Background Checks!

Here at NewPointe, We take the safety of your children very seriously. We have a team of security volunteers who's role is the safety of your children during your time with us at weekend service. This group does a great job and I'm very thankful for them. (Keep up the great work guys!)

There's a lot of "stuff" that goes on behind the scenes as it relates to the security and safety of your children and it all starts with background checks for our children and youth volunteers.

Yesterday, we changed background screening providers to SecureSearch and we processed our fist screening through them. I was very impressed with the whole process.

Here are the benefits of using SecureSearch.

1. Fellowship One integration. (This is a big deal.)
2. Multi State Criminal check
3. National Sex Offenders check
4. Social Security Number trace
5. Address verification
   
6. It's all done on line.
7. We are reminded annually to rescreen volunteers.
   
8. Soon, volunteers can input their information online for screening.
9. The results of the screening are attached to the individuals record as a pdf file.
10. Peace of mind.
    

This is part of our comprehensive process in providing a safe environment for you and your family.

New High

I hope you were able to attend one of the two Easter services we had here at NewPointe. It was a great day. Make sure you check out Danny's blog to get a recap.

If you weren't able to attend, you can download or listen on line to Dwight's message by going to NewPointe's web site.

Since I'm the numbers guy here at the church, I wanted to share Easter's attendance number with you as that's a question we get a lot, "What was the attendance Sunday?". Well, no need to wait until next week for the attendance in the worship guide.

Easter attendance. . . . . 2,790

Beyond the new high, there was story after story shared at our all staff meeting today about people coming to NewPointe for the first time.

I can't wait for next week as we continue our series on forgiveness. It's called no strings attached. You can check out a quick summary here. Hope you can join us next week.

Two if by Sea

Just a little bit ago, I was checking out Google Analytics on my blog. As you might imagine, I find numbers and statistic fascinating and Google Analytics provides all that and graphs as well. As I was checking out the different stats, I noticed two recent visitors were from England. (Brighton and Droylsden to be exact.) (Get it, Two if by Sea? This is my sense of humor)

This makes me wonder how someone from so far away ends up on my blog? Then I got to thinking how cool it would be to have a conversation with them to find out the how and why behind stopping at my blog.

When I started blogging I really had no expectation or predictions of readership. As it continues to grow I'm feeling a sense of responsibility of weekly posts and relevant topics. I hope I'm doing both.

Online tickets & payment come to NewPointe

One of the new ministries we are launching at NewPointe in 2007 is something called Married Life Live. My buddy John Bunn does a great job describing Married Life Live over at his blog Thinking outside the Bunn. Please click on this MLL link for details. My wife and I are really looking forward to taking part of that Saturday night in April.

MLL is where online tickets and payment comes into play. K Greenwalt and I are implementing the weblink module in Fellowship One. Fellowship One is our church management software system. It and the people who work there are at the top of their game. Most recently, Maggie at F1 played a big roll in our online purchasing process. Thanks Maggie!

Starting today, for the first time, you can register and purchase your tickets via our church web site. Here's the link. So if you haven't read John's blog yet on MLL here's a brief summary and I hope you decide to come. Cindy & I are planning on being there.

MLL is date night--NewPointe style. At MLL you'll experience incredible music, creative programming, and a message that's very relevant to your marriage. It's all specially designed to encourage and empower you as a couple.

Purchase your tickets on line. (Way cool)

Whats in a Password?

Passwords. It seems like these days we need one for everything. I get asked this question a lot. "What's a good password"?

Your password should be easy for you to remember but difficult for unauthorized parties to guess. here are a few suggestions.

1. Create acronyms from the words to your favorite song. For example, Mary Had A Little Lamb becomes mhall. Even consider adding numbers characters to it. For example, 8mhall4 where 84 was the year I graduated from High School. (whoops did I just give away my age?)
   
   
2. Deliberately misspell a word. (I do that when I'm not even trying.) Example, locomotive could be lokuhmotiv. ( Ok, that one is hard.)
   
