Financialness, or not

I've read a lot of financial books.  They all say pretty much the same thing.  The ideas are all pretty much the same.  Each one has a bit they think is different.  But at least a bunch of them realize what they're saying is not unique. 

Short answer: buy things that make money while you sleep. 

That's pretty much it.

Big shocker.  But yeah, that's it.  The path to that answer is always different, but it's roughly the same regardless of what choice you make.  Many will suggest you start buying that thing while you are still in debt.  Others will tell you to get out of debt first.  Others will tell you to use debt.  But it's all the same: buy something that makes money while you sleep.

Continue buying things that make money while you sleep until you make enough money to where you don't need to work, and then you are rich. 

Could be businesses.  Could be stocks.  Could be bonds.  Could be houses. 

So, before you read your next financial book go look for something you can buy that will make you money while you sleep.   Because that's what the financial book is going to tell you anyways. 

The only difference is when and what method. 

Truthfully, I was thinking of a longer version of this article.  It seemed like a good place to go in to the differences between Robert Kiyosaki, Dave Ramsey, Mr Money Mustache, and Suze Ormann.  But it's pretty much the same thing over and over again.  A lot depends on where you are in your journey and your risk tolerance. 

From Kiyosaki, I learned that you should have multiple plans.  From Ramsey, I learned the psychology of getting out of debt.  Mr. Money Mustache provided an end game idea.  Suze Ormann didn't teach me all that much. 

Still not believing (in global warming)

I don't believe in global warming.   My argument is pretty simple.  I haven't heard anything that points out otherwise.   I haven't actively searched, either.

Simple argument is thus: quantifiable inputs to global warming follow an exponential growth curve, not a linear growth curve.  I think I'm getting my wording right here.  The point is best illustrated by a finance joke.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet walk into a bar.  The average net worth in the bar goes to $30 billion.

Not much of a joke, but it illustrates the Pareto principle pretty good.  Let me add another couple of lines.

In one corner, a man is losing his entire net worth gambling on a horse race.  By the end of the race, the man will have lost $500,000 dollars of his net worth and he will be homeless.  The average net worth in the room will be completely unaffected.

In another corner, a woman has won the lottery.  She just won $5 million dollars.  The average net worth in the room will be completely unaffected.

Now.  Let's go re-examine that story.  It well illustrates the power of exponential growth curves to destroy averages.  That doesn't mean those lives weren't affected in the gain and loss.  It just means the average is unaffected.

Now, lets apply the idea to pollution.  Of all the polluters in the world, 20% of the polluters produce 80% of the pollution.  It's the same concept as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  Let me give you an example.

A household is told to reduce their pollution by turning the AC up 5 degrees in summer.  That will "solve" global warming.  Compare then a TV studio and audience.  That building uses energy at a greater rate.  Given common electricity usage rates, that TV studio probably has monthly electrical bill of $3,000.   The house has a monthly electrical bill of $100.   I'm guessing on both of those.  So one studio is the equivalent of 30 houses.

The other part of the equation is the house has a higher use rate than that TV studio.  The TV studio probably runs about 10 hours a day at high capacity.  Lets say 70% occupation.  The rest of the day, it runs closer to 10% occupation.  It is either empty, or has very few people.  The house is a study in contrasts.  It runs at 0% occupation for 8 hours, and 60% occupation for the other 16 hours of the day.

Which building is better capable of reducing electrical usage?  The TV studio.  The changes in that single building would easily dwarf the changes to 30 houses.

Now, the second part of this is in the implementation allowance.  Or should I call it the "put your money where your mouth is" tax?  The people most likely to declare the need for changes regarding global warming are, by a high percentage, unwilling to make meaningful prolonged change.  Despite everything, that person wants to continue their lifestyle while you cramp yours.

Let's look at this another way.  How many large metropolitan areas have city ordinances against windmills and solar panels?   Why?  Because solar panels are reflective and remove the picture postcard view of the city.  It narrows down to the "not in my back yard" problem.  So people want you to change, but won't change themselves.  If you are that adamant about something, you'd do it first. 

I think I've covered that section pretty well.  Next...

The next part is one that drives me up the wall.  It really does.  It's the lack of a failure state in global warming. The lack of a failure state is invalid in most events.  There is a failure state built into all weather forecasting models.  That's why you get a percentage of a chance of rain.  That's why forecasts longer than five days are negatively correlated.

In global warming, there is no failure state.  If the weather gets colder, it's global warming.  If the weather gets hotter, it's global warming.  If the weather stays the same, it's global warming.

