Rent or Buy?

If you are into personal finance I'm sure you have come across this question or terminology before. This time, its with a little twist. See in our new church, we are moving in in five months, we may have need for 100 round tables. We own 20. So we either purchase 80 more at $97 each for a total of close to $8,000 or we rent them for $8.50 each. We may rent as little as zero times a year or as much as 4 times a year. The other issue issue is storage. Now we have already accounted for the storage space in the new construction but if we don't have to store 80 tables we can use this space for other stuff. One think I'm learning real quick is storage space is always a premium. So even if we did have a need for 80 tables 4 time a year we could rent them for 2.6 years before we would spend the $8,000. Last thing to consider, If we don't purchase the 80 tables now, it frees up that $8,000 for other construction / furniture needs.

What would you do?

What a profitable day

It's almost time to hit the road and head back to Ohio. (300 miles to get home) The day was very profitable for myself, my wife and for what we are going to be bringing back to our church. I did meet up with my wife for lunch. Other than that time, I haven't seen her all day. She said she's learning a great deal from Granger's communications person and she's made a few key contacts from other churches.

I owe Andy a great deal of thanks as I took up most of his morning. He was very gracious to me and I appreciate that very much. We talked Fellowship One stuff, Microsoft Map Point stuff and Podcasts. He shared with me a few of his favorites and I did the same with him.

1. The Creative Leader
2. Business Greatest Strategies
3. Manager-Tools
4. Catalyst
5. HBR Idea Cast
6. Blogging Church

If you get a chance check out a few of them. I hope they are "profitable" for you as well.

Road Trip 1 down. . . Road Trip 2 in progress

Greeting all!

My road tip Wednesday was very profitable. We learned a lot and had great success networking with other Church Facility Coordinators. Bill's got lots of work, great connections and a game plan to implement! Mission accomplished.

I'm now on road trip #2. I'm blogging to you from South Bend IN. I'm in a hotel room with my wife. She's attending a Church communications seminar at Granger and I'm going to be meeting with some Granger staff. So we are mixing time away from the kids with work.

We just returned from dinner. Little did I know how close we were to Michigan. As we drove north from here about two miles and there was the sign welcome to Michigan. I forgot to roll down my window and . . . as we entered that state. Anyway, as I type I've opened up my Franklin planner and started my list of questions for tomorrow. Look out Andy, I've got lots of questions. We'll see how many I get through as I want to respect his time. Off to some TV to relax.

Road Trip

Today Bill, our new facilities Manager are off to Fort Wayne In for a Church Facilities forum sponsored by Granger Community Church. I'm very excited for a number of reasons. First off our Facilities Manager's position is newly created and Bill has been on the job for 3 weeks now. Secondly, I hope to network and gain lost of knowledge from the 12 churches that are going to represented in addition to ours. Our church SFMC with a name change coming soon, will be moving from our 46,000 sq ft. Facility five miles down the road to a newly constructed campus of 105,000 sq ft. If' your interested is some pictures your can click on the link here. I'm very excited about the move and also stressed. (Just being real) So say a pray that the trip is very fruitful!

Got Organized . . . How about you?

This past week, I attended a Franklin Covey seminar. Thanks so much to Adventure Harley Davidson for opening up this training to management team of SFMC. It was very much appreciated.

The day was full of useful information and I'm so pumped! This is exactly what I've been needing in my life. I can now trash the three ring binder and the spiral bound notebooks. Our Franklin Covey instructor Vicki was great. She even showed me how to index important information so months later I can quickly retrieve it. She also got me to right down the "big rocks" in my life as well as my roles and value. I share more on this in anther blog. If you are looking for a great way to keep your personal and professional life organized the Franklin Covey system gets my endorsement. Happy planning and Oh ya, Happy Mothers day. (I'm blogging away why my wife is napping. She deserves the rest!)

8 Things Successful People Do

I was listening to a podcast some time ago and I took notes. I had some time today and I decided to clean up my office. Just finished month end and needed a mental break. Anyway here's the notes I took.

8 Things Successful People Do

1. Focused around your goals (Alignment)
2. Be the most positive & Passionate person you know
3. Work Smart!
4. N.S.I. - Never Stop innovating
5. Use your Time Well - Ben Franklin "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."
6. Add outrageous Value to Others
7. Invest in other People
8. Be devoted to Excellence

30 year mortgage? 40 year mortgage (what?) 50 year (Are you kidding?)

I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan. So much so that I lead, on average 2 Financial Peace University classes per year. Dave preaches no more that a 15 year fixed rate mortgage. Any longer time period than 15 years and you can't afford the house. Recently, I've come across many articles and blogs talking about the new 50 year mortgage.