   
3. Consider combining a number of facts, such as dates and events such as 12Christmas25day.
   
   
4. Mix cApiTaL letters into your password.
   
   
5. Use punctuation characters and/or numbers.
   
   

Anyway, theres are some of my thoughts. I know there are lots more you could chose from. Have fun with it and please change your password to something different than "password".

Insurance

Last night was another great Financial Peace University class here at NewPointe. We totally took apart insurance. Dave Ramsey does an outstanding job walking you through all the different insurances that are out there. In a nutshell, everyone should have the following coverage.

Remember, the idea of insurance is to transfer risk from you to the insurance company.

1. Life Insurance @ 8 - 10 times your annual income (Term ONLY! never cash value life insurance its a big rip off.)
   
   
2. Health Insurance. The best way is to get it through your employer if you can. If not, consider a individual Health Saving Account with a high deductible. There are some great tax saving advantages to a Health Saving s Account.
   
   
3. Long Term Disability Insurance. If its available to you through work, get it! It's very cheap this way. I've gone out an purchased it myself years ago.
   
   
4. Homeowners. You need 100% replacement cost coverage. This is getting harder and harder to find. Most major insurance companies only want to insure your home at it's current value when you first purchase the insurance +a 25% adder. Watch out for this.
   
   
5. Auto Insurance. If you have a fully funded emergency fund (3 to 6 months) then raise your deductible to $1,000.
   
   
6. Long-term Care Insurance. As you or a family member reach age 60, purchase a long-term care insurance policy. It will cover in home nursing care or a nursing home.
   
   
7. Identity Theft Insurance. This is becoming more popular. (I don't have it yet but am considering it.)
   

Stay away for the gimic insurances. cancer insurance: accidental death (your not double dead if you die in an accident), mortgage death insurance. You are much better off using these premium dollars to fully fund an emergency fund and then invest.

If your interest in shopping some of these insurances Dave Ramsey recommends Zander Insurance

Coming Soon

Here at NewPointe we are always looking for ways to be culturally relevant and the use technology plays a big role in relevancy. Soon, we will be rolling out gift/prepaid cards. Here's what they will look like.


The initial plan is for these gift / prepaid card are for use in the cafe and bookstore. They will make great gifts as well as provide a nice way for parents to manage their children's purchases at the cafe. My personal plan is to purchase a gift card for both of my kids and put $5 on each card. Then it will be up to them to manage how they redeem it at the cafe.

These cards can be used over and over again with dollars added to them at anytime. We are also planning on offering 3% added back to the card each time you use it.

One final thought. I think it's going to be real cool to carry this NewPointe card in my wallet. I'm hoping it will be a good conversation starter as I plan on showing it off.

7,000; 90+; 50+; 1,100 (What's with the numbers?)

Did the title peak your interest? It's no surprise that I like number. So, on my bike adventure to Holly Springs N.C. (Real close to Raleigh) I wanted to keep an eye on the number.

Kevin B, Rod S, and myself took a road trip this weekend to visit my buddy Scott M. We brought the bikes and road Saturday & Sunday in beautiful 83 degree sunny N.C. (Thanks for the great weather Scott)

Here are the number.

• Calories burned by me during the rides - 7,000
• Miles peddled on my bike - 90+
• Number of riders for Sunday's ride - 50+
• Miles driven there & back - 1,100 (all worth it)

Scott, thanks for a great time and letting us stay at your house. This will be an annual event.

Count Team - Thank You

I'm blogging today and thanking the count team here at NPCC. We have a group of dedicated and very trustworthy ladies that come in each week and process the offering. Lot's of envelopes, checks and some cash with the occasional paper cut and computer problem. (We're working real hard to solve the computer problems.)

These ladies are part of our behind the scenes volunteers. They play a crucial role in the life of NPCC and I want to thank them publicly.

So ladies, THANK YOU for your time, dedication and service to NewPointe each and every week. I pray you are blesses as much as you are a blessing to me and the church.

How rich are you?

