Hundreds

I was just searching in our Gmail account for an email, and used the search string "fpu" (Financial Peace University) - Gmail only gives you the first 20 results and then you need to click a link for older messages - it also typically tells you how many results it found. When I went to click for older messages, I saw this:










Hundreds of messages in our email account with "fpu" in them - love it.

FPU at NSA - Round 2

We got the green light to do another FPU class at our church! We'll be starting January 20. I'm so excited!

A Long Overdue Update

A lot has happened since our last post, so I’ll try to get things caught up to speed. Sonja quit her job and is now a full-time mom. She’s enjoying it and we can’t imagine how families with children still have both parents working – they must be super human or something. We’re very thankful that we have been blessed with the resources to be able to have one of us stay at home. Thank you, Lord, for providing. And, once again, thank you Dave Ramsey and FPU for teaching us how to best manage the Lord’s provision.

I’m still working (although we’re scheming on how we can BOTH be stay at home parents – so far winning the lottery is our best option). I have a training class all next week where I will be learning Red Hat Linux. I’m pretty excited about it and have been trying to get up to speed with where the class will be starting. It’s going to be challenging, but I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Next weekend we’ll be down in Oregon visiting the Stafford side of the family – should be a fun and relaxing trip.

Now for the Boy (I call him “the Boy” a lot). Levi is doing really good. In fact, on Monday the little pooper had to have surgery for a hernia. He did so well! They kept him overnight for monitoring, but he really was back to his normal self later that day. They just had to make a small incision and that should heal up nice and clean. He was something like 9.5 pounds and is just really healthy. While we were in Children’s Hospital for the surgery we really were reminded of how fortunate and blessed we’ve been with him despite his early arrival.

Somewhere since the last post we bought a mini-van. I was going to do a full post on it, but I think I’ll just say that we got a great deal on a great van (99 Ford Windstar). We recommend Bickford Ford in Snohomish, WA – they were great and even did some work on the van after we bought it even though we didn’t get a warranty or anything. Low pressure and easy to work with - ask for Jeff Wing or Darren Smith. And, once again, thanks to Dave Ramsey and FPU, we had the tools to save about $500 on the van and pay cash for it. We plan on selling my car sometime after my training next week. *sniff* I’ll miss my little Accent…but we really don’t need it. I’ve been driving it to work a lot lately due to all the Dr. visits, and am quickly being reminded of how expensive that can be! I need to get back into my routine of riding the bus using my company paid-for bus pass.

And, finally, now for the real purpose of this blog post. More pictures of Levi! And a video. The video is extra fun – it’s of our little guy smiling and even laughing a bit. His first time doing it was even better, but we only caught the second one on video. There's also a couple of pictures of it near the end of the album. I know that there are a LOT of duplicate pictures…I just didn’t feel like weeding them all out.

Levi - 10 Weeks Old and Growing Strong

Detatchment

This past Sunday, Sonja and I realized we had double booked/overbooked ourselves during church. Sonja was teaching Children's Church and leading our Bible Quiz practice while I was going to be making the FPU announcements and manning the FPU table. This left very little (or no) time to watch our little boy. So, Levi had his first Sunday in the nursery. He spent 4 hours in there (1st service, Sunday School and 2nd Service) and did really well. But, you can be sure he got checked on by mom and dad probably close to 20 times throughout the morning. I'm sure it helps that we have a fabulous nursery and nursery workers.

All you have to do is ask.

So…we’ve been couch shopping for a while – not aggressively, but wanting to find something soon. Like good Dave Ramsey-ites, we have a “Couch” envelope and have been saving up for it. But, it was also the first envelope we dipped into if we were running short. So, it kind of peaked out at about $500 and I was getting anxious to get a couch picked out so we could really aggressively start saving. Sonja was going to go shopping with her Mom to find a few options (to narrow it down – I was getting overwhelmed by all the choices) and then I would go with her to pick the final one out of a few choices. But, Tuesday night we happened to go out on a whim and hit a few stores. At our third store, we found one we liked enough to want to get there on the spot.

It was originally $849 on sale for $699. One of the things taught in Financial Peace University is how to get good deals. And one of the “secrets” is to just ask. But, this can be difficult sometimes (especially for Sonja and I – neither of us are aggressive “give me a deal” kind of people). But, we decided we would at least try. So, I said something like this: “How long will the sale last?...[end of the week]...We came out looking tonight not sure what we would find, but we only brought $500 in cash with us…would you even be willing to go that low?” He hemmed and hahhed for a bit – explaining that it was already on sale and that was a good price…but that he would go check the cost price. Well…that kind of surprised us. He came back and told us he could give it to us for $600…including tax! About $150 off the sale price!

We were both pretty tired and happy with the deal, but I think if we had tried to be a little more aggressive and push back a bit, he would have gone lower. But, like I said, we’re not that aggressive and we were tired. It was nice to find a way to ask that fit with our comfort level and personalities. We also weren’t sly or deceptive – we really did only have $500 in cash (actually there ended up being $519 in the envelope – but we didn’t know that). It takes two weeks to get the couch and we can just pay the balance then. (not that FPU or Dave Ramsey teaches to be sly or deceptive – but it is a temptation when trying to get deals like this)

Couch: $600 after tax
Financial Peace University: $90
Saving up and paying cash for items and saving money by just asking: Priceless

*the picture is not the actual couch - I think it's the same model, but a different color and...well, we bought a couch and not a love seat

25?!

