Since writing about medical school stuff based on a reader comment before I’ve had a sprinkling of hits from various search engines when people type in medical school and student loans. The title of this post reflects one of those search queries that lead people here. What is interesting about this phrase is that it indicates two independent parties operating without unity in a relationship that desperately needs unity.  Your husband should have asked you if you wanted to go to your parent.  Period.

If you feel burdened or overwhelmed by loans for school or whatever type they are: don’t roll the loan into a loan from a family member!  These sorts of loans destroy relationships and as Dave Ramsey says, “Thanksgiving dinner tastes different when you’re eating it as a slave with your master right there at the table with you.”  I’m not sure how this particular situation worked out, but I can imagine that you should talk to your parent and confirm that such a situation didn’t cause a blow-up and confirm that you are going to talk to your husband.

When you talk to your husband make it clear that the debt is something that you own together.  Because your marriage makes you one person you need to attack debt together.  Don’t let the concept of co-habitation enter a marriage: its not fifty-fifty, its one hundred percent from either party.  Marriage vows often contain some element of, “For richer or poorer.”  This is for good reason: your finances can impact your marriage, but there is no reason to let them direct your marriage.  You take control of your marriage as two adults who are passionate about unity and bring your finances together, unified, owned and rested on.  If you can’t sleep at night due to bills then the two of you need to bring your situation into control so that you are able to rest, keep unity, and allow for your marriage to be solid.

If your parent chooses to contribute to your debt payment make sure that it is a gift - because otherwise your relationship as parent and child will simply flounder.

On September 11th, 2000 I started a new job for a company that I now do contract work for.  At that point in time I was new to the tech industry and my job was to help the guy in documentation handle the heavy load that he had.  Unfortunately a few weeks after I started I was moved onto a web project and I never went back to doing full time documentation.  I helped in a few areas but for the most part the web development took over my position.  A year later I drove into work oblivious to the world events that had taken place and feeling excited that I had been working for the company for a year.  It had been a tough, but good year.  My co-worker walked into my office and asked, “Did you hear about the plane that crashed into one of the twin towers?”  I had not.  What was an exciting day turned into one of the most emotionally intense days of my life aside from marriage and having children.

September 11th rolls around every year and I have a small personal celebration.  September 11th this year will be seven years with the company (though now as a contractor), but I will recall the life altering events of my first year anniversary with great intensity.  That single event helped me refocus my life so that when I think about what I have to do every day I remember my priorities.

I focus on my relationship with God first, my relationship with my wife and family second, and I take the duties of my job to be integrated with my provision for my family.  Finances are a part of my serving my family - they’re a priority because my family matters.  I don’t worship the money, I don’t focus on the money as a priority over my family, but I focus on them because my family is a priority.  I blog about what I’m learning here because I think that there are others like me who have been distracted by ‘the pursuit of happiness’ but forgetting life and liberty.  This blog serves the Internet in an attempt to help remind people that happiness is not through finances, finances are part of life and liberty with an end result that will hopefully include happiness.

Don’t get distracted by advertisements, social pressures, or extended family to be pursuing the ‘new’ American Dream.  The drive for stuff.  Instead recall the old American dream of independence coupled with interdependence.  Take a moment to go encourage someone today.  Encourage them to be vigorous and passionate about what they’ve got going on in life.  Help remind them of liberty, help remind them about what life is about, and remind them to be focused on their priorities - their children’s children will more than likely be effected.

I just ran into this article on CNN.com.  CNN is really pushing the envelope in journalism to cover this as a news.  Apparently the terrorist angle isn’t selling ads any more.  I would prefer that they not try to bridge religion and home sales from that angle… but such is life.  I used to work at a Christian book store and every once in a while a person would come in looking for a ‘home sales kit.’  Yes, from a Christian book store.  The first time they came in I didn’t know what they were talking about but finally someone clued me in that they wanted to offend the saint so that the statue would sell their house.  Dumb.  Superstitious.  Not Christian.