I know, we'd all like to be making more money. I'd like to suggest that most of the time, more money isn't the answer to our financial worries. (This is a discussion for another time.)

Anyway just how wealthy are you? If we're going to ask and answer that question, we need to look at it from a global / world perspective. I've come across a web site that shows you just how "rich" you are in comparison to the rest of the world. It's quite eye opening.

Here's the link to the web site. globalrichlist.com. Check it out. It sure made me think.

toddcolucy.com

Today I registered toddcolucy.com at Go Daddy. It was painless and the cost was very reasonable. Less than $10.00 per year.

Have you considered registering your name as a .com? You can visit various web sites including Go Daddy.com and search for free to see if your name or some variation of your name is available. It's a lot of fun to see what comes back when you search for yourname.com. I was very happy that toddcolucy.com was available and I purchased it right on the spot.

As for now, toddcolucy.com is pointing to my blog and in time I'll have a web site to go with it. I'm excited to see how having my own .com will play out in the future. I think I call my parents and try and explain this to them.

Thanks for stopping by today. Stay encouraged!

33 Credit Cards . . . . . (No More!)

Last night at Financial Peace Class we covered the lesson on dumping debt. In my opinion, it is one of the most powerful and life changing lessons of the entire class. My belief in this was strengthened last night as we had over 10 families destroy, cut up, and mutilate 33 credit cards.

Here's a picture of the 33 credit cards we cut up right there in class in front of all 80+ people. It was dare I say a religious experience.

I'm so very excited for the families that will be forever free from the bondage of credit card interest by saying no more to credit cards and credit card dept.

It's a honor to be part of life change. I'm so grateful I get to be part of the financial ministry here at NewPointe. We are making a difference in peoples lives and hopefully change family trees.

My best Email time saver

Like the rest of the computer world, e-mail is a way of life for me. I enjoy communicating and staying in touch this way but if you're not careful, e-mail can burn thought a lot of your time.

I've come up with a neat trick that saves me a lot of time and in some cases hassle in responding to e-mail by creating multiple signatures. I name each of these "standard" signatures so that I know which one to included in a particular email. Here's and one that I use and have titled "Thanks but no thanks".

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail me. At this time, we are not in the position to move forward on your request. I'll keep your email on file for three months and if the opportunity arises I'll contact you.

Sincerely,

Todd Colucy
Director of Business Operations


E-mail signatures do not have to appear at the bottom of your email. You can drag or cut and past them to any spot in your message that you want. This saves a lot of time.

Give it a try and create a few signatures. Have fun with it.

Just got a 21% return on. . . . .

Did the title get your attention? I guess it did as your reading this. Well, I did get a 21% return on my latest investment. Here's what I invested in, are you ready? Braces for my 13 year old son. Stay with me and I'll explain.

Based on my adjusted gross income, my federal tax bracket is 15% and my stage is 5%. I'm participating in our church's flexible spending account program (FSA). An FSA allows you to set aside dollars on a pre-tax basis (Federal & State) for qualified medical, dental, and vision costs. Braces are qualified dental cost. When I pay the dentist, I'm using my debit card and that give me 1% back on purchase.

Cost of braces $4,100 (OUCH!)

Flex Spending & Debit card % of 21% = $861 still in my pocket.

Hey, if you have to pay for stuff like this, it's called life, take advantage of the opportunities available to you. Looking at saving $861 putt's me in a better frame of mind then looking at paying $4,100.

Deal or No Deal?

Last night at our First Wednesday service, we did a spoof on the game show Deal or No Deal. The powers that be suggested I play the role of "the banker" for the game show. I agreed.

I spent all of 10 minutes sitting in a chair talking on my cell phone and twirling a pencil (pencil twirling is one of my many talents.) while our video guru, Dave Mast, rolled the camera. Dave is extraordinarily gifted in so many areas. I'm glad he's on our team. He make my on screen antics look great. Thanks Dave.

