A friend of mine has been doing some film work lately, the latest addition to her acting repertoire. Click here to see the short indie film on Google.
Posted in entertainment industry | Comments (0)
Archive for May, 2006
I saw this today on Wall Street Journal: Credit-Card Issuers’ Problem: People Are Paying Their Bills. Ha! That’s interesting.
Anyone who’s talked to me for more than 3 minutes on financial issues knows I don’t like credit. And I’m certainly not fond of a culture that fosters a perception of dependance on the almighty credit score. I’ve got friends that have actually gotten credit cards against their desire because someone told them they’d never be able to buy a house without a credit score. Mindy Richmond has some great responses to the standard excuses for credit cards.
Better watch where you get your financial advice. I don’t take my diet and exercise advice from fat people. (“You know what you gotta do… you gotta chew sugarless.”) I don’t take my financial advice from broke people. You can get a house without a credit score. It’s called manual underwriting, and it’s how they used to do things before the credit score came along.
Manual underwriting is the process used by a lender to look beyond the FICO score to your unique financial situation.
More on the credit score and manual underwriting at Underclings.
Anyway, I really take to heart the verse in Proverbs that says the borrower is slave to the lender. Think about that practically for a minute. Why do you think it’s such a bad idea to lend money to a friend? Because suddenly, you’ve changed that relationship. You’ve put them in a position of indebtedness to you, and it will at least put a strain on the relationship. No, if you’re going to give money to a friend, then give it to them; don’t expect to get it back.
The borrower truly is slave to the lender. People go to great lengths to elude creditors. Our society has demonized creditors who are trying to get their money back. (Note: I am in no way defending the tactics used by collections agencies, just pointing out the attitude we take towards them.)
It is my belief that it is ethically and morally upright to pay for everything with money you actually possess, not money you expect to possess come payday. Do you think anyone set out with the goal, “I want to go deeply into debt!” No! If anything, they thought they could mathematically beat the system. It is precisely the moment you buy a new refrigerator from Home Depot on 12 Months/No Interest or a new sofa from Rooms to Go on 90 Days, Same as Cash that something horrible will happen (job loss, death of a loved one, etc.), and you won’t be able to make the payments because the income you *anticipated* to have was no longer there. So, since the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, I’d better put some safeguards into my financial plan.
1) Have a written budget, telling my money what to do every month. Mine happens to be a prioritized budget, since my income is less than predictable. It means I’ve got a list of things that need to get taken care of, and there’s no way I’ll ever make enough to complete the list. Most necessary things are first, least necessary are last.
2) Do three things with every dollar that comes in: give, save, and spend. I’m convinced that the reason Christians are told to give is because God wants to make us more like him, a giver, and not one that does so begrudgingly. Save, otherwise what will I do when an emergency comes along? Put it on the credit card? No thanks. And my favorite part… spend! Because I like toys, too.
3) Pay for everything in cash (even avoiding debit card as much as possible). Simply put, it hurts a whole lot more when I see those greenbacks leaving my wallet. I tend not to think about it when it’s just a swipe of the card with money coming out of my account (even so, it’s still far better than financing a Big Bacon Classic meal with MasterCard). McDonald’s knows this: the average transaction went from $4.50 up to $7.00 when customers swiped. Why do you think they all offer the convenience of credit card acceptance now? A Dunn & Bradstreet study confirms this. Beyond that, there’s a practical aspect to using my debit card as little as possible. When used for every little purchase, it becomes a monumental task to balance my checkbook. I only use it for large or online purchases.
4) Consistently contribute to my Roth IRA retirement mutual funds. I’ve got to get into a habit of consistently making Roth IRA contributions. I opened a retirement account after a summer term that included an accounting class in which my professor simply charted out the retirement possibilities for someone starting at age 20. Earning a meager 9% on a Roth IRA, a 20 year old could retire a millionaire at age 65 by putting as little as $1,745 in his retirement yearly. That’s pennies. Not even $146 per month. Plenty of my friends are able to find some way to pay Visa more than that every month. Here’s a brilliant Roth IRA calculator that can help you chart the same for yourself, something I highly recommend. (Here’s another example that mathematically lays out the pros of saving early on.) Once I realized the simplicity of retiring a millionaire if I started early, I knew I had to hop on it soon.
Let’s end this discussion with some wise words from Seinfeld:
George: Maybe I’ll go down to the track. Put it all on a horse…
Jerry: Why don’t you put it in the bank?
George: The bank? This is found money. I want to *parlay* it. I wanna make a big score!
Jerry: Oh, you mean you wanna *lose* it…
Let’s not be like George.
Posted in financial | Comments (0)
On a whim, I picked up Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk today at Kroger. Wow. It’s making me reconsider my life.
But I don’t really know what else I’m considering…
Posted in askew | Comments (0)
From the AP:
President Vicente Fox telephoned U.S. President George W. Bush on Sunday to express concern about the prospect of the United States militarizing its southern border.
Well Mr. Fox, if you’re so concerned about relations with the U.S. and the possiblity of the militarization of the border, maybe your government shouldn’t publish a “how-to” on jumping the border.
(This is not a joke, it’s a real brochure published by the Mexican Department of External Relations–a.k.a. Departamento Mexicano de Relaciones Exteriores.)
Of course, our own government appears to be less than zealous to keep the illegal Mexicans out. They’ve been tipping off the Mexican government to the whereabouts of the Minutemen:
According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants — and if and when violence is used against border crossers.
That’s certainly more than disturbing.
Posted in politick | Comments (0)
President Bush has yet to actually announce his plan for border security, though two White House officials have already given the press a heads’ up. That led to a response for nearly everyone who considers their opinion important, and this morning as I lay awake in my bed, unable to fall back to sleep, I hear this ridiculous statement by the Republican senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel:
…what in the world are we talking about here, sending a National Guard that we may not have any capacity to send up to or down to protect borders? That’s not their role.
Beg your pardon, sir, but I believe the National Guard’s responsibility actually is to protect the domestic front. It’s simply that, in recent times, we have yet to really fight battles here on our turf, so they’ve been used mainly for peacekeeping duties. Which is what I perceive they will be doing on the Mexican border, since there will be a whole lot of people that lose their cool if the border continues to be a revolving door.
I personally enjoy the statement given by the senator from my own fine state, Bill Frist:
First and foremost, secure the border, whatever it takes. Everything else we’ve done has failed. We’ve got to face that.
Posted in politick | Comments (0)
Derek Webb has an eloquent treatise on the state of Christian Music in his new podcast (click here), much like my argument here (though, again, much more detailed and sound).
Posted in Christianity, entertainment industry | Comments (0)
