We’ve been reading the book The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey.

Ramsey takes a revolutionary approach to financial fitness…get out of debt.

Wow!  Who-da-thunk?

Simple, straightforward…get out of debt. It’s unfortunate that we have a society that places value on buying things without having the means to do so. Let’s hope that we don’t take part.

Payments on Pizzas

Crazy, no?

Yet that’s exactly what happens when someone carries a balance on their credit card month after month. They’re making payments on pizzas (and a lot of other things like toothpicks)!

Sunk but Looking Good

Nope, they’re worse.

Of course with loan for an automobile you may obtain a lower interest than a credit card but when you look at the dollar amounts involved, it’s insane!

People pay thousands and thousands extra above the original purchase price due to interest for a vehicle that will lose value faster than equity is gained.

Save for a car, then buy it, period.

Home Ownership

Someone commented once, well if you make extra payments on a home and then lose your home, you lose the extra money you put into it. The answer to that is…put yourself in a position where losing your home would be very hard to do.

How do you not lose a home?

Have a large emergency fund saved up that will get you through difficult times (something we could all work on).

Risks of Borrowing

Does buying “things” on credit really sound fiscally responsible?

How many people would have been better off to purchase a car they could afford and take the money they would have had as payments and put it into an emergency fund?

Once their emergency fund was, ahem, funded, they could take that money and invest it.

“I just don’t have enough to make ends meet.” If that’s the case, read Dave’s book, and you might find yourself inspired to make things happen so you do have enough to make ends meet.

Creating an Emergency Fund, the First Step

We’ve enjoyed reading Dave’s book, which strongly encourages as the very first step to freedom the creation of an emergency fund and offers plans on building a fund.

The stories in the book are inspiring about people that sacrificed so that they could live debt free and create security.

Budgeting is an important part of getting control and creating an emergency fund.  Mint.com (owned by Intuit) is easy to use and ties into your accounts so you can categorize expenditures and create budgets.

There are many savings accounts you can use to create an emergency fund.

Keeping an emergency fund account separate from your bank that has your checking account might be a good way to preserve the fund for real emergencies.

ING Direct (savings online) has a deal right now that if you are referred by a friend and open a savings account with $250, you get $25 and the referring friend gets $10, so if you’re interested in a referral link, let us know. (The ING offers and amounts change from time to time).

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you (and your spouse if married) are the one(s) choosing where the money goes rather than the money choosing where you go. And you can take that to the bank.

A familiar question, one that is usually asked when you’re in trouble. However, this time, it takes a different meaning. Seven celebrities embark on a quest to answer the question, “Who do you think you are?” in a new television series on NBC. Of course, Ancestry.com on of the largest Genealogy Websites is helping out.

The show starts Friday Evening, March 5th and continues each Friday.

Ancestry.com offers a Free Trial to new signups.

The external flash would be cool, but as the only flash, it would be a little cumbersome to hook on the external flash every time we needed to take a quick picture with the flash.

We came across a video from Norther Lights that shows what the problem was and how to fix it.  The fix took just a few minutes once we had the right precision screwdriver, and viola! we saved ourselves hundreds of dollars in repair costs and time without a camera.

The Internet is awesome!  Just a little bit of searching, and we had our answer.

Mimolette Cheese - The cannon ball

We enjoyed the evening with friends and neighbors and had a good selection of cheeses. Some of the cheeses were repeats from last year, and some were a first try.

Baguettes and specialty bread was also an addition which enriched the sampling.

We had the following cheeses that we or other guests brought:

• Jarlsberg from Norway
• Butterkase from Germany
• Brie from France
• Vermont Sharp White Cheddar
• Smoked Gouda
• An Ireland Cheese (can’t remember the name)
• Cheese cake
• Mild Cheddar
• Cheese Dip
• Cheese Ball

Brie was one of our favorites that we discovered in Paris, France.  We found that if you put a small slice in the microwave for a few seconds, it helps to soften it up, and put on a baguette, tastes excellent.

That was 20 years ago. What’s funny is that I had a credit for the Wii and downloaded Mario 3 just for fun. It’s still a fun game.