I must admit I kind of enjoyed some time out front in the service. . . . . but that small roll was enough. I'm very happy to go back to the things I do best and being on stage/on screen is not one of them.

DST & my 101's post

I've received two phone calls and an email from Fellowship One warning me about Daylight Saving Time coming three weeks early this year. (This Saturday) By the way, it's "Daylight Saving Time" not Savings time.

I didn't realize that moving DST would have an effect on all this stuff. Fellowship One has everything handled as it relates to check-in and contributions. I had to do nothing. Yet another big + for using F1.

I was required to schedule a billable service call for our door system. I've got to pay a service tech to come in and install a patch on their software. When I asked why we had to pay for the patch, I was told the government changed DST not the software company. We've got no choice here. I'll have to pay for this.

Microsoft even has something to say about DST. Here's the link. click here.

What do I like most about DST? More time after work to ride my bike! (Like my new picture of me and my bike?)

You might think I'm crazy

I took my camera with me on our bike ride last weekend. I wanted to share a few pictures of our adventure with you. I hope you enjoy them.

Getting ready for the ride. There were 4 of us. (Bill, Kevin, Rick and me)

Bill's on his mountain bike. (Snow, what snow)

We're off.

Speed! 25.7 mph on this down hill. It's hard going this fast with only one hand on the bars and one taking the picture. (Let's not tell my wife about this shot.) I maxed out at 32 mph on this down hill.

Total ride mileage 26.2. Temp. 37. Can't wait for spring!

Fresh Brew

I love coffee. . . . You don't understand, I'm passionate about the stuff. So much so, I started roasting my own beans about two months ago. You have never experienced coffee until you've tasted fresh roasted coffee brewed in a press pot.

The picture to the right is one of the batches I roasted less than 30 minutes ago. Tommorrow, it will be in my burr grinder as soon as I get up in the morning. I'll enjoy a few cups (at least 3) with the Saturday newspaper.

I was very surprised how simple and fun it is to roast green coffee beans. I stumbled on to a web site that explains how to do it. sweetmarias.com A few hours on this site, one $19 eBay purchase later and I was roasting coffee in my kitchen. (I use a hot are popcorn popper. No kidding.)

One of the side benefits of roasting coffee beans in the house is the wonderful coffee smell for days. But be warned, roasting coffee beans causes smoke. I set both smoke detectors off almost every time I roast. A very small price to pay and besides I know our detectors are working properly.

Coffee is best within a few days of roasting up to about 10 days. It's only good for a few hours after grinding. This is why I don't purchase roasted coffee anymore. Is there really that big of a difference? You bet. Everyone I've given some of my home roast to has said it's the best coffee they have ever had and I agree. Give it a try.

I'm the first blogger. . .

My title is no lie. I am the first person on NewPointe's staff to blog. We currently have 7 staffers blogging. A few of them are linked here on my blog. I've need to update to include the rest.

I don't really remember why I started blogging but I'm sure glad I am. It's a way I keep myself accountable. I've been told by those how read my blog it's a way for them to keep up with what's going on in my life. I think that cool.

So, here's a quick run down of what's been going on.

• Road 26 miles Saturday. Yes there was snow on the ground.
• Door Access control training.
• Considered purchasing a new / used car. (Not going to at this time.)
• Some one-on-one financial counciling
  
• 5 individual tax returns. (5 more to go)
  
• FPU tonight - relating with money
• Walking our dogs every chance I get
  

Cash Flow Planning - FPU #2

Last night was another successful Financial Peace Class. The topic was Cash Flow Planning. OK Budgeting. Wait. . . Don't go, this budget really works. My wife and I have been using it for more than 4 year know.

In a nut shell, You write down your take home pay and assign every dollar a home. At the bottom of the budget it must equal zero.

We have a "blow" category in our budget. This is for things that we forget or in most cases for when the kids come home from school and say "I need $XX for school tomorrow." Without a blow category in our budget, the budget would never work.

If you'd like more information on the zero based budget, click here.

Remember all a budget is, is you telling your money where to go. Try it! It works