Wednesday, October 31, 2007

All in good fun

This past Saturday, our family went to my cousins annual Halloween party. It's always lots of fun. Lots of family, laughs and good food. (Thanks Jackie & Tim)

Here's a picture of what Cindy and I went dressed as. What do you think?

Publish Post

Monday, October 29, 2007

Thinking about 2008 yet?

Have you given any thought to 2008 yet? The IRS has and they have made more than three dozen changes that will effect most all taxpayers.

For 2008, personal exemptions and standard deductions will rise, tax brackets will widen and workers will be able to save more for retirement, thanks to inflation adjustments announced last week by the IRS.

Here are a few changes worth noting.

  • The value of each personal and dependency exemption, available to most taxpayers, is $3,500, up $100 from 2007.
  • The new standard deduction is $10,900 for married couples filing a joint return (up $200), $5,450 for singles and married individuals filing separately (up $100) and $8,000 for heads of household (up $150). Nearly two out of three taxpayers take the standard deduction, rather than itemizing deductions, such as mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes.

  • The maximum Hope credit, available for the first two years of post-secondary education, is $1,800, up from $1,650 in 2007.
Take advantage of the changes to make adjustments to your withholding on your paycheck. Remember when you get a refund from your tax return, you have given the government a interest free loan for 15 - 18 months.


Thursday, October 25, 2007

Financial Stress


I've been invited to speak to a local group next month on Financial Stress. My talk will focus a lot on the holiday season and it's effect on our financial lives.

There are lots of ways I could go with this talk. I've got 20 minutes to convey a message and give some tips and tools that will help ease this stress.

I'm interested in your thoughts, tips and suggestions on this topic. I'm asking for your help in what with my presentation.

Please comment with your suggestions.

Thanks

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Goal Reached! - 2,000 miles!


If you live near me, you know the weather was unbelievable this past weekend. Sunday was sunny and in the upper 70's. I took full advantage of this.

I'm very excited to report that I've exceeded 2,000 miles on my bicycle this year. This is a mile stone for me as this farther than I've ever ridden by bike in a single season.

One of the important lessons I've learned in reaching this goal is. You have to set your goals a little out of reach. I really never thought I'd hit 2,000 miles. By setting your goals a little out of reach and then telling someone what your goal is, you work harder to achieve it.

The most important thing about goal setting is not actually reaching the goal but it is who you are becoming as you work toward reaching your goal.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

29 More!

Another Tuesday night, another Financial Peace class here at NewPointe. I know I blog a lot on FPU. That's because this is where and how God is using me in the ministries of NewPointe. That gets me pumped.

I get very excited when members of our class come forward and give up their credit cards to be cutup and destroyed. As such, last night was a great night. Between two couples they turned over 29 credit cards. Check out this picture. That's a stack of cards.


If you come to NewPointe for worship over the next few weeks, you'll get to hear first hand stories of life change from some of the people who have taken FPU here. I can't wait for others to hear what I already know. You have to get your financial house in order before you can truly
worship God.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Who's helping you grow?

On the way into work this morning I was thinking about the guys I meet with or talk with on a regular basis that help me learn and grow. Each guy that came to mind influence me in a different area of my life.

Because we have spent time together, trust has grown, stories have been shared and in turn we have helped each other grow. Here are the areas I'm growing in because of them.

  1. Spiritually
  2. Accountability
  3. Professionally
  4. Relationally
  5. Leadership
  6. Husband
  7. Father
  8. Employee
  9. Boss
  10. Volunteer
I hope you have a few people in your life that you can look to for growth. I believe as you grow you are doing life the way it should be done.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Bill, Bill, and more Bills

I'm sitting at the bar in my kitchen as I've just finished paying my bills for the the next two weeks. Why the next two weeks? Thats a great question. I get payed every two weeks. Tomorrow is pay day.

I always sit down the night before I get paid and "spend" every dollar of my paycheck on paper. Some pays it goes better than others if you know what I mean. But hey, that's life.

I use an excel spreadsheet to do the number crunching. This makes it easier to go back and revise my allocations as i work through the bills. Believe it or not, I enjoy this process. Once your entire paycheck is spent on paper, it takes away managing your finances by crisis or impulse.