There is no condition where the global warming crowd is ever wrong.  Except when they are.

Anyone remember acid rain?

I remember acid rain.  It was the rain the was going to fall and burn our faces off.  I was a kid, and had assumptions about what acid did.  Mostly the horrible, horrible kinds of acid that destroyed things badly.  You can still see such idea propagated to movies.  And when you hear it, it causes you to stop.

Because there never was any acid rain.

But the people who declared there was going to be acid rain suddenly changed their position when it didn't happen.  Amazing how that happens. And it was like they never preached to the choir about acid rain.  It just quickly disappeared.  And then suddenly global warming is here.  And then global cooling.  And then global weirding.

Yeah.  There is no failure state.  There is no point where these scientists sit back and declare "yup, I'm wrong".   Everything has a failure state.  Everything.

The third part of all of this is the lobbyists.  Yes, the lobbyists come into play.  But not the science ones.  No, these are the lobbyists from the power company.   Why would the power company have lobbyists?  Simple: remember that 80/20 rule discussed earlier?  Who's the 20% doing 80% of the damage?  The power company.   Who's the 20% that is likely to suffer the most from individuals generating their own power?  The power company. The power company builds its business model off of monopoly.  It's not designed to compete.   It's designed for winner take all, and loser becomes illegal. 

There was a point when that was required.  But I think we're beyond that point.  There will probably still be the need for a public utility company.  But that company needs to have to compete with private individuals in order to become more efficient.  There is no need for the power company to innovate due to the nature of their monopoly.  And they will protect that monopoly to the best of their ability for as long as they can. 

And the thought of individuals living off the public grid is something that does not appeal to them. 

So what would it take to generate an off the grid solution?  You'd need some sort of solution or a partial solution.  And an electrician.  The solution would probably be a one box solution.  And you need an electrician to safely wire the thing into your house.  There's a giant boom for the electricians and a major loss for the electric company. 

I wonder what the lifetime loss is of one person leaving the grid?  What about 1% of the population?  I'm guessing its astronomically huge. 

Exoneration

Let's talk about exoneration for a minute.  Exoneration is the idea that I can do something for a period, and then quit doing it forever.  The concept is usually introduced when talking about money or fitness, but it's generally used all throughout life.

The mindset is generally this: if I can make it to X, then I won't have to do this sacrifice ever again.

The X factor is always different, based on the mental picture that has developed.  But it's all based on the concept of exoneration.  And the hard part is there is no point of exoneration.  Almost never.

Yet people reach endlessly for the exoneration point.  I'm not saying you shouldn't reach.  What I'm saying is you can't ever quit.  Because if you quit, you go back to being what you were before you started.  Dieting is generally a big exoneration subject.  The key to success with diet and exercise is a long term plan.

You are not going to fix whatever problem you have with your weight or health in three weeks.  It's just not going to happen.  You can take almost anyone and put them on an exercise plan for three weeks, and they'll lose weight.  Why?  Because they weren't putting in any effort before.  But long term, the weight loss will stop or slow down.  Then the person will quit, and regain everything they lost.

Several months later, the same person will find a new "quick fix" and proceed to quick fix and lose 20 pounds.  Then the new will wear off, and then 20 pounds will recover.  My wife found a book that was talking about clients losing over 100 pounds.  Except it was the same 20 pounds over and over again.

Most multilevel marketing plans are sold as exoneration plans.  I'm not saying they are not worth the income if you can get them to succeed.  But they are sold as quick fixes in a world that needs long term solutions.

Quit trying for exoneration.  It doesn't work.  There is never a point at which you get to quit doing what you've been doing.

Unless you don't like what you are doing.  You do like what you are doing, right?

Logical fallacies

I keep seeing posts wander through the Internet about a husband that wants to pay his wife to stay home with their child.  In the end, he’s mad because he can’t pay her his perceived salary of close to $100,000 per year and still pay the bills.  

Let me say this up front: my wife is a stay at home mom of three kids, not one.  She has a very hard job in taking care of the household.

The value my wife adds to my life is incapable of being counted.  If I lost my wife, my life would be devastated from the loss of her.  Not from the loss of what she does.  I love her to death.

But it’s not a $100,000 a year job on the open market. 

It’s a horrible argument that is used to trump up the job of stay at home moms.  It’s an argument made by people who don’t know business.  It’s an argument made by people who want money for breathing.  If any one of these people really forked out the kind of money they talk about, they would quickly change their standards. 

