Stories

A few weeks ago Linda and I went out to dinner at a fairly nice restaurant. It wasn’t a five-star restaurant, but you could expect to pay $25-$30 per meal. We like to go out to eat, but in an effort to minimize our expenses, it is more of a special occasion when we dine [...]

Behind the letter were ten, crisp $100 bills…  I can’t wait to see what God has in store for them. Way to go extravagant givers!

When I am making a purchase or any other decision, I have found that asking myself if it is to impress others or to please God is a normally a good test of my motives. For me that is usually an easy way to find the right answer.

Recently I heard that David Green, the CEO of Hobby Lobby stores, decided to increase their minimum wage to $10/hour. The change will affect 9,200 of their full-time employees and will cost the company about $15 million dollars each year…

I remember when I was trying to figure out how to control spending in my life… It is challenging, but these tips can help…

The Peer Bearing company recently got bought out by a Swedish company. The owners decided to pass along a nice chunk of the acquisition price to their 230 employees. As a year-end bonus they gave away 6.6 million to the employees. The bonuses were calculated based on the employees’ years of service and averaged over $28,000.

How should I deal with my debt? I’m often asked what is the most important step in dealing with debt and the answer I invariably give is to start by getting visibility to what’s happening with your finances. About a year ago I had a conversation with a friend who told me that she and her husband had just been to see a bankruptcy attorney and that he recommended that they declare bankruptcy.

I don’t exactly remember when I started to tithe - probably about 7-8 years ago. But I do remember getting a new job that was nearly double my previous income and thinking, “Wow, so this is the result of tithing.” It was a helpful lesson to me since I was, like most, skeptical about the whole thing. I had heard about all the scandals with TV preachers and kind of grew up with a cynical attitude towards giving to the church. Somewhere along the line I decided to “take a chance” and try it out.

Basically FNBO Direct held a competition asking you to make a 60 second video explaining what you were saving for and what obstacles you were facing.

As I was staring at this tree I began to realize that trees grow slowly. You plant a seed for a tree and it takes a while to sprout and takes a while to grow to a decent size.Grass and even plants, on the other hand, grow a lot faster. They sprout up quickly and sometimes you can even notice growth one day to the next. I have been enjoying watching this rapid growth with all of the plants in my vegetable garden.

How could I possibly be richer than John D. Rockefeller? With as wealthy as he was, he could have had anything that money could buy. But what a few hundred dollars may buy today, couldn’t be bought with millions 150 years ago.

Stewards are required to take risks: It is interesting to me how upset the master got with the steward who took no risks. The other two stewards did take risks and reaped the rewards. I often wonder why the parable didn’t contain a steward who lost some of the investment. But either way, I think we are led to believe that the primary frustration of the master was that the steward was lazy and didn’t even try.

I just visited an old friend of mine this weekend and we talked quite a bit about money and God. It was eye-opening for me to talk to someone who had a completely different mindset on money than I did. He has been on the opposite extreme of the American way of living extravagantly off of credit cards.

Could you build a life with nothing but $25?
I found an interesting article about a young college grad who decided to try an interesting social experiment: starting over with nothing.
Adam Shepard left his comfortable existence to see if the “American Dream” was a reality. His goal was to go from owning nothing but $25 [...]

There is a balance between preparing for the future and waiting until the future to enjoy life. I used to be out of balance by spending everything I had and more and having no thought about the future.

I found this story about this billionaire named Chuck Feeney, who from what I have read about him was a great example of someone who understands that money is NOT the root of all evil.

I was driving home from work yesterday and I saw a man begging on the off ramp by my house. As I drove past I had this strong compulsion to go take him out to lunch and talk to the guy. This was about the last thing in the world that I WANTED to do.

But, recently a couple transactions are causing me to doubt the online shopping world. One was an ebay purchase to buy a set of speakers, which was from a seller with hundreds of transactions and a 100% positive feedback score. The other was a memory stick for my PC from newegg.com.