Here's a snapshot of the spreadsheet that I use.

1. I enter in my net pay and my wife's net pay along with any check book balance carryover and any miscellaneous deposits. This adds up to what is available to spend in the next two weeks.

2. Next, we start "spending" the money by entering amounts in column C. As I do this, the remaining dollars available to spend in column D get smaller and smaller. When I get to the bottom of the sheet, column D must equal zero.

3. As I spend money throughout this pay period, I enter these amounts in columns E - H and column I shows me how much I have left to spend in each category.

How about you? What method do you use to pay your bills?

Monday, October 08, 2007

Steps for Life

The staffers at NewPointe just completed an 11 week walking challenge. The goal for each participant was 10,000 steps a day.

The results are in and I'm quite happy with how things ended up. I came to find out that as a staff, we are a competitive bunch and each team (there were 3 teams of 7 people each)wanted to win. The winning team gets their car's washed by the loosing two team.

It was very close. Here are the total number of steps by team:

1st Place 7,229,860
2nd Place 7,150,349
3rd Place 7,079,567

On a personal note, I was very happy with how I did. Yes, I walked the most steps out of everyone.

I walked 1,667,772 steps in ll week or approximately 790 miles. That's way cool. On a side note, I only have 15 more miles to go pedaling my bicycle to reach my goal of 2,000 miles for the year.

Friday, October 05, 2007

bankrate.com and going green.

I love bankrate.com's web site. It's full of great financial information. The site focuses mostly on news, tips and advice to compare mortgage rates, home equity loans, CDs, car loans, credit cards and money market accounts.

Recently, They ran an article on living green. In fact, they list 153 ways to go green. You can link to the article here. I've been investigating how to go green around our house of late. Much to the chagrin of my wife, I'm replacing all of
incandescent bulbs with Compact fluorescent bulbs.

Compact fluorescent bulbs use 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. They're more expensive than traditional light bulbs, but it only takes about 3 months to make up for the higher sticker price in energy savings.

You will save $85 over the life of the bulb for each 60-watt light bulb you replace with a 15-watt CFL. You'll also save 543 kWh of electricity and reduce your CO2 emissions by 833 pounds.

This is a simple and cool way to go green and save some green $$.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Fasting

I'm sharing something very personal here today. I'm doing so because after just finishing a fast, I believe it's something all Christ followers should do.

For some time now, I have sensed God wanting to deal with me regarding certain areas of my life. (God's good like that.) I knew this would be painful and I wanted to be "all in" and to be focused like a laser on God during this process.

In cooperating with God on this, I did a three day fast. The fast, along with many quiet times in prayer and reflection was life changing. I really focused on God and He did a work in my heart. I'm in awe at how I'm feeling right now. I wish I could stay here.

If you want to experience a breakthrough and let God do a work in your heart, consider fasting. It will rock your world.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

IRS & Lesson Learned

Last week, here at work, I received a letter from the IRS. If you are anything like me, just seeing the envelope with "IRS Notice" gets your heart pumping a little faster.

Deep down, I had a feeling I knew what this notice was about. See during our reorganization time, I was late in filing our payroll deposit. I knew the IRS would come a knocking on this and rightfully so.

I opened the letter to see that NPCC was being assessed $381.30 in a penalty. Ouch. In reading through the letter and getting past the "warning" of additional penalties and interest if not paid by 9/17/2007, there's this section at the bottom of the letter stating "Removal of Penalties."

The IRS say's if you have reasonable cause the IRS would consider reducing or removing the penalties. That was my open door.

I wrote the IRS a letter laying out the reasons for my late filing and that I've never filed late in the past and I've taken steps to insure this doesn't happen again in the future.

I'm very pleased to say in the mail today was a letter from the IRS waving the $381.30 penalty.
If you've stayed with this post this long, thanks. The point of all this is to be proactive in all that you do. When you are wrong admit it. Don't try and hide it or make excuses. Take responsibility for your actions and learn.

Thanks IRS for the waived penalty and lessons learned.