But let’s get to the real problem with the argument.  The original writer of the argument assumes that everything a stay at home mom does should get charged at a different rate.  That’s just crazy.  Let’s make an adequate comparison.  I have an office.  I keep it relatively clean most of the time.  I don’t get paid a dime to clean my office.  I clean it because I’m not a slob, and because I’m an adult.  I clean it because it’s part of presenting a professional appearance.  But I don’t get paid a separate rate to clean my office.  I don’t work for a union that says I can only do one single job.  I do it all because that is what I was hired to do.  I have to do my job, plus all sorts of other little things that seemingly have nothing to do with my job.  Clerical?  Tied in with the package.  Negotiation?  With the package.  Data entry?  Part of the job.

The major invalid assumption of the argument is that each service is being purchased ala carte from an outside vendor.  That can be done, but hiring ala carte is about hiring a professional.  And hiring a professional means you get someone who works faster than the average person at their job. 

Let’s compare laundry.  If I was to hire ala carte for laundry, then I would bag my laundry up, and leave for work a few minutes early.   I would stop by a laundromat and drop off my laundry, and pay by the pound to get someone else to clean my laundry.   I would come back on my way home to find my laundry complete and ready for pickup.  Total amount of my time: 20 minutes.  And laundry goes for about $1 a pound.  Given an adequate clothes supply, laundry could be dropped off once or twice a week without real problems. 

Following that same line of reasoning, you could easily negotiate salary positions to handle every single household task.  And once the child becomes school age, then the amount of time hired to do those tasks drops dramatically due to the child being in school.  The average day would go from 10 hours to 5.  Half the time involved?  Half the pay involved.  Unless the nanny is hired at salary.  And that’s what the intelligent nanny is going to do to even out their paycheck.

Now, I'm excluding places where living expenses are out of control  Those places are just flat crazy.  And $100,000 in those local dollars is really not the same amount in comparison to other locations.  

Realistically, I've had to think about what would happen if my wife died.  And in that case, what would I do?   Really, I could replace my wife with a 15 year term life insurance policy for about $500,000.   In comparison, I need about $800,000 on me.  That's from the purely financial perspective.  

Due to getting out of debt, I don't have $800,000 on me.  I have $400,000.   So should I die, my wife is good for 5-6 years.  Should my die, I'm screwed as I don't have anything on her.  Kids each have a $10,000 burial stipend tied to my life insurance policy.  And term life is cheap.  I pay about $35 per month.  

In a parking lot

Still contemplating the this/that complex that usually encompasses most people. That choice provides a false duality that bleeds over into the rest of life.  All choices become a/b choices when often a and b aren't good choices in the first place.  That simplicity removes the possibility that all choices can have more than one answer.  Yet it's that specific trait that is desired by business.  Perhaps it's an educational failing.  I remember having an argument with an English teacher in 7th or 8th grade about being dropped off at school.  High school moved band to first period, and the school was small enough to have 7th/8th graders in high school band.  My parents gave my brother the option of taking me to school in the morning or not. He was in high shool.  The teacher wouldn't even entertain the possibility that my brother had been given a choice.  She was a firm believer in a/b choices.   

Such separations become obvious in politics.  It gets to the point where neither side will talk to the other.  They both blame each other, but both sides are still having an a/b conversation.   

I'm not mad at current society.  Our failings are simply amplifications of being taught the wrong thing.  We failed the OODA loop, and we're solving problems that simply don't exist anymore.  

The biggest problem with the A/B option is best described by Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  It says that any logical model of reality is incomplete (and very likely inconsistent) and must be continuously refined and adapted in the face of new observations.  A and B are never complete theorems, and neither side even decently describes humanity.  They never do.  But it ends up being a squirmy little box, so people shove and shove trying to get their idea into the box.  All the while, parts flow out in all directions.  

Observation is the key to understanding.  Those items that just don't seem to fit in the box don't fit in the box.  They need to be moved into a new home, where they fit within what they do.  And once you find the right home, that bit won't try to escape the box.  The only problem is your A/B solution suddenly becomes an A through Z solution, and it's hard to describe the entire thing.  

In order to describe life, the theory has to be necessarily complex to fit everything.  Simplicity just doesn't work when you combine free will.  That's the crux of it all.  That's the point that breaks apart every good thought and plan.

I'll stop now, before this falls off into more of a chasm than it already is.