Sonja and I are getting pretty excited! On March 11 we are starting FPU (Financial Peace University) at our church (class details here). This past Sunday was the first time that it was announced in church and Sonja and I couldn't be there (we were in Oregon). Since it was the first Sunday the church was hearing about it, we had no idea how many people were going to sign up. We knew that Pastor Mark and his wife were going to be in the class and that he had encouraged some of his staff to sign up as well, but beyond that we had no idea. Especially since it was such a short notice! The class requires a 13 week commitment and were only giving people two weeks to make that choice and sign up.

So, Pastor Mark emailed us today and said that after last Sunday there were 25 families signed up! 25? Wow! That's like 40-50 people (depending on how many of those are couples)! And, we're still pitching it next Sunday, too. Sonja and I will get to give a 4 minute commercial about how much we learned from the class and then we'll show the orientation video again - so we might get even more people to sign up. The only part we're worried about is how to keep our commercial under 4 minutes. If you've ever heard either of us talk about Dave Ramsey or Financial Peace University, you know that we could talk about it for hours!

So, yeah, we're totally excited. If you can join us for the class, please do! Sundays 4-6pm starting March 11. If you can't join us (because of distance or schedule), then find a class you can go to! We hear there's one that might be starting at Edmonds Open Bible...(hint hint!)...

We'll post an update with the final numbers after next Sunday. Stay tuned...

Class Over

We wrapped up our FPU class last night. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed doing the class. By this last class, our numbers were definitely fewer than at the start, but I still feel like we finished strong. In the last class they have you add up the total amount of debt your class paid off in the 13 weeks – as well as the total amount saved in the 13 weeks. With only about 50 people there last night (it was a very nice and sunny day), the total debt paid off was about $75,000 (plus another $247,000 – we figured someone sold a house). And the total saved was about $58,000. Wow!

30 Day Challenge

I'm going to take the 30 day challenge. It's been something I've needed to do for a while and I'm hoping the 30 day challenge will help me get it done. Anyone want to join me? Or at least just keep me accountable?

The 30 day challenge is something Dave Ramsey promotes. It's a challenge to get your Love Drawer organized and in place in the next 30 days. What is a Love Drawer? It's a draw (filing cabinet, box, folder, etc.) where you have all your important financial and legal documents - organized in such a way that your spouse or loved ones could easily manage any financial/legal issues without you. If something happened to you, would your spouse know where all that info was? This is especially important for the person that does the majority of the bill paying, etc. If something was to happen to me, would Sonja know where the info was on the mortgage? Or, more importantly, my life insurance policy? What about what bank account(s) are used for what and what bills are auto-drafted from where and how to log into each one online? In the midst of dealing with a tragic event, the last thing someone should worry about is "does the utilities payment get auto-drafted or do I need to pay it?" In fact, it's pretty negligent and irresponsible of me to not have this in place already.

Hence the 30 day challenge. I got started on it last night (so 4/13 is my deadline for completion) - just looking at what I need to do and where stuff currently is. I could not find a single scrap of paper in our file drawer about my life insurance policy. No idea where the mortgage docs are, either. So, it's time to get it all organized.

There is some info about it here. If you're a My Total Money Makeover member ($10/month or free while in an FPU class), then there are even more documents/resources available (primarily a nice, editable PDF that has a bunch of fill-in-the-blanks for listing all the info - that you can save and edit/change as needed and print off).

Things I need to do to get started:

• Organize file drawer with all important documents
• Make an index or table of contents for the important documents for easy access
• Get some wills put together - Dave recommends getting forms from US Legal Forms - I ordered ours last night
• Fill out and print off the Love Drawer PDF from MTMMO - give copies to family members for safe keeping
• Go over it all with Sonja and plan on updating it and reviewing it at least once a year

Sob sob, boo hoo - yes it's really sad and depressing to think about the "what ifs" and have to talk about and make decisions about powers of attorney and funeral arrangements - but it will be such a relief when it's all over to know that if something happens to either one (or both) of us, all of that is DONE. Taken care of. And in the midst of all of the tragedy, no one will have to try to figure out where to send the mortgage payment.

Let me know if you're interested in doing the 30 day challenge, too - we can share resources and ideas. If you've already put something like that together, share some tips in the comments. Also, feel free to ask me over the next 30 days - "how's that drawer coming along". Sonja and I will (try to) post an update at the end of the 30 days to let you know how it went.

I'm down to just 29 days now - I need to get moving!

Mistaken Identity

Last spring Tycen and I facilitated Financial Peace University at our church. It is a thirteen week video series taught by Dave Ramsey.

On Sunday one couple who took the class came up to me – their youngest daughter, 4 years old, saw me and said, “Look mommy, its Dave Ramsey’s wife”

** side note: in the last 2 months every Sunday we have had people who took the FPU class and sharing their stories with us from learning how to save, invest and even shop better to being debt free except the house and a few that are now debt free including the house! It’s exciting to hear their stories.

Final Class Numbers

Well, we had our second week of class this past Sunday and the final count is...52 families! Or right at about 100 people (a "family" is an individual, couple, or couple with their high school/young adult children). We think that about 400 or 500 people attend our church, so that's about 1/4 or 1/5 of the church! We've heard a lot of great feedback already and people seem to be enjoying it. One guy told me that he and his wife have discussed finances more in the past week than they have their entire married life (I'm sure he was joking though...I hope). Another guy told Sonja that he's actually even eating better because of the class! He said when he started thinking about being responsible with money that he started to look at other areas of his life, too. So, the class is off and running and we're totally excited to see what will happen with it. In related news, we have exactly 1 month left (2 pay periods) before we are credit card debt free! We'll still have the student loans and the house, but that will be it. I still can't believe that we're almost there. Yeah for FPU!