When Money is Tight it’s All About “We”

This Christmas, the Miller family will have less financial-driven stress than we’ve had in recent memory. That’s right less financial stress. That’s because we had our own personal recession four years ago. We’ve (I’ve) learned a lot and know what it takes to get by on less. But first a little background…

Four years ago I lost my job as a pastor and my income fell to 40% of what I had been making. It had been way too long since I had left my Fortune 100 job. Skill sets for the new marketplace had changed, so I worked as many as three jobs at a time to  keep income coming in.

There were plenty of times when we had to go to Kroger to exchange coins to get a few dollars for gas because there was less than $10 in the checking account…with three days left until payday. This gave us a whole new insight to disposable income. A big part of the problem is that we had incurred an unhealthy amount of unsecured debt. The personal lending bubble burst for us before we even knew who Bernie Madoff was or thought the U.S. government would have to bail out General Motors.

I normally hate lists, but I’m communicating information here. It’s your job to do the transformation. So here goes. Here’s some lessons we learned that may help you.

- We. Not me. Not her. Not them. We. Ken and Michelle. A unit. A team. A couple.

We.          Us.         We.       One.

- We learned to communicate more efficiently. We learned to fight fair. You’re going to fight as a couple. For those with self-righteous leanings, I’m sure that you guys dialogue vigorously or something retarded like that. We fought about money. But we learned to fight fairly. OK, we got better at it. We’re still honing our skills at communicating information rather than emotion. Why? When money is tight, you wanna fight. To fight fairly, you can read this post for better technique.

- We learned to communicate often. We talked constantly about our situation. If you don’t have much money, you better know who’s spending what, when they’re going to spend it, and when more money is coming in. Since communicating often about money is hard for us humans to do, this one will take the most effort. It’s just plain uncomfortable to talk about money when there’s seems to be no money to talk about.

- We learned humility. We had stellar credit. Had. It’s rebounded dramatically in the last 18 months, but it tanked because some of our debtors were more important than others. We learned our self-worth wasn’t tied up in our FICO score.

- We learned to tweak our personal financial systems. We averted financial “disaster” because we had a good personal financial system in place. We had and still have a budget, but we went from a budget that was updated every couple of months to a budget that was updated every few days. We issued purchase orders. Yep, verbal purchase orders for anything over a predetermined amount. We spent our money together. We also used more cash and less debit card. Dave Ramsey is no fool.

- We learned that kind and generous people actually exist in the local church. It’s not exactly a financial lesson but it may be even more important. Pain and suffering is best experienced in a community of faith.

Anybody want to weigh in and let everyone else know what you do to get by when money is tight?

Looking for contentment

If we’re searching for something we can find justification or even validation for it most anywhere.  I did that searching for contentment this week.  It’s always been one of those things that’s been elusive.  I wasn’t raised with much materially, so I’ve always thought I was trying to compensate somehow. I still don’t have much.  Sometimes I secretly wish a close friend or relative would win a PowerBall or MegaMillion and throw me a bone or two.  After all, it’s illegal for a Bapticostal to gamble, right?

So I’m preparing a talk for this weekend and the topic I was given was “the family as the primary disciple-maker.”  No problem.  Deuteronomy 6 was a good starting point.  Plenty of material there.  After a little study, I just seemed like I needed to go to the Ten Commandments.

I became transfixed and distracted from my subject matter.

I read the Decalogue and reread it.  I had already read it like a thousand times.  I even had most of them memorized.  (You may be able to quote them all without a lot of mental gymnastics, but I’m not you, OK?)

For the first time I saw the Ten Commandments as a statement of how to be content as a human being.  Adam and Eve weren’t content.  We haven’t been content since then.  In God’s infinite wisdom he knew we needed something to show us how to live as the human beings we were created to be.  The radical minimum standard of human behavior included, even if inferred, our need to have a character that includes contentment.

Be content with a Creator God alone.
Be content that I can’t successfully craft Him in my image or any other image.
Be content with a God that is indescribable instead of throwing His name around loosely.
Be content with completely unplugging and spending time with the Creator one day each week.
Be content with my parents and I’ll actually live longer.
Be content and I won’t get angry enough or careless enough to kill someone.
Be content with my wife.  Discontentment here just causes a lot of pain and misery for a lot of people.
Be content with your BlackBerry Pearl and PowerBook G4.  Contentment keeps me from getting arrested.
Be content to keep my mouth shut.  Let other people make themselves look stupid with gossip, lies, and slander.
Be content with my house that doesn’t have a media room.  I’ve got HDTV and a PS3. A servant or two might be nice…sorry.

It was a good study for me.  It wouldn’t get an “A” from my hermenutics professor but he’s probably already content.

I’m still working on it.  I’m content with being a created being, but I’m getting an iPhone 3Gs when my contract rolls over in November.  Just sayin’…

More cash for your family

Here’s a great article about putting more dollars in your pocket. Since the economy isn’t projected to do much better this year, we all need good advice. For my wife and me, the flexible spending account has been working great for us for seven years now. Check it out.

Just a little side note…making decisions together builds a healthy marriage.