Side note:  this one is called "in a parking lot" because it was partially written in a Wal-Mart parking lot while my wife ran into the store.

disorganized mess

This is going to be a disorganized mess, but I’m okay with that.  It’s hard when you observe situations and know there is connecting tissue there, but you don’t know what that connecting tissue is.  I think I’ve been reading too much about too many different things.  All of it combined makes for a giant mess of a thought process.  Here are several of the incomplete thoughts running through my head in recent days.

The income gap: how do some people find it so easy to make money while others struggle with McJobs?  It probably started with something I read about conversations overheard in the Goldman Sachs elevator.  Though I can’t attribute anything, nor do I believe it actually happened, one conversation went like such:

Some girl asked me what I would do with $10 million dollars.  I told her I’d wonder where the rest of my money went.

I think I read that statement as something to aspire to.  I guess money is so demonized that people don’t understand why someone would want “that much money”.  My thought is simple: I want the money for the opportunity it provides.  My lack of money creates insecurity and unneeded stress.  I spend so much money a money servicing debt and making others rich that there is nothing left to make me rich.  But that’s only the case for another 2-3 years.  The lack of finances also prevents pursing opportunities and learning things I desire to learn.  Without extra money, I don’t have the $100-200 to risk on something to determine whether an idea is feasible.  I don’t have what equates to relatively minor sums of cash to try initial experiments.  Because with those initial experiments, I expect to lose my initial capital.  And I don’t have the spare capital to lose.

Going back to my original thought: how do some people seem to be able to make large incomes easily while others don’t seem to be able to hold 2 cents to their name.  It makes me think there is something there worth studying and understanding.

2^nd: Next time you are driving, think about how much time and effort you have spent paying for your car.  Think of the undue stress of buying that car.  Once you have made it through the buying process, it’s off to the bill payment process.  And then finally, the bill payment process is over and the vehicle is yours after years of blood, sweat, and tears. 

Now drive by a wrecker yard and see what your investment in time in stress is worth a few years down the road.  Or in the next 15 minutes.

There are more, but those are the beginning thoughts.  That, or maybe I should quit reading John Boyd.

Return to Quicken

I’ve been contemplating buying Quicken 2014 Deluxe.  My last version was Quicken 2011 Deluxe.  Intuit decided they needed a new paycheck to do the exact same thing they did previously, so I can no longer download my bank information and have it automatically entered.  All manual entry if I want to do that type of thing.  I really don’t.  I manage my account well, so I know how much I have and I review it several times a week.  Note the “managed” part of the account. 

So I guess I wonder if I should repurchase it.  I’ve been out of service with Quicken since the end of April, though I slowly quit using it prior to that because the darn thing wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do.  It didn’t seem to understand the term “monthly budget”.   Telling me I’m over budget because I’ve got rent scheduled for the next year and I don’t have the money to pay Decembers rent in February is kind of stupid to me.  But that is what Quicken does.  Maybe it thinks I’m trying to prepare for apocalypse. 

So stupid.  Have they fixed any of this?  I doubt it.  But some part of me thinks I should go get it just to see if it anything is better.  I do wonder if Quicken is the best because everything else sets the bar so low.  But I digress.  Could be I’m just complaining because I feel like it.  Seems like a good thing to do.

I think the other, and real, problem is a mental problem.  When my gas account gets up high, I think of things to go off and blow it on that don’t have anything to do with vehicle maintenance.  I need to go replace my front tires and all my shocks.  But that wouldn’t be “fun” or exciting.  Buying tires is kind of like having a root canal.  I haven’t had a root canal, but I have bought tires.  It was somewhere in the “supremely boring” category.  And did I mention expensive?  Yeah, that too. 

Going back to the budget I wonder if there is really anything useful for me in Quicken that I don’t already do.  Other than categorizing things and figuring out where money goes, I don’t know.  I do yearly budgets with an Excel spreadsheet and that works fine.  Seems to work a lot better than the over complexity of Quicken.  See, Quicken operates for casual budgeters.  I’m an “every dollar on paper on purpose” budgeter.  There is no “left over” money at the end of the month.  Because I spent every single bit of it before I ever got it.

Now, sometimes that money is spent in the “blow” category.  Sometimes it’s spent on rent.  But it’s all got a name and a purpose.  I know when the bills come due and I know the generally amounts.  I know electricity and gas swap being horrible based on the season.  I know when I’m going to put money into savings and when I’m going to be short.  I always know.  Because my life is balanced off a budget of me not working a single minute of overtime.  And I always work overtime.  There is always a degree of flexibility there that allow me to do whatever I need to do.   And if I truly am short, then I’ve got $1,000 in an emergency fund to make the problem go away.  Simple.

