Bring on the cool air

The entry date of this post is August 9th, 2009 and today is the day we finally turned on our central air conditioning this year. All the global warming has kept central Ohio pretty cool this year. There were several days earlier in the spring and summer where it got fairly warm, but we found that with some fans blowing on us, there was no reason to run the A/C. It’s been a real financial blessing. We are on a yearly budget plan for our electricity and right now it’s only $44 a month. This is partly due to the fact that last year during the two hottest months of July and August, we were in Hong Kong with our house empty. This year has been nice and cool so the savings has been huge.

Today’s high was 96F (36C) so we decided that since we had held out until August, we could turn on the A/C. :o) Man, does the cool air feel great! If you are also on the Total Money Makeover like us, the warmer house feels tolerable because the thought of saving $$ makes it feel okay. Just a few degrees saves hundreds a year, and that’s hundreds that can be spent on paying down debt, giving to charity, or enjoying nights out. Since our Total Money Makeover, we look at our money in a whole new way, so we’re stoked about it being well into the month of August before we utilized our central air. How about you? Can you spend a few days getting used to 77F (25C) instead of 75F (24C)? If so, you’ll be glad you did.

TobyLaura.com

Socialism

With all the spending and government promises, are we on the road to socialism in America? This poster started showing up in L.A. over the past weekend. Many people call it mean spirited but I wonder if they thought the same depiction of G.W. Bush was also mean spirited (in a nationally syndicated magazine, not just a few local posters.)

 

Of course, there have been other posters popping up on the net: of which my favorite is below.

TobyLaura.com

New furniture


We came home last night with some new furniture for our house: a bed and an armoire. It was ordered from Brandywine Furniture (303.343.5224), about two hours North of Columbus, near Cleveland, in Amish country. A nice lady named Erin runs this place as a small business that sells Amish made furniture at great prices. Laura’s mom found Erin years ago and she and her daughters have purchased many things from her over the years.

We have a coffee table, two end tables, and now a bed and armoire. The craftsmanship is exquisite and the prices are amazing. Erin doesn’t mark up prices like other “Amish Furniture” places do. She’ll sell a dining table and six chairs for thousands less than those discount Amish places. My coffee table cost less than one with cheap particleboard and veneer from a regular furniture store. It’s incredible, and we want to buy all our furniture there. The mission style wood is timeless and will last forever. We don’t have the money to buy cheap stuff over and over, so we save up for the best, and buy it once.

Once we finish our bedroom set, we’ll look for a dining room set. Our bed is Cherry wood and the armoire is Oak. The armoire will give us additional storage space outside our bedroom and will someday be used in a guest bedroom. We’re happy with the purchases and look forward to adding to our collection, slowly, piece by piece.

TobyLaura.com

Our new Elantra


Since the passing of my Passat, we were down to one car. We wanted to search for a new car, but were in no hurry to do so, as it is cheaper to only have one. In today’s gotta-have-it-now culture, we wanted to go slow, do our research, and if the right deal came along, only then would we buy a second car.

After reading Dave Ramsey’s book: The Total Money Makeover, we’ve completely changed our finances to align them with his ideas. Because of that, we are completely debt free, and because of his book, we would be able to write a check for our new car at the dealer — no financing. Do you need a money makeover? Click the link on his book and the $16 you spend will change your life. Forever.

Because of the way our jobs work out and in our unique situation, we could have actually kept to having only one car for a while. Yes, it’s easier to have two, or even three, but we really only needed one. A lot of us Americans have gotten ourselves into trouble because we over-extend our finances because we think we need a lot of stuff. Check out GlobalRichList.com and put in your annual salary and see where you rank in the world. You’ll find that even the poorest among us are still vastly wealthier financially than most everyone else in the world. (A kid working for minimum wage at McDonalds is in the top 12% in the world.)

