Spouses, Finances and Teamwork

By Kevin

This is a guest post from Kevin at No Debt Plan. Kevin helps readers eliminate debt, learn how to budget and save, and move themselves towards financial freedom.

My wife and I were married in January 2007. That’s almost a year and a half ago and it’s hard to believe. I proposed in October of 2005 — yes, we had a 14.5 month engagement because:
A.) I’m impatient
B.) I knew I had found the woman of my dreams

(For the record, we DON’T recommend that long of an engagement… but we made it!)

When we got engaged we weren’t even living in the same city. It would be January 2006 before our long distance relationship became a short distance relationship. With 14 months between our engagement and wedding days, we had a lot of time on our hands. We went through premarital counseling and went on a separate pre-marriage retreat that was a gift from friends.

Co-author Shawn is a new daddy!

My BFF Shawn and his wife are the proud parents of baby Ava as of yesterday evening. His wife was in labor for a grueling 18 hours (1am to almost 7pm) and eventually had to do a C-section. Both the mother and baby are healthy and doing well, and Shawn didn’t faint (or at least he won’t tell me).

If you’d like to contribute to the baby fund AND earn yourself a free $25, you can hop on over to my ING Referrals page to open an ING Direct Orange Savings account. The minimum to open is $250, but you get $25 bonus cash instantly upon creating the account (as long as you’re not a current customer). There’s no minimum balance required on the account, just the $250 to open! And since the referrals are from Shawn, he earns an extra $10 for each account opened!

Is Welfare Unconstitutional AND Bad for Society?

In the book Does Your Bag Have Holes?, Cameron C. Taylor, in addition to financial and spiritual topics, highlights a number of points regarding the foundations of society, the intent of the Constitution and the role of government in the welfare of its people. I’d like to talk about the last point because Taylor opened my eyes to “the other side of the argument” about social welfare and who should take care of the poor and unfortunate.

The Intent of the Constitution

In the book, Taylor discusses about 2 dozen “myths” about personal finance and how God, government and our own free will play a big role in each. One of the myths reads:

Government has a responsibility to provide for the poor and needy

Well, that was always my assumption because why else would the government have instituted welfare programs, social security, or giving money to other countries to help in crisis situations? Who else would do it?

Expanding Your Family and Reducing Your Income

By Shawn

Shawn, a subscriber and frequent commenter here at Clever Dude, as well as a personal friend of the Clever Dude and Dudette will be posting occasional guest articles. You can read his introduction here.

My wife and I are less than 10 days away from the birth of our first child. As a result, we’ve had first hand experiences with a lot of the concepts that the Clever Dude has discussed on this site.

Stay-at-Home Parent

The first arises because my wife and I thought it would be best if she stayed home for a year or so. This means we’ll be heading down to one salary.

One of the most important things we needed to do as a couple to make this adjustment was to sit down and discuss our new financial goals. We’ve had a debt-free plan that was contingent on a 2 person family with 2 incomes. Adding a third and losing an income obviously has an affect on our goals.

TV Guide needs to update its subscriber list [I see dead people]

So I got an IM from my mom today that she received a call from TV Guide for my Gram’s second husband (we’ll call him “Bubba”). The agent wanted to know if Bubba wanted to renew his subscription to the TV Guide magazine.

But there’s just one problem…

Bubba’s been dead for over 25 years!

My mom informed the agent of this and the agent didn’t know what to say. After a little stuttering, the agent told my mom she would remove his name from their list. My mom silently cheered that at least one telemarketer would stop calling!

As a note, my family has not received any TV Guide magazines at that address for decades (if they ever did in the first place) so obviously the agent was phishing for a new subscription. She probably noticed the listed age of my deceased grandfather and thought she could trick him. Either that or someone has been getting a free TV Guide every week for the last 25 years!

Buying Bulk Gravel

Over this past weekend, I began work on the first of 3 planned retaining walls at our home. The first wall is a “practice run” since it’s small (about 50 bricks) and easier to pull apart and put back together. However, it’s not going to be a cheap effort. I’ve already spent about $200 on my Discover card, which gets me 5% back on home improvement and clothing purchases this quarter, and I still have much more to spend.

For this article, though, I’m not covering the “how to” for building a retaining wall. Instead, I want to highlight one of my experiences of saving money and relay it to you. And if you make it all the way to the end, you’ll get to read a humorous story about my attempts at acrobatics.

Bulk vs. Bagged Gravel

One thing you need when building a retaining wall (or a driveway, or most any landscaping that involves bricks or cement) is gravel. But what are your options for gravel? Well, you can:

Break the Cycle of Financial Bondage

Earlier, I placed some blame for our (and your) financial problems, but I also mentioned one important thing at the end of the article: Break out of that cycle of debt by learning the proper way to budget and research, and then growing your knowledge with continual education.

Some people think that since they grew up poor (or even middle-class) that they’re destined to be poor or in debt. They don’t think they can get ahead or better their situation. They can only see what their parents or their friends have done with their lives and think that’s all they can do as well.

I’m not the first person in my family to get a college degree, but I might be the first to get a graduate degree. In Stacie’s family, neither of her parents have college educations, and Stacie is the first with a masters (her sister beat her to the undergrad). But neither of us just accepted our place in life to be a truck driver, carpenter or office clerk. In fact, our parents promoted our efforts to get higher education and more stable work. They wanted more for us than they had, and so far their dream is coming true.

Who do you blame for your financial problems?

If you’re in deep debt, who do you blame? The credit card company? Your school (for not teaching you proper personal finance)? Your parents? Yourself? Well I had a good conversation on IM with Ana from DebtFREE-Revolution.com about her recent article about Kids and Credit Cards, and I have my own opinions based on experience and observations.

Current Mortgage Crisis

I won’t spend much time on this topic, but in my opinion, the major blame for the mortgage crisis can be assigned directly to the consumers, myself included. We signed up for an interest-only loan AND 100% financing when we bought our house. After rethinking my position some more from those original articles, the main reason we chose those options wasn’t for future planning at all; it was because we wanted more than we could afford. We made a gamble on our future and luckily it’s paying off so far (at least in equity).