I guess the end of this is I don’t want Quicken.  I just thought I did.  There is nothing it can provide me that I don’t already do or have.  And that $55 (or $65 or $48, depending on where you look) can easily be spent paying off debit or buying tires.  

a cascade of random

While looking to set up links for yesterdays’ post, I found the Amazon post for Seven Days.  I have to admit, it doesn’t look as bad as I’d thought.  I’m not going to say it’s the most beautiful thing in the world, but it definitely worked for what it is.  I guess the only question is whether it works to show off the story or to sell more.   We’ll see.

 Been a crazy last part of the week.  Worked all night Wednesday night, got three hours of sleep, and went back to work Thursday. 

Now it’s Saturday, and I’m eating lunch and listening to the Dave Ramsey channel.  Listening to some of the people, it makes me realize why raising the minimum wage will not do anything.   Why?  Because you get people on the show making $130,000 a year who are flat broke and people making $40,000 a year who are debt free and have their retirement care of.  The point is simple: if you are broke and in debt at $8 an hour, you will be broke and in debt at $800 dollars an hour.  It has absolutely nothing to do with income.  It has everything to do with behavior. 

There’s a false premise that people assume that comes with a change in income.  They assume that when the income changes, behavior will change.  This is false.  Adding more money to the equation just makes the behaviors larger and stupider.  Instead of a credit card, they get a bass boat or a vacation home.  Increasing income does not automatically change behavior.

While I’m  thinking about it, I’ve gone back to Java development for the purpose of making Android apps.  I’ve always said that one shouldn’t start until you have something to execute on.  Just trying to learn with no end result in mind is very difficult.  It’s different if you have a goal and a purpose.  Now, I have a goal and a purpose in mind.  I have an app that I want to make, and I think it’s just different enough to create a market.  It’s really simple and the idea is either stupid or brilliant.  Like I said, it’s just different enough to be unique, but not so unique as to be hard to sell.

Debt, debt, debt

As a mental exercise, I know the best use of any money right now is to pay off debt.  But it’s hard to remember that.  There is always a part of the brain that tells you to go invest or play around with this or that.  Your brain forgets the risk, and often forgets the plan you planned out.  Sure, the student loan I’m paying on has only 3% interest, but that’s not the point.  The point is that student loan is currently the lowest debt I have, and is near the end of repayment.  Only $300 to go until I can free myself from that thing. 

But my brain is saying “Go buy mutual funds.  You can probably get 10% on those”.  And sometimes, I also listen.  The math tells me I’m paying out 3% and getting 10%, so I’m gaining 7%.  I’m beating the system.  But then I remember there is an unwritten amount of risk in getting that 10%.  And very easily, my 10% could go to 2%.  It’s all based on the stock market, right?  So that risk is inherent. 

And I also know that no matter what, that 3% will run through to perpetuity.  Or at least until I’ve paid it off.  And once I’ve paid it off, then the entire problem goes away.  That becomes another $12 a month that I don’t have to pay on.  It becomes money that I can do things with, and the debt burden is lessened.

But I don’t want the burden to be lessened.  I want to be free from it.  And the only way to be free from the burden of debt is to pay it off as rapidly as possible.

I guess life covers just a bit of chaos theory.  Chaos theory, in general, states that the inputs of A and B aren’t necessarily additive.  Meaning, it’s not always A+B.  It might be A*B.  Or A^B power.  So the reliability of the measurement can cause drastically different changes.  Sometimes, we hope we could predict the outcome of our actions and our lives, but for the most part we just have to operate with faith and grace and move in the direction we want to go, with the assumption that we will eventually get where we want to go.  You may have to go sideways for a bit, but eventually you get there.   It’s all about behavior and action.  

And this blog ended up somewhere without really going anywhere.  And is brought to you by the word “burden”, which I have successfully misspelled four times before my spell check fixed the problem.

The definition of wealthy

So… now you are motivated to do something with your life.  What now?  There are several areas in life that everyone needs to work on.  Those are, in no specific order…

1)      Financial

2)      Health

3)      Spiritual

4)      Family

5)      Personal

Now, let’s look at the financial part.  I start with that one, because all of these have to be done every single day.  This is not something you can work on step by step, process by process.  It has to be done all at the same time.

