Financial Peace University

Amy and I haven't exactly been the most avid of bloggers, but we're going to try to make our blogging a rather regular occurrence. So here's to hopefulness and optimism.

Tonight we attended FPU (Financial Peace University) for our fourth session. I attended FPU during my senior year at IWU for Personal and Family Finance with Prof Jerry Showalter (affectionately referred to as "Showtime"). The founder and leader of FPU is Dave Ramsey, a Christian radio-show host, best selling author, and financial guru.

Though I have attended FPU before, Amy and I decided that we wanted to attend the classes together and especially learn about investing and financial planning for retirement. However, I've been learning about more than just financial planning for the future. One particular discipline that I have been tweaking since attending the classes has been budgeting. I know, the dreadful word and discipline of budgeting. No one likes doing it, but, when done correctly and with motivation and consistency, it can be one of the best tools for financial peace.

Currently, we budget every month and have a balance at the end of the month that we want to hit in our checking account, which gives us a big cushion. I like this for the sake of having big payments that are coming out of our general checking account at various times of the month (i.e. mortgage, nursing school payments, etc.). However, this makes it difficult for us to truly have a zero-based budget. So, here are some of our goals that we hope to accomplish by the end of FPU:

• Have Amy's Grad School paid for. She will still have about a year and a half to go, but we plan to have enough saved up to pay the remaining balance by the end of November.
• Fine tune and become consistent in budgeting every month. Sometimes we go in spurts - budgeting for a few months, and then off for a few, so we have a goal of being consistent, monthly budgeters.
• Refinance Our House. This goal is contingent on what we find out in research for refinancing - if we'll need 20%, how much closing cost fees will be, etc... Nonetheless, we have a strong desire to refinance for a better interest rate and to move to a 15 year mortgage.

Those are just a few of our goals. We look forward to the rest of FPU and allowing God to use this in our lives to move us towards financial peace so that we can spend, save, and give like never before!

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Our Semi Annual Post

It's the last day in November, and I think that our last post was in April. Much has taken place in our lives over the last 6 months, so the next several posts will be dedicated to the events and happenings over the course of the Spring, Summer, and Fall months.

Life never seems to slow much. You work, vacation, get married, have kids, buy houses, own pets, change jobs, and get involved in an endless amount of church and community happenings. I admit, I frequently become so busy that I forget what is really important, and in addition I forget to be thankful. How sad our lives have become if within our busy lives we forget to truly live. God has given so much to be thankful for, but I confess that I lose sight of those blessings in the busyness and chaos of life. Yesterday Amy's family left our house after spending Thanksgiving together. We took time at Thanksgiving dinner to share what we are thankful for - family, Michael (the cat), jobs, church community, God's provision... What was convicting to me was the realization that I seldom take time to thank God for all that He has provided.

Thanksgiving was wonderful last week, and it reminded me of all that I am thankful for and all that God has blessed in my life. I just hope that I can remember to thank God for His provision and blessings more than just one week out of the year.

-from amy-

Well, hello blog readers (if there are any?). I have felt pretty bad over the last few months about our lack of updating, but not badly enough to do anything about it till just now. I am always intimidated by these people who update their blogs on a daily basis and have all these wonderful and profound things to say. I have never been much of a philosopher or anything so I figured I'd just do the day-to-day life type updates. So here it goes:

Well, today is April 6, and we woke up to a blanketing of snow. What the heck?!? We are supposed to be planting our garden this week- which I am very excited and nervous about. You would think it is a low-key hobby of sorts, and I've been stressed out about the dumb thing. I am worried about where we should put it, when to plant stuff, if we are going to kill the plants or have a crop, if the neighbors are going to get mad about it, if it will get enough sun in it's location, which kinds of plants to get.... etc. Lame. I trust that Jon knows what he is doing and we will just be able to enjoy it. So who knows, we might get in tilled this week and start the process or we might have to wait for it to get a little warmer. I tried to post this picture and couldn't figure out how to flip it over once it was on here, so you'll have have to tilt your head. I'm still trying to figure this whole thing out!

Speaking of WARMER, we are going to Florida for our spring break in 6 days!!! I don't think I have ever anticipated a vacation this much in my entire life, and I'm thinking it's largely due to the fact that I am now a working woman who is taking a vacation as opposed to a student who is granted several weeks of vacation in the middle of a school year. I am just so excited! We are leaving next Sunday after the Easter activities at our church (leaving around noon) and hopping in the car and driving 18 hours down to Orlando (area) to visit my grandparents and to have spring break with the fam. We were originally going to take Barkley with us, but we just kept thinking we would have to babysit him the whole time and wouldn't be able to enjoy ourselves. So we decided to get a d0g-sitter for the week. I work two more days this week and then I'm off for 13 days and couldn't be more excited!

So what else is going on in our lives... Well things are going really well at the church. We had a scavenger hunt with the youth group on Saturday which was a lot of fun. We are seeing a lot of growth in the teens and that has been neat to watch. We are regularly running 50-60 a week at youth group. Jon is doing such a great job. We had a teen-takeover service last Sunday night and adults in the church were so encouraging and complementary of the work Jon is doing and how excited they are to see the teens being involved. It was really neat. Things at work are going well for me too. I am really feeling more comfortable with ICU patients and the skills I've acquired. I had a really rough time last week with a patient that passed away, having spent my whole week with him and his family members, but I am seeing that my job as a nurse really is a ministry and an opportunity to share Christ's love with people. Here is me after I get home from work every single day.

Well I don't have a ton else to say for now, just wanted to let people know we are alive and well here in Warsaw, and we will post pictures and updates from our va-ca!

The New Camera

A couple of months ago Amy and I decided to purchase a camera. Well, this had been a long "searching" process, only to end with a trip to Circuit City as they were going out of business. We bought a camera for an incredible deal, but it was a floor model. We thought everything would be fine though. Long story short, we've spent long amounts of time on the phone with different representatives from Panasonic each phone call. I'm sure you've been there: you have to call the company, only to hear an automated voice answer the phone. She said, "I'm an automated voice, you can speak naturally to me. How can I help you." I said, "This dumb camera of yours doesn't work right, the battery is wrong, and I need to speak to someone for help with this." She responds with, "Ok, I'm transferring you to shipping." Needless to say, I'm not a fan of talking to a computer that's trying to understand my concerns.

Skip ahead a month or two, and we now are in the process of finally receiving a new battery, have just downloaded the software to convert our HD video camera files to the computer! Hooray! At last, we will be able to use our camera... So we took some new video footage of Barkley shaking hands and performing his "tricks."

Barkley and Jon Bachelor Night

Today I got home from FUEL, the Wesleyan Youth Leaders Convention. Amy is in Florida with her sister, mom, and grandma for a girls' weekend, so I'm home till Tuesday, bachin' it with my dog. With many leaves to rake, a lawn to mow, and some other things on "to do" list, I decided to take a break after raking up the leaves. I brought Barkley outside, and this is how he responded to the piles of leaves.

Landscaping, After

And now, here are the pictures of after putting flowers and other plants in... we have hydrangea's, hyssops, black-eyed susans, burning bushes, rose bushes, some tall grasses, and some other plants. It's exciting having our own home and being able to landcape how we want!