Baba's Blog » Finances

Websites for Jesus

Baba — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:15:20 +0000

For the year 2008, my church is emphasizing working together to build stronger individuals, stronger families, and a stronger church. One area that our pastor has asked us to step up in is finding creative ways to bring finances into the church for some special projects that we want to get done this year. For example, we want to build a playground on one part of the property and a baseball diamond on another.

Sunday, Bro. John Williams told the church that he was going to donate all of his profit delivering appliances for the month of May, which confirmed for me something that I’ve been thinking about as well. For 2008, I will donate all profits from any websites that I build to my church. At this point, I haven’t decided whether I’ll donate to a specific ministry or project, but just that it will all go to the church.

It bothers me to make this statement so publicly. I take the Scripture about your right hand not knowing what your left hand is giving pretty seriously. However, I’m not sure this is the same type of giving and I have two good reasons for wanting to do it this way. First, I’m hoping that it will bring me more clients, which will bring in more money for the church. Second, I want to encourage my fellow New Lifers to do something similar, just as John encouraged me to do.

Cash Flow Plan

Baba — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:35:14 +0000

Tonight’s homework assignment for Financial Peace was to develop a “Quickie Budget” for a given month. Dessa and I sat down and did this over dinner before class. It was really awesome to see the bills coming together. It was quite easy to do for two reasons. First, Dessa had already done a lot of the groundwork before we started. Second, my pay now is a set salary, so my check will be exactly the same every week.

After about 30 minutes, we had our budget. We found out that we can actually pay all of our monthly bills and still have some left over that we can put toward debts and saving. That is AWESOME! At AO Smith, we were all too often on the other side of that coin, where we didn’t quite bring home enough to pay everything. It’s a good feeling to see the numbers work out for a change.

Another awesome feeling was the one we got when we were finished and we realized that, if we follow this, there’s really no reason to worry about money. Everything may not be caught up or paid off, but we’ve spent every dime in a responsible fashion and there’s no guilt or regret.

This class has already been a great help and learning experience for me and my family. Thank you John for putting this together!

Baby Step 1

Baba — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:41:41 +0000

Tonight we started Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at our church. It was such an incredible time. Dave Ramsey is hilarious. But, the point of this post is to say the first Baby Step to Financial Peace. Getting an Emergency fund built up of at least $1000. This is what Dessa and I are going to start planning how to do. Of course, I really wish that I had went through this lesson a year ago, because having an emergency fund right now would be nice

Have a BLESSED DAY!!!