A 50 year and for that matter a 40 year mortgage is nuts. Look at this example.

A $200,000 mortgage with a 30-year fixed rate at 6.63% would cost you $1,281.28 per month.Total interest paid: $261,262

A $200,000 mortgage with a 50-year fixed rate at 6.63% would cost you $1,147.06 per month.Total interest paid: $488,236

Why didn't I show you the number at a 15-year mortgage. Because if a 30-year, 40-year, or 50-year mortgage is making financial sense to you, there's no reason to crank the numbers for 15-years.

Gas prices and the church

As a church business administrator, I like to keep my eye on the finances of the church. Hey, That's one of the reasons I'm on staff. Finances are my passion area. (That's a blog for another day.) Anyway, I've been wondering for some time now how these high gas prices are going to effect peoples lifestyle. Will high gas prices effect our church's weekly offering? Only time will tell. I hope and pray that people live on less than they make.

In reading today's newspaper, I did get a little insight on how gas prices are effectively people. According to an AP poll, the number of people who expect rising gas prices to cause financial problems jumped from 51% a year ago to 70% today. Wow! The real shocker is that the increase from last year came mostly from those earring more than $50,000 per year.

People are concentrating on gas prices only. We are very lucky in this part of the country that we had a very mild winter. This kept our heating costs in check.

If you find yourself worried about the high costs of the basics, then take some time in the next few week, have a budget planning meeting and look for areas of excess. As Dave Ramsey says, "live like know one else so later you can live like no one else"!

Mentor (Criteria)

Do you have a Mentor?

I've been thinking about this a lot as of late. Why is this important? I believe if you want to continue to grow as a person, you need someone in your life that you can be honest with and who is further down the road of life than you are.

When most people think of what a mentor is, the first think that comes to there mind is financial. I want to caution you. Do not set this as the #1 criteria when searching for a mentor. You need to look at the 5 "F's" in this order.

1. Faith
2. Family
3. Friends
4. Fitness
5. Financial

You're mentor needs to be further down the road than you are in these 5 areas. In addition to these you need to look for the person who can fill your "gaps". Or what are trying to get better at?

I know finding a mentor is not easy. That's why you need to constantly be spending time with people. Always be aware of who is around you. Keep your eyes open!

Graduation Time of year - Best Gift Idea?

My wife and I are at that stage of life where we are not being invited to many high school graduations. (Yea!) Lots of people I know and work with are not so lucky. So if you find yourself searching for that perfect graduation gift why not consider some the following from Jim Rohn. Jim is a great motivational teacher and speaker. I've learned a lot from him and he's put together a gift entitled Three Keys to Greatness is a guide for teenagers to achieve financial independence and success.

This may be the best gift a teen will ever receive.

New Hire!

Yesterday was the first day for our Facilities Coordinator. We have never had this position before on our staff. I'm very excited by the opportunities to lead in a new what as I work very closely with our FC. I hope we are off to a great start!

We are going out to Indiana in two weeks to a Facility Management Forum sponsored by Granger Community Church. We have lots to learn and we can't wait to network with all the other church's that will be at the Forum. We need to learn from those who are farther down the road than we are.

Big Churches

According to a Wall Street Journal article published today based on research from Hartford institute of Religion Research, there are 740 churches in the US with weekly attendance > 2,000 people. Here's the breakdown by state.

California 178
Texas 157
Florida 85
Georgia 73
Illinois 46
Ohio 44 (Soon to be 45 when we relocate in Oct/ Nov of this year!)
Michigan 43
N Carolina 39
Indiana 31

Why are these churches so successful? Thoughts?

1st Check-in was a Success

This past weekend was a mile stone for our church and our Fellowship One journey. We went live with Check-in for the first time. We had a first impressions training event that was open to our team and to other churchs. All of our Fellowship One training, planning and practice paid off. Check-in was very smooth and fun. The two wireless check-in stations that greeted attendees as the entered created quite a positive buzz. This is leading to very positive talk throughout the church on how cool our new system is. (Great Buy-in!) We hope to go live in our Grade Level weekend activities within two weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Big thanks to K, Tracy, and Leigh Ann for a very smooth roll out of our Check-in system!

Get your next years tax refun now!!!

Got your attention? Good.

