Capping Your Lifestyle
How much is enough? That’s a question we should all take time to explore. When studies have asked this question to individuals in different income ranges, the common response is always slightly more than they’re making today, regardless of their current level of income. Those making $50,000 a year thought $55,000 would make life a…
Read More6 Principles for Defining Your Lifestyle
Choosing a lifestyle isn’t a quick and easy decision you can knock out over dinner. It’s often a long process that takes years and a series of smaller decisions. In fact, most people don’t actually choose a lifestyle. Instead, they make a lot of independent decisions and allow the sum of those decisions to be…
Read MoreChoosing a God-Honoring Lifestyle
Debt is one of the most popular topics in financial courses primarily because it’s the pain that so many people are currently dealing with. However, focusing on debt is like a sick person focusing on their symptoms and ignoring the illness. We would consider it foolish to give a person an aspirin to treat the…
Read MoreCredit Card Survival Guide
I’ve heard it said there are two types of people who use credit cards, those who benefit from the service without paying for it and those who carry high interest balances and foolishly provide all the corporate profits. Regular use of credit cards could be compared to swimming in shark infested water. If you know…
Read MoreDeath to the Car Payment
The car payment is often treated like a member of the family. You acquire it early in your adult life and plan to feed it, grow it and ultimately fade into retirement with it. I don’t know where the idea of a car payment being something that you would always have originated, but I can…
Read MoreThe Greatest Debt Payoff Ever
If you ever find yourself going down the internet rabbit trail looking at debt payoff success stories, you’ll likely run across some pretty amazing stories like the one where a dentist paid off $380,000 in student loans in just 21 months, or the family that paid off $125,000 of debt while eating mostly dehydrated hashbrowns…
Read MoreTeaching Teenagers to Value Money
It’s difficult as parents to see our children fall and hurt themselves. That’s why we need to understand how important the lessons of failure truly are. When we grasp that reality, we stop looking for ways to keep our kids from falling and instead look at how we can provide them with an environment that keeps them from getting hurt when they fall.
Read MoreTackling Your Debt
You’ve conquered your fears, overcome the procrastination that’s been holding you back and now you’re finally ready to draw a line in the sand and leave your reckless spending habits behind you. Unfortunately, making that big decision doesn’t erase all the baggage from your previous behavior. Many of you will need to deal with the…
Read More3 Questions to Ask Before Taking on Debt
In a society that hands out debt like candy at a parade, it’s easy to fall into the trap of snatching up everything we want and then going in search of more. Let’s face it, we all have wants and are constantly bombarded by messages telling us to “treat yo self”, which may even remind…
Read MoreThe Intangible Costs of Debt
Typically, when we consider the possible downsides of having debt, our minds focus on the lurking financial consequences, like the amount of interest we’re going to be paying over the length of the loan or how the monthly payment is going to affect our quality of life. Most people rarely ponder the equally as real,…
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