This is dedicated to Grant. I don’t know him or her, the mysterious person has chosen to remain anonymous. But regardless of their identity, they’ve expressed interest in how to budget, save money, and live a lifestyle that allows you to avoid using payday loans.
While I don’t know much about money stuff, I thought at the very least I could share different things that have allowed Jess and I to live virtually debt free, simple, and happy lives (up until today at least!)

• Spend less than you make. I’m not being sarcastic at all. In our day and age it’s no longer an assumption that you shouldn’t spend money you don’t have. If this is something that you cannot seem to avoid then you should cut up all your credit cards and force yourself to only spend money that you have.
• If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills get another job or go through each and every dollar that you spend and figure out how you can spend less. Try selling stuff on craigslist or ebay. Babysit someones child or something. Anything.
• Get rid of one of your cars. Most american families have multiple cars. This means more money in gas, more money in car insurance, and more car payments.
• Ride your bike. Jess and I are in the process of getting our bikes fitted for commute riding this summer. We decided that if we could use our bikes most of the time we could save upwards of $200 in gas!
• Get rid of cable. It’s expensive and if you have the Internet you can stream anything you would want to watch anyway.
• Budget. There is absolutely nothing to replace this. Little else is as important to saving money as to creating a working budget and then actually following it. This was the hardest thing for Jess and I to do but has had the largest rewards. The challenge is to dictate how you use your money in life rather than allowing your money to dictate your life (I’m sure Dave Ramsey or someone else has some pithy or witty way of saying that…but I don’t know much)
• Give your money away. I don’t mean like random doling out of cash, but be purposeful in setting aside “first fruits” to give away to worthy causes. I can tell you honestly that Jess and I have found that the more we give the better we’re able to pay our bills in the long run. It’s not intuitive to say the least, but for us it’s been true (as a Christ follower it makes perfect sense since God made promises that if we give to him first he would provide the rest)
• Switch to Geico. They can save you %15 on car insurance
• Make a shopping list before you go grocery shopping.
• Invest in quality when the opportunity presents itself. Don’t buy a $20 pair of shoes that will hurt your back and wear out in two months when you can look and find an $80 pair on sale for $40. The better quality pair will last longer and make your body feel better. That’s just an example. Often buying something of a little higher quality will save you time in the end.
• Consume less. Duh. Try joining The Compact and not buying anything new for a year. You’ll find that you don’t need as much crap as you thought. Do you really need 20 purses? How many pairs of shoes can you wear in a months time? Can you just get the book at the library instead of buying it (this is a tough one for me. It hurts bad.) If you consume less you’ll save lots and lots and lots and lots of money.
• When possible purchase things that are more sustainable. It may be more expensive at first but in the long run it will save you money. Energy efficient light bulbs will cut your electricity bill down. A push reel lawn mower will save you money on gas, upkeep, and on the initial purchase. Gardening has huge benefits financially. Using a clothes line instead of your dryer. Not over drying things. Washing clothes in cold water rather than hot. Shorter showers. Not only does all this save you money but it also creates a healthier world to live in.
• How much money do you spend on getting your hair cut? How about on hair products? Well maybe you should get dreads? In our family alone we save at least $30 a month.
• If you want local, orgainc, and quality produce you should check into a local CSA (community supported agriculture). It is cheap, it supports a local farmer, and it challenges you on how to cook new and intruiging foods (leeks have rocked my world the last two weeks. They’re delish).
• Invite someone over for dinner. It’s so hard to get into the habbit of making dinner instead of eating out. So if you invite someone over you’ll be forced to make food instead of eating Wendy’s. Your body will be happy with you and you’ll be saving money on eating out.
• Ride the bus. This would obviously depend on your comute and lifestyle. But potentially bus riding saves you a ton of money and also gives you time to read.
• Get a vespa.
• Steal. If you become proficient in stealing money or easy to sell items, you’ll find that money will soon not be a problem.

I don’t know much about 401k’s or roth iras or any of that stuff. I don’t know much about anything, so if you’ve got some good tips we’d love to hear them. Grant, I hope this offers some decent suggestions for you. I hope you can avoid those payday loans! ‘Cause they’re sucking up your cash flow!
So do you readers have any good tips to add to this?

I could see us singing these lyrics at Renovatus in worship. What do you think?