As of last week, the IRS had processed 75 million 2005 tax returns. And a whopping 90% of them called for refunds. The average refund or as i call it an interest free loan to the government is: $2,314

Here's an idea. You can get next year's refund in installments starting next payday. All you have to do is file a new W-4 form, Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate, with your employer and adjust the number of allowances you are claiming. You can claim an allowance for yourself, your spouse and your dependents, for example. Each allowance basically makes $3,300 of your annual income off-limits for withholding. Claiming extra "allowances" on your W-4 will automatically push down withholding, which in turn will push up your take-home pay. You'll enjoy instant gratification from a do-it-yourself pay raise.
Good idea! I agree! :-)

If you want to read more, check out this artical from Kiplinger

Google your Phone #

Did you know you when you type your phone number into google search it pulls up your name? Intersting thing is if your street address and name comes up, click on "map" to get detailed driving directions to your front door. As convenient as this may appear, the safety issues are unnerving. You really should remove this information from Google. To do so, simply click "phonebook results for your phone number. This will take you to a detail page and on this page click on the link that says "If you would like to have your PhoneBook listing removed, you can do so using our PhoneBook Removal Form"

Millionaire Facts

Who wants to be a millionaire? Lot's of people dream about this goal. I must admit, its appealing to me as well. Most people don't know how to get there. If you think the lottery is your only ticket to millionaire status or Deal or no Deal, your wrong! The key is to avoid debt and patiently invest over the long term. A little invested consistently goes a long way over time.

A recent survey reported by CNN found the number of millionaires (households with a net worth of over $1 million) in the United States hit an all-time high 8.9 million people last year.
How did these people do it?

More than half said their wealth is the result of long-term wealth accumulation.
Over 60 percent of their dollars ($1.4 million out of the average net worth of $2.2 million) are in investment assets.

Almost 70 percent of those millionaires own mutual funds.

The survey also found that the median age of this group is 58 years old. These people didn't have to work until age 90. They had a plan and just started investing early and often enough. After a while, compound interest made the money grow even faster.

Approximately 90 percent of the millionaires in America are first-generation millionaires; they didn't inherit their wealth, they built it. It is very possible to become rich. Get on a written plan, live on less than you make and invest, invest, invest.

The typical American family with a $40,000 annual salary has an $850 house payment, two car payments totaling $530, a student loan payment of $165, $185 in credit card payments and $120 for miscellaneous payments. All those payments total $1,850.
That money, invested at 12 percent, would grow to $1 million in 15 years. After 20 years, it becomes $2 million. Cool!

Get started today!

401(k)'s are they worth it?

In a single word, Yes. For a number of reasons and it's Biblical. Proverbs says "A wise man saves for the future but a foolish man spends whatever he gets."

First of all you have to have a plan for your retirement. Most employers today offer retirement plans to their workers. Any amount you put into your employer's qualified retirement plan goes in before taxes are taken out of your pay. This means more earring power. And guess what? All your earnings grow tax deferred.

In addition to tax free and tax deferment is many employers match at least a portion of your 401(k) contribution. If yours does, take full advantage of this. Its FREE MONEY!

I invest the in my employer sponsored retirement plan and I take full advantage of their matching contribution. My additional retirement dollars are invested in a ROTH IRA. More about that another time.

To find out more about 401(k)'s check out this web site www.401khelpcenter.com

Teens Test on Money - Test Score = F

According to a recent survey, teenagers don’t know much when it comes to money. High school seniors were given a test on basic economics and finance. The average test score was a mere 52.4%. (Ouch!)

Here are some of the results from the survey:
“Only 14.2 percent correctly said that stocks likely would offer the higher growth over 18 years of saving for a child's education.

44.8 percent thought a U.S. savings bond (a very conservative investment) would offer the highest growth.”

“Just 22.7 percent knew that income tax may be charged on the interest earned from a savings account at a bank if a person's income is high enough.”


Should schools require finance courses to graduate? I think so. Many students will never use 1/2 of what they are tought in school but 100% of them need to understand finances! I’m curious what you think about the issue. Please share your thoughts.

Fellowship One (day 2)

No don't worry, I'm not going to blog every day from this point forward regarding our experience with Fellowship One. I do want to share that after two full days of use of the ASP, I'm very excited. The system has brought a whole new level of accountability to our staff. The reporting is truly remarkable. I'll admit the matching of contributions the first time is taking a long time. We anticipate it going much much faster next time as checking accounts will already be match with donors.

A great big thanks to Mark Lindsley from Fellowship One. He has been great to work with and he's extremely knowledgeable.

I know there will be growing pains to work through. There is with anything new. As we continue to grow and get ready to relocate, I know Fellowship One is the church management system that's right for us!

We're Live! (Fellowship One)

Today's the day. All the planning and training are being put to use as I type this. We started entering contributions at 8:30 a.m. this morning. I love the check scanner already. I must admit it will take some getting use to as we have had to change some processes. That's not a bad think it's just different. I need to remind myself that to repeat over and over again why we have made the switch to F1. It will allow us to care for people better than we ever had before!

I'm off to help our admin staff enter information from our worship welcome cards into F1. Pray for me!