Your smart money on home sales is going to come from various other alternatives:

1. Selling your home in a location that is desirable.  If your home won’t sell because you’re in a bum market waving dead chickens, hiring clowns and burying statues will not sell your home faster.  Location, location, location.
2. Price is a good indicator.  You may think your house is worth $1,000.000.00, but if the foundation is cracked because its on a fault line, or maybe you’re the only one who thinks that volcano front property is valuable, it isn’t going to sell.  Don’t look at comps for market value, be realistic.  Comps (a comparison of prices for homes that are for sale or have sold recently in your neighborhood or region) don’t give your house value, they give you a starting point.
3. What does it look like?  Be honest with yourself - there are reasons why you want to sell the house - those reasons may be reasons why the house won’t sell.  Our house has bad counters in the kitchen and we bought it anyway.  We’re going to replace them.  Much of the rest of the house is great though, and so we compromised.

Saints won’t sell your house, consumers aren’t being controlled like robots by upside down statues.  Get real CNN, and be realistic home buyers and sellers!

Today I went to the dentist.  The hygienist, who spent most of the time with me, told me something interesting that I thought you might like to know as a reader: their two demographics that they try to help take better care of their teeth are kids and convalescents.  The children are notorious for cavities, but the convalescents they’re finding have arthritis in their hands and other joints and are less likely to take care of their teeth because of the pain associated with regular and lengthy oral hygiene sessions.

She recommended that older folks with reservations about brushing for a longer time period get an electronic toothbrush.  She said that its easier for folks to hold the larger handle and that the motorized brushing plus softer toothbrush heads means that they can endure.  Many higher quality brushes have timers built in as well.  If you’ve got older parents, talk with them about helping them keep their teeth in tact and oral hygiene as a priority!

I just looked over this article about mistakes women make, the first example is a straw woman argument.  The problem is pitched as being about money, but it really, really needs to be about relationship.  You see, finances are just an expression of your relationship.  If your finances aren’t unified then your finances are one of possibly more pieces of the relationship that are out of order!  Your finances could be in order and they would be out of order if your relationship isn’t together.  By ‘together’ I mean a major focus of your day to day life.  Kids don’t get to be an excuse for the focus and quality of your relationship not being what it should be.  If anything the kids need you to get your marriage relationship together!

The whole article is based on several ideas:

• You should always suspect that your marriage is going to fail
• You should always keep yourself separate from your spouse

Here’s the kicker: by keeping yourself separate from your spouse you’ll probably increase the chance of a divorce!  The more unity that a marriage has in physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual and financial ways the greater your chance of not getting divorced.  When my wife and I got married the pastor, who happened to be my grandfather, sent us down the aisle as a unified, singular person - with two bodies and two wills.  The purpose of the marriage ceremony was for us to publicly declare the union that we were prepared to undertake!  We are constantly amazed when we run into people who don’t understand why we’re so concerned with unity in our marriage.

Take a straw man out of this equation and the financial advice goes away.  In stead the advice should roll down to the relationship and your first priority should be unity.  Marriage counseling may be required, but whatever it is you’re going through in a marriage your focus should be first on the marriage and unity and second on finances.  If the three reasons people get divorced are money, sex and communication… you better get your communication in order because money and sex come and go with time and age (though many sex researchers have been pouring their grant money into studying older people’s sex lives it seems based on the news reports I’ve seen).  If the communication is open and clear then you’ll find the communication will encompass money and sex, but sex and money won’t create communication!

Get out the big, bad wolf and blow down the straw woman, but get ready for communication and unity because that is the one mistake people make, failing to communicate, that has no straw man or straw woman.  They’re you, and you’re real.

I have heard the “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) slogan for some time. I used to work at a Christian bookstore and we sold more WWJD bracelets than I’d like to recall. Recently someone typed into the search engines, “Jesus handle my money” which made me think about things I’ve learned in the Bible regarding the life of Christ. There are elements to the question that we cannot answer due to the miraculous, but outside of the miraculous we can learn what Christ did and acted upon as revealed in the Bible. How would Jesus handle his money?

