Gather Little by Little

I changed jobs over a year and a half ago and I still have not developed a frugal lunch routine. There are certain characteristics of my job that force me to eat out more than I like. At my last job, I always bagged my lunch or ran home for lunch every day. My former workplace was more structured and the people that I worked with had a high level of frugality. Much of that rubbed off on me. Since our move, I have not yet developed the discipline to make sure that I pack a lunch everyday.

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I believe that God orders all events and this belief is a comfort, not a threat. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose”.

So how does this affect my attitude toward money? There are hundreds of ways – we talk about the influence of faith on money all the time. But once in a while, we get a little comfortable and need a reminder that to trust in a high salary, a beefy 401K, or even in debt freedom for security is foolish. Those things are great, they are smart, but our ultimate trust must be in the One “who owns the cattle on thousand hills”.

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Many of you are well aware of my travails regarding the home that we own in another state. If you missed those posts, you can read them here and here. Many of GLBL readers have been very helpful with your suggestions and if you happen to be struggling with decisions regarding your house, I encourage you to read through the comment sections on the aforementioned posts. They are a great resource.

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I often read The Wallet at the Wall Street Journal. A recent article asked the question, What was your biggest financial blunder? I started to think through that question and I could not come up with the answer right away. But I thought through several possibilities:

Purchasing our house

My housing struggles are well-documented on this blog, but I don’t think that was our biggest financial blunder. We purchased the house for a competitive price, we spent some money fixing it up and if we still lived in it, I don’t think we would be having any problems keeping up with the mortgage. A bigger financial blunder might have been when we moved three states away . . .

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Last week, I posted about our housing situation and a large number of you took the time to respond with your thoughts and advice. I enjoyed reading through the thread and many of your comments challenged my thinking.

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Adam and Dave were the best of friends. They met sometime during middle school. They lived in the same neighborhood, road the same bus, and had the same interests. Both came from well off middle class families.   Their fathers even worked for the same company.

When they became of working age, they both obtained jobs and that is where one key difference emerged between the two of them. See, Adam was a spender and Dave was a saver. Turns out this small difference became a huge difference as they grew older.

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The following is a guest from Shawna who writes at Two Working Parents. I’ve been reading Shawna’s site for a few months now and enjoy reading her blog and invited her to write a guest post for me. She graciously accepted. If you enjoy the article, make sure you head over and subscribe to Two Working Parents.

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Last week we had a pretty major wind storm here in the NC mountains. Wind storms aren’t unusual, but this one was much stronger than usual. We awoke the next morning to find some of our outdoor furniture blown around, but everything else appeared fine. My two older boys and I climbed into the SUV to head to the bus stop. At the bottom of our street we found our metal street sign laying in the road. We then proceeded on down the mountain. As we came around a turn, we found a large tree laying across the road, no way to get around.

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This is not a picture of the accident. This one is actually far better than the one I witnessed.

Yesterday I had to drive to Charlotte, NC to run a few errands and pickup a couple of Christmas presents for our kids that we had stashed at my in-laws place.

About 10 minutes from home, I was heading east bound on I-40. In front of me riding in the left lane, a car and in front of the car a Mercury Mountaineer  (SUV) pulling a medium sized camper (a 24 foot or so travel trailer). A dump truck was in the right lane just ahead of the SUV. As the SUV pulling the camper passed the dump truck, he began to sway.

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My wife and I just finished signing the contingency contract waiver on the new house we’re trying to buy. Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t updated you on the latest news.

On Sunday afternoon we received the call we had hoped we wouldn’t receive. The sellers of the house we a trying to buy in the mountains received another offer and accepted it. They now had a back-up contract and invoked the 72 hour kick-out clause in our contract. The seller’s seem like great folks and conveyed that they felt bad and really wanted us to have the house, but needed to sell it. I could understand that and appreciated their thoughts.

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