Those last two paragraphs kept us mindful that we didn’t want to just run out and spend more money to bring us back to status quo or even to keep up with the Joneses, but if the deal was just right, we’d make a move. (By the way, as Ramsey says, never try to keep up with the Joneses, because they’re broke anyway.)

We have been so happy with our Hyundai Sonata that we wanted to give their smaller model a chance. Everyone loves to talk about how good Honda and Toyota are, but the thing missing from that praise is the HUGE markup one pays for the name of those cars. Sure they are good and reliable, but at what price? We feel that Hyundai is the dark horse in the race (but hopefully not the dark horse and rider of the apocalypse riding across Armageddon’s plain). You get the best warranty in the industry, a car maker that will take your car back in the first year of ownership if you lose your job, a car that is built in Alabama by Americans, and a company that is not owned by and taking orders from the U.S. Government and Barack Obama.

We looked at Civics and Corollas and then laughed at the high prices/miles. Hey, if you own one of these, power to you, but we didn’t want to pay those prices. Our gamble is that Hyundai will be good on their warranty word and will have built just as good a car. My guess is that when GM and Chrysler are just a distant memory, the foreign cars, along with Ford and Saturn (owned now by Roger Penske) will be doing well. If you haven’t given Hyundai a chance, give them another look. They totally redesigned their models in 2007 and you won’t go wrong for the money.

When we searched the internet, we found some really good deals on the Elantra. After test driving two, we decided that it was a fun, roomy, affordable car that would work for us and we’d keep an eye out for one. Laura found a great looking one in Wheeling, WV, about two hours away. After calling and finding out a little about the car, we drove over today to take it for a spin. It was only driven for five months, was a 2008 with less than 14K on the odometer and was listed for $2,000 less that what both Kelley Blue Book and NADAsaid it was worth. It was clean, not a nick on it, had alloy wheels, leather steering wheel, premium sound, and best of all, as a Dallas Cowboys fan, it was the right colors, too. The only “downer” was that it is a manual transmission and Laura doesn’t (yet) drive one.

We used AutoTrader.com to search for cars and highly recommend it for finding your next car, too. At autotrader, we saw that manual transmissions were about $1,000 to $1,500 cheaper than the automatics. We decided that because I love driving a stick shift, the money savings would be worth it for Laura to learn. Manuals get better mileage, need less maintenance, and are more fun to drive!

The salesman was real nice and we worked the price down a bit and then shook hands and we wrote him a check, right there on the spot. A few minutes and signatures later, we were headed home, with me in the new-to-us Elantra and Laura behind in the Sonata. On the drive home, I couldn’t believe that we got a great deal on a great car and so quickly found a replacement for the Passat. God is certainly good to us. Believe it or not, even as a pilot, we are not rolling in dough at our house. However, with Dave Ramsey’s help, we’ve become debt free (except for the house), and with part of our emergency fund, we were able to replace our car by just writing a check. This is our second slightly used car and we will probably never buy a new car again. In doing so, in just two cars, we’ve saved close to $10,000. We are certainly blessed to have such a nice car as our second car. We love our new Elantra, Laura is looking forward to mastering the transmission, and we are glad to have found a great deal.

TobyLaura.com

Great sermon audio on iTunes


Do you crave to be inspired by God’s living word? Do you enjoy a great sermon by a great pastor? Nothing beats the worship of a local church, but if you can’t make it to church, or you need some midweek encouragement, why don’t you give Pastor David Dykes, of Green Acres Church in Tyler, Texas a listen?

He is the pastor of my parent’s church and I’ve always enjoyed the worship there and God always speaks through him each Sunday. Green Acres has now moved their sermon audio to iTunes, meaning that whether I’m in Dubai, Hong Kong, Anchorage, or just at home, I can listen to a great word from God. The subscription is free and I set up my iTunes to download new podcasts from Pastor David each time it is updated. Make sure you have iTunes installed and then click on the subscribe button below to signup. Then, in iTunes, just make sure your subscription is set to auto update and enjoy!

TobyLaura.com