After using the tag line “I want to be weird”, I’ve received a few emails from those wondering what the heck that means. It comes from Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University where normal is broke which if you think about it, it’s true. I also live with the motto “everything is relative” which used to be my tag line ever since I graduated college. I always would compare up and if you stop and think about how bad things can be, you realize everything in life is well, relative.
Anyways, back to being weird. It’s living in a way that’s well, not normal which unfortunately in our society that is broke. See like most 20-somethings, I got married then we just had to get a house because it’s what normal married people do, bought a new car and financed everything. Then one day I came across Dave Ramsey. I’ve always been good at manage money. I felt like I mastered the credit companies and had great credit but after reading The Total Money Makeover, I was hooked. It took about 6 months for me to change my way of looking at things, it wasn’t easy but now I can’t help but to share the knowledge and truth that I have learned.
For those not familiar with Dave Ramsey’s baby steps they are:
- Save $1,000 cash as a starter emergency fund.
- Pay off debt using the debt snowball.
- Finish the emergency fund which should have 3-6 months of expenses.
- Invest 15% of your income into retirement.
- Start saving for your kids college fund.
- Pay off your home early.
- Build wealth and give!
We’re still on baby step 2, paying off debt. We plan on being debt free except the house by April 2009 and completely debt free by 2023 (15 years from now) since we are refinancing our stupid ARM and HELOC into a 15 year fixed mortgage.
I recommend everyone to read The Total Money Makeover or visit http://www.daveramsey.com.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
My cell phone was getting so bad, people couldn’t hear me as well anymore so I decided to go out and purchase a new cell phone. I’m with SunCom and although I have had my share of bad experiences with them, for the most part I’ve been satisfied with the reception and quality of the network so I decided to stay with them. I knew I wanted a data phone and really my only choice was a blackberry so that’s what I ended up getting. For an additional $15/mo, I got the unlimited regional data plan which I rarely ever go outside of my regional area.
I ended purchasing the BlackBerry 8120, it lacks GSP but has WiFi and a 2 megapixel camera, a far cry from the 480×240 resolution camera on my old phone. It took me about a day to learn how to use it and where all the features and options are. Wifi works great except on my own home wireless network. Go figure. Found out it’s my router, it’s 4 years old and so outdated that I’m probably going to have to replace it within the next 6 months so for now I am stuck using EDGE at home. Anyways, I can get on to my work network and almost any free public wifi network without any problems. I love the fact it’s “always connected to the internet”, just like my cable internet is. The coolest mobile app out there has to be Yahoo! Go! It has all of My Yahoo! settings like my sports scores, weather, map locations, etc and one search and you can add widgets although being still in beta, those are limited right now. I also have the Facebook mobile application which lets me update my status, view friend status updates, poke, write on friend’s wall, send messages, etc. Of course, if you have a web-enabled phone, I’m sure you can download these apps as well.
Typing on it gets easier and easier each time. I love the qwerty keypad now. It was difficult at first but now that I’ve gotten used to it, I can type fairly fast on it. The only negative is the keys are a bit small so if you have big fingers, it’s probably going to be extremely difficult to type.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
