Archive for finances

The Financial Learning Experience

// January 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // finances, my church

Joe Sangl is the Pastor of Financial Planning at New Spring Church and we were fortunate to have him be our guest at CCV this weekend. During our three services Joe did an excellent job wrapping up our financial series. Visit this post again later and I will link the podcast here as soon as it is live. If you missed Joe’s sermon you will want to listen to him on the podcast as he shares four principles he learned with his wife Jenny as they figured out how to manage their money together.

After our morning services Joe came back with just a one hour break and enthusiastically taught The Financial Learning Experience. In the 8 year history of our church we have never had a response to a class a large as this one! Let me sum it up in one word. POWERFUL. Joe has a bottomless pit of energy, and he taught the class with just as much excitement as he had when speaking during our three worship services. He taught some strategies to attack debt, demonstrated the family budgeting process, and then helped everyone calculate their financial need for retirement. If you ever need help with this sort of thing at your church Joe would be the first guy I would recommend.


The entire day I had people sharing with me that this was the best series on finances that our church has ever done. In addition, I had people also telling me that The Financial Learning Experience was the best class we have ever offered.

If you are interested, everything that was shared this weekend can be found in Joe’s book: I Was Broke, Now I’m Not .

If you were a part of the class and you are looking for Joe’s free tools to help you manage your personal finances, you can find them by clicking here.

Click here to listen to Joe’s story when he spoke at CCV.

My Top 5 Ways of Saving Cash

// February 7th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // finances

As a couple we work pretty hard to pinch pennies every where we can, we were kind of forced into frugality. Sometime I might tell that story on the blog but I dont feel like hashing it out tonight.. Anyway here are the top 5 ways I save cash.

  1. I maintain a strict lunch budget – If I have sushi (my favorite) this is the only meal out I have that week.

  2. Don’t buy coffee – I try so hard not to buy coffee out. Most days I succeed and make it only in the office or at home. This saves me hundreds of dollars per year since I would often buy coffee daily when we were both able to work outside the home.

  3. Sell something to buy something – I love new tech! When a new gadget comes out that I want, I sell a bunch of old gadgets to buy it.

  4. Refuse to buy on credit – We pay cash for everything. I use my debit card as much as possible so I can track every penny I spend in Quicken.

  5. Invite friends over instead of going out – we love playing board games so we will often spend hours with friends enjoying their company at out home.

For 100 more tips on saving cash click here and visit The Simple Dollar.

Fuel Saving Tips

// September 12th, 2007 // No Comments » // finances

As a frugal dad I am always looking for ways to save money. Especially with the price of gas fluctuating so much these days. Forbes Autos recently interviewed a guy named Wayne Gerdes who can pull 84 miles per gallon out of a standard Ford Ranger pickup. I found it interesting so I thought I would pass on Wayne’s tips (if you are interested in more click on the above link):

  1. Inflate your tires to their maximum recommended pressure. High pressure in tires enables you to accelerate with less gas and coast farther. It also enhances turn-in capability and facilitates better tire longevity.

  2. Use the lowest weight oil recommended for your vehicle. Low-weight oil is easier to pump through an engine, and the engine components will interact more efficiently.

  3. Change your air filter at least once a year. Engines work harder when they have to pull air through a dirty filter.

  4. Drive as if you hypothetically do not have brakes. Gerdes says that drivers usually burn fuel to get up to an excessive speed, then throw that energy away by slamming on the brakes at a stop sign or red light.

  5. Don’t use cruise control or worry about keeping a constant speed — instead, be concerned with not changing the load on your engine. In other words, it’s acceptable to slow down as you go up a hill, as long as your engine continues to work only as hard as it did when you were on level ground. You’ll make up the loss in speed on the other side of the hill due to the assistance of gravity.

  6. Don’t drive above the speed limit. The faster you go, the more you increase drag on the car from the wind, consuming more fuel.

  7. Turn your engine off if you are idling for more than 10 seconds. Idling is one of the worst fuel wasters.

  8. Practice “potential parking.” First, seek out the highest point of a parking lot and, if parking lot topography permits, coast uphill into a spot where you can face out, allowing you to coast right out when you depart.

  9. Instead of relying on your fuel gauge, odometer and your long division skills, install a ScanGauge (scanguage.com) automotive computer that calculates and displays your fuel consumption.

  10. Turn off the A/C. Running a mechanical and electrical accessory like air conditioning steals fuel from the engine and decreases fuel economy. Operating the air conditioner on its maximum setting can reduce miles per gallon by up to 25 percent.

Tight Budget Tip

// June 7th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // finances

I don’t know if your family has a tight budget but ours sure does! After my son’s two surgeries there was a need for some significant therapy. This caused us to go from a household with two full time incomes down to just mine. That means every dollar is important. There is a blog (The Simple Dollar) I keep tabs on that had a great post today illustrating what I mean.

About once every three months since I was eight, I would spend a day keeping a detailed chronology of all of the stuff I did on that day. I kept a little notebook with me, noted things throughout the day, and would write it all out in great detail that evening in a notebook that I still use for this project. It is really fascinating to look at this notebook, as it has snapshots of my life dating back to third grade.

Recently, I looked at this journal over a period of time to see if I could notice how my spending changed and also whether there were any routines to my life that I could identify that were costing me money. Interestingly, I noticed that the one consistent routine throughout my adult life that cost me money was my morning routine. Here’s how it would go for the last ten years or so:

  • 5:30 AM – wake up, morning hygiene, check my email
  • 6:30 AM – leave for work
  • 6:45 AM – stop for breakfast – cost: $8
  • 7:10 AM – stop at a newsstand for the New York Times – cost: $1
  • 7:30 AM – grab a cup of coffee before heading in – cost: $3
  • 9:30 AM – morning coffee break – cost: $3

Let’s stop and look at this for a moment. That’s fifteen dollars a day blown on a morning routine. Let’s say I did this every day for forty eight workweeks a year for ten years:

  • $75 a week
  • $300 a month
  • $3,600 a year
  • $36,000 for ten years

This simple morning routine, one that could easily be analyzed and broken down, has cost me roughly $36,000 over my adult life – enough to write a check for two top-notch automobiles or make a 20% down payment on a $180,000 home, just so I can enjoy breakfast and drink coffee.

Over the last year, I’ve changed this routine quite a bit. Here’s how it now looks:

  • 5:30 AM – wake up, morning hygiene, check my email
  • 6:25 AM – drop a homemade breakfast burrito or breakfast sandwich into the microwave – cost: $0.50
  • 6:28 AM – food is finished
  • 6:30 AM – leave for work, drop son off at daycare, eat sandwich on the road
  • 6:45 AM – arrive at work 45 minutes early, start up small coffee pot on my desk – cost: $0.25
  • 6:50 AM – browse the NY Times website and a few others; print off any articles I may want to read
  • 7:00 AM – get started on my day – I shifted my day to start half an hour earlier
  • 9:00 AM – morning coffee break, drinking coffee I already made and reading articles I printed

Not only did I cut my morning routine spending down from about $15 a day to about $1 a day, I also freed up some significant morning time, enough so that I was able to alter my work schedule to start a half-hour earlier and thus leave a half-hour earlier (on average). Not only do I save money, but now my evenings seem longer, giving me more time to spend with my family, which is what is really important to me.

Spend some time looking at your regular routines. Write down a detailed rundown of a few random days in your life, then compare them and see what patterns you can find, especially those that cost money or waste time. You’ll be shocked at what you might find.