were hinting strongly about The End Of The World As I Knew It.

*For those outside the EU, VAT is Value Added Tax. In the UK it is 17.5% on most things. Business owners are unpaid tax collectors for the government.

Don’t stop here! It’s too depressing. How we started climbing out of our mess is the next installment.


9 January 2008
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Money: Intro

This is the beginning of a series on the financial journey of the Gill family. I like stories about how people rise above difficult circumstances, but normally one hears or reads such stories after the fact when the protagonist is rich, the bad guys are dead or in jail, and all the struggle is condensed into a three-and-a-half minute song. I thought it might be nice and possibly helpful to do this one in real time with conversation along the way. So here I go. Let’s start with a slideshow about the finances of Britons I made for my church in February 2007.

When I put that slideshow together we were carrying just below the average amount of UK household debt and I was doing a very poor job of managing our finances. In my next money post I will tell the story of how we got to where we are. After that I plan to write about what we are doing to get out of our mess. Some time in the future this story should have a happy ending. I guess I’ll keep going till it does.

You are, of course, welcome to add your stories and ideas at any point.


3 January 2008
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