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

Come let me love you,
let me give my life to you
let me drown in your laughter,
let me die in your arms
let me lay down beside you,
let me always be with you
come let me love you,
come fill me again.

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

What if I started all my words with a P instead of its normal letter. That would be funny. So that cookie when spoken became pookie. That would be pretty weird.
I wonder what the funniest word would be. Pookie?

Today was our biggest test. You see, we’ve joined in The Compact. Google it and you’ll find plenty to read about it. Simply put we have agreed to not purchase anything new for the rest of the year aside from medicine, underwear, food, and maybe something else (I don’t really remember). Instead you’re supposed to buy or barter for used or recycled things. It was kind of funny actually, we were doing some research about it and then just decided to do it. It wasn’t until the next day when we went to buy something that we realized what we had gotten ourselves into. For some reason we didn’t realize the severity of the pledge we had made. We don’t buy much stuff anyway we thought…wrong…
One week into it and there we found ourselves at the grand opening of the largest and coolest Fred Meyer’s known to man. Facing insurmountable odds we were able to traverse the store without breaking our promise. I was proud of my wife, proud of myself, proud of our resolve.
I’ll keep you up to date as to how this goes. I’m very excited about how God is going to use this to shape us this year, to separate us from the consumerism that has controlled us and our country, and to save us a pile of money that we don’t really have.
On a separate note, after going to the store we last minute went and checked out SCRAP a recycled art store in Portland. It was pretty amazing. But while we were there Jones was mesmerized by a box of old highlighters, pens, and markers. He stumbled across a permanent marker that he is NOT allowed to play with at home. But at the store I thought I’d let him give it a try. Here is how the following conversation went:
ME: Jonesy you know you’re not supposed to play with permanent markers. But if you make good choices I’ll let you play with it right now. What do you think?
Jones: I’ll be careful.
ME: Ok, I’m going to trust you.
JONES: Don’t trust me! Do not trust me! I’m a fragile boy.
ME: What? No, trust means that I believe that you will make good choices, I trust you. I believe you when you say you’re going to make a good choice.
JONES: (as he grabs my face and then points at me) Daddy, do not trust me. Do not ever ever trust me. I’m a fragile little boy. I’m glass.
ME: You’re what (trying not to laugh)?
JONES: I’m glass, I’m a fragile boy. Do not ever trust me ok?
ME: I don’t think you understand…but ok.

Take this blog for what it is. Don’t read too much into it and try not to decide too much about my character based on this blog.
Yesterday I watched the American Idol Gives Back fund raising show. Pretty impressive. Lots of money was raised and will go to very important and worthy causes. Almost equally important is the awareness that it brings to our American culture. Last night people all around America were told by people that they revere as gods (aka, celebrities) that it is important to care about people in extreme poverty, people who are dying of AIDS and malaria, and people who are suffering due to Hurricane Katrina among other needs.
But here’s my beef. It takes a lot of gall for some of those celebrities to get up there to challenge average middle class America to give their money to these causes. How can those people get up there and challenge us to raise millions of dollars when our average annual salary is around 40,000 while they’re making that in one month. Kobe Bryant, who implored us to give, makes over 200,000 per game (that’s not counting his endorsements), how much did Brad Pitt make last year? What, upwards of thirty plus million? If Brad chose to wear $75.00 dollar jeans instead of $300.00 ones that would be a good start. It’s insulting. And, don’t get me wrong, I love worship music, I even love the song Shout to the Lord, but talk about odd! Apperently some exectuive did a study and found that this would be an appropriate way to tug on some heart strings as one final push to get money donated. It just felt out of place, like if a worship song was sung at the half time of the super bowl. I mean, for me, it’s not out of place, in that I think that taking care of those in need is what Jesus wants us to do and all that jazz. But when it comes on American Idol it just doesn’t feel the same.

Ok, I’m glad I got that said. Again, I want to make clear that I’m cool with money being donated no matter who’s asking for it when it goes to serve people who are starving and dying around the world. I honestly don’t care if it takes a bunch of self righteous or smug millionares to motivate us as long as people are helped. And I’m sure that there are many famous people who do great things (if you really want to know somethign about rich sacrificial giving look no further than two of the NBA’s tallest men in Dikembe Mutumbo and Manute Bol). And I’m cool with the whole word singing and hearing music that gives glory and honor to the God I love…But…I just felt like ranting…so there you go…