Anyways, in order to be “wealthy”, one must first define “wealth”.  The dictionary says wealth is “an abundance of valuable possessions or money.”  Which is a really worthless definition.  Buckminster Fuller provided a better definition.  He said wealth is a measure of how long you could live if you quit working tomorrow.  A person is “wealthy” when the income produced comes from efforts that are not their job.  That’s a big can of worms…  so let’s make this simple. 

1^st example.

Let’s say you have $1,000 in expenses every month.  Your investments and other income aside from your job equates to $100 a month.  Your wealth could now be defined as 1/10^th of a month. 

2^nd example

If you have $2000 in savings, $1,000 per month in expenses, and $100 per month in  income.  Then your wealth is now…  

First month…  $1000 expenses, minus $100 in income.  Leaves $900, so take that out of savings.   So you now have $1,100 in savings. 

Second month.  $1000 in expenses minus $100 in income.  Leaves $900.  Take that amount out of savings.  Leaves $200 in savings. 

Third month.  $1000 in expenses minus $100 in income.  Leaves $900.  Minus $200 from savings.   Leaves you with a $700 deficit.  Your wealth has lasted you 2 3/10ths of a month. 

3^rd example.   You have $2,000 in expenses per month.   Your income from investments and other (non-work) methods is $2,100. 

So long as this person continues to live within their means, then this person would be considered wealthy, because that person can live effectively forever without ever working again. 

So, that’s my definition of being wealthy.   Now that we have that part considered, let’s look at what we can do.   Your best bet is to follow the Dave Ramsey plan.

1)      $1,000 cash in the bank.

2)      Get rid of all debt except your house.

3)      3-6 months expenses in the bank.

4)      Save for retirement

5)      Save for kids college.

6)      Pay off the house early

7)      Build wealth, and give a bunch of it away.

IN THAT ORDER.

Why do you want to do this?  Remember our 2^nd example.  The person with savings lasted much longer without a job than the person without savings.  The next part, elimination of debt, is to decrease our expenses so we can become wealthy faster.   It’s a lot easier to get $1,000 per month in income you don’t work for than it is to get $5,000 a month.   In my case, I only need about $1,500 a month to reach the definition of wealthy.  At that point, I could quit my job and survive indefinitely without ever getting another job.  

All making sense?  I hope so.  This is the easy part.

Luck (or cheating)

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…   Or something of that nature. 

Success is not about luck.  It has nothing to do with luck.  What some consider luck, others consider cheating.  But then, they are mad when they lose because they believe the game is stacked against them.  In reality, it is.  But that doesn’t mean either side is cheating.

See, the rules are laid out by economic class.  The lower and middle class generally have an influence on each other.  The upper class generally ignores everything the lower and middle class does financially.  Because lower and middle class people are there because of their choices.  It’s all in how the deck is stacked.

I once read a blistering takedown of an investor.  A great investment came up, and the young investor said they didn’t have the money to invest.  When asked why the young investor responded that all their money was tied up in stocks and they were fully invested.  The older investor said the younger man was a fool and for experienced investors, fully invested left a good 15-20 thousand in cash free just for opportunities that may be unexpected.

See, rich people don’t think about pulling out credit cards for emergency funds.  They have actual cash to solve problems.  Me?  I just spent $850 getting my car repaired.  But I had $825 in cash sitting around waiting for something like that to happen.  The money was in a savings account, but to me it was an emergency fund.  I didn’t have money in the account to “save for a rainy day”.  I had it there for emergencies.  And I qualify “can’t get to work” as an emergency.  Stacked the deck?  You bet I did.

Next payday is going to be less than normal.  But this paycheck had 9 hours of overtime.  So what do I do?  Put $150 in savings and pay $70 on the car payment that I originally planned to pay in full with next weeks’ check.  I budgeted my entire week off what I was going to make before the overtime.  And then I spent that overtime money rigging the game in my favor.  So my emergency fund now has more money back in it, one day after I cleared it out getting the car fixed. 

You are darn right I’m stacking the deck in my favor.  Because I know next week is going to suck for both my gas reimbursement check and my regular check.  But it will barely affect me because I planned ahead.  You could say I cheated.  I’m okay with that. 

Because chance and whim are for gamblers and idiots.  This is your life, your legacy, and your success.  Quit leaving it to chance or whim. 

And I think I’ll leave you with this…  Hebrews 4:16

¹⁶ Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

And my mercy and grace, the Bible means healing, salvation, finances, and everything else we are redeemed from in the Curse of the Law.