Jesus didn’t start his ministry when he was born. In fact he didn’t start it until he was considered an older man, which was around the age of thirty.   I’m a month shy of thirty and I’ll tell you that I’m glad that the culture and life expectancy are different now compared to the time of Christ. Remember that Jesus grew up in a Hebrew context with strong Greco-Roman influence. After being moved around by his Earthly father, Joseph, (due to the guidance of the God to do so) Jesus learned about carpentry and most likely apprenticed under Joseph. It is believed by some scholars that the carpentry that you and I think of was probably not the same thing as the carpentry in the time of Christ. More than likely stone work was also involved. For roughly fifteen or more years Jesus probably worked as a carpenter and probably was a well toned worker. Christ labored for his money before starting His ministry.

Upon starting His ministry Christ probably took the value of what He did have from being a carpenter and brought it directly into supporting his discipleship ministry within Israel.  Whatever He did with His money it would have been in a manner of submission to the direction of the Father through the Holy Spirit.  To clarify God the Father directed Christ through the Holy Spirit.  All three parts of the Godhead were involved with Christ’s earthly ministry.  Christ walked out a life of abiding as an example to His disciples.  They would watch Him abide and then, later, after Pentecost they would have understood what their ministry was to be like because they saw it first hand!

So what did that look like?  It looked like Christ praying, fellowshipping and relying on His relationship with God the Father.  It meant that instead of going around and doing miracles to make money multiply, miracles to keep them fed all of the time that He and the disciples lived a life of reliance on God.  The Believer today is still directed to do the same thing whether they make $20,000 a year or they make $2,000,000,000.00 a year. A life of abiding and reliance will lead to financial peace because the peace is not in the money, its in the resting in reliance.

Colossians 3:1-3 tells the Christian to set their mind on things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies.  The lifestyle of Christ was set on the heavenlies where His father was seated.  There is nothing that Christ did that wasn’t within the framework of abiding, and that included money.

It is noted that Judas was the money keeper.  Christ, while abiding, let Judas manage the money.  Christ’s knowledge of Judas’ role had no effect on His rest in God the Father’s direction to have Judas handle the money.  If you’ve ever listened to a televangelist talk about Christ’s money, many of them have said Christ had an amazing amount of money, but the scriptures surely don’t record that.  Instead the Lord and the disciples simply lived by faith.

The believer who is financially focused and has stewardship on their heart and mind needs to live by faith as well.  There is nothing in the believer’s life that is outside of God’s ultimate ownership and the believer must rely on the Lord for every single penny.   How did Jesus handle His money?  With rest in God’s provision.  The money was always God’s and the life lived was always God’s.  Christ’s relationship with God was established: He was God’s son.  However, He focused on fellowship as well to keep the intimacy that was so vital to His life.  Take a moment to reflect on your relationship with God, in life, in finances and in fellowship.  Make sure your conscience is clear, and if so, understand that God will make it known what His plans are for you and your finances as you rest in Him.

I think that I need to move to New York and attempt to get in on the farm subsidies that the people living there are already getting.  The article (here) I just read blew me away with the population density shown in the chart giving out farm subsidies to people around the Manhattan area.  Its money, its politics, its taboo

I would love to interview one of the people getting the large (quarter-million a year) subsidies from the government for this blog.  If you know one, please put me in touch with them!

Bob over at the ChristianPF just posted an interesting read about interacting with a guy pan-handling for money. Bob’s insight into the mindset that the pan-handler had really got me thinking: do I feel stuck somewhere based on my mindset? Do I have faith in what God has already done in my life through Christ? Is God done with me yet? Certainly not! My attitude is sometimes wonky because I’m not submitting myself to my relationship with God. My mindset is off at that point in time.

Bob’s generosity is incredibly humbling - I’ve driven past the same pan-handlers for several years now in the Denver metro area and I’ve not once had compassion towards them because I know that there are groups and organizations out there set up to make up for what the church should already be doing. This has got me thinking for sure.

Since I live in Colorado I found it highly amusing that this last Winter’s intense storms have led to a major impact on the economy. We had people in accidents which caused new car sales to go up, but auto insurance revenue went down. We had road repair jobs for people all Spring and Summer long because the snow and plows caused a lot of road damage.

And more recently we’ve had some other predictions: more babies. One way to keep your finances under control is to make sure that your ‘winter storm boredom busters’ are also not creating fall-time expenses. I’m not suggesting for a moment that babies are bad, because I think they’re absolutely precious, but I am suggesting that one way to handle financial matters is to keep your unplanned pregnancies to a minimum