My Friend Kristine recently posted maps on her blog of the states she and her husband, Cliff, have visited. I stole this idea. Here’s my map:
visited 35 states (70%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
Seeing this visual makes me want to take some vacations to knock the rest off. Maybe first up should be finishing off the northern border.
Anyone want to join?
Tags: fun, travel, trips, visited states
When I was in college I dabbled a bit in selling Avon mainly because I enjoyed the products Avon offers. After months of spending more than I sold I decided to call it quits.
However, I am now a much more mature, disciplined individual. Right?
After a bit of thought I’ve signed up to sell Avon again. I love the products, and the company. I think the products sell themselves. What’s cool about Avon now, is that each representative can have their own webpage where their customers can shop, order and pay for their Avon products. Gone are the days of needing to have a representative where you are– you can order online and have your product mailed to you.
That’s a pretty sweet deal.
Seriously– check it out.
So, if you are in the mood for makup, bath products, shampoo/conditioner, and a wide variety of other things (kitchen gadgets, clothes, bags, etc) check out my avon site. I can give you a real brochure if you would like as well!
Have family or friends that might be interested? Pass this site along to them as well!
I have heard it said that there is a first time for everything. There have been a lot of firsts around here lately!
While it is not really a first, a couple of weeks ago I the chance to drive to Fort Worth to see my favorite author, Donald Miller. You may remember my previous post detailing my excitement about his newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. A couple of friends joined me, and we drove to Fort Worth to have dinner with a few of my favorite former students turned friends, and then on to see Don. Let me just tell you that it was more than worth the hour and a half drive and the $15 ticket. After Donald finished speaking we had the chance to wait for autographs. Kelcy, a student who joined the trip, remembered to bring her book however, I left mine on the kitchen table. We waited in line for her to get her book signed, and I got the chance to meet Don in a moment of awkwardness and awe. Highlights of our 30 second conversation include that he called me “nice” twice. Ahhhh. . . . Here’s a photo of me and Don.
Also recently I tried a new vegetable- acorn squash. I have seen them in the grocery, but never tried it before. My friend Steph posted a link on her blog with a simple recipe so I decided to try it. I must admit, acorn squash was very yummy! You should check out Steph’s blog for yummy recipes.
Tuck recently had a big first. In preparing for Thanksgiving, I felt really guilty about leaving him with other people so often this year. So, since Southwest Airlines recently changed their policy regarding pets, allowing animals aboard flights, I decided Tuck would come along for Thanksgiving. For the first time in his life (that I know of at least), Tuck got to spend lots of time in a crate and flew. The flight out was relatively uneventful, minus the three times Tuck busted out of the cage and decided to try to wander around. Luckily the people sitting around me thought he was cute and wanted to play with him. He was much happier when we got in the car with his grand-people.
May you have a happy Thanksgiving filled with a few firsts!
Tags: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller, Kentucky, Tuck
With the transition to a new blog, I have a lot to learn. WordPress is much more powerful, but also more complicated than Blogger. I’ll figure it out eventually, just taking it one step at a time.
One step I recently took was learning that my site had comments blocked unless you were registered with WordPress. Oops. That’s fixed now! Comment away!
And, while you’re at it, check out some of the photos I recently uploaded to my Flickr. I’m in the process of editing some recent ones, so more new shots will be coming!
America seems to be king of living paycheck to paycheck. According to a 2007 article on CareerBuilder.com, 41% of workers in the US claim to live paycheck to paycheck. The article also says that these individuals do not save for rainy day, because they do not believe that they make enough to do it. If they could only get a better paying job, they could save more. However, a study from MetLife in 2003 says that 52% of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck. This study also negates the idea that by making more, you are less likely to live this way. According to this study, of those making more than $75000 a year, 34% report living paycheck to paycheck. Harper’s Index said in December of 2008 that 47% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and that 21% of them report making more than $100000 a year. In his book Financial Peace Revisited, Dave Ramsey sites the U.S. Department of Commerce and says that “the typical American saves 2.2 percent of after-tax income, while NLI Research says the average Japanese saved 27.0 percent of after-tax income” (Ramsey, p. 107).
We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We are blessed beyond measure. Yet we live way beyond our means and find ourselves in financial pitfalls that we could avoid if we tried.
Living paycheck to paycheck sure is stressful. I’ve done it– most of my college career to be exact. As a sophomore, our RA paychecks were unexpectedly cut (do to lack of budget planning at the university level, oops), and I went from earning $200-$400 a month to about $90. Talk about stressful. Most of my friends did not have to work because their parents provided spending money, whereas mine made it very clear when I left for college that I would have to earn any spending money I needed. Since responsibility is an overactive blessing and curse in my life, I took that charge to heart and made some financial decisions that were dumb and cost me a lot (i.e. my first credit card). That year’s pay cut, coupled with my inability to say no to my friends and ask for my parents help, has ended up costing me a lot more than the price tag on those few movies or dinners out.
Fast forward a few years to 2009.
I realized this summer that I still continue to be a poor manager of my resources. I make more than $90 a month now, but I still could not seem to shake that habit of living paycheck to paycheck. Not only do I get a decent salary, I have a paid for apartment, a meal plan, free gym membership, and free or severely discounted entrance to division one sporting events. Despite that, I still found myself, most months, waiting for the next paycheck. Despite my renewed focus on budgeting last November, I do not have much to show for it (minus a small emergency fund).
I have a job that I love. I have an apartment that I love. And, I have the chance to make some good, but tough decisions now for the future. Decisions that mean when the day comes that I have to be a big girl and pay for my apartment, utilities, etc, I can with little stress. Decisions that mean when I ring in 30 in a few years, I will ring it in with no debt.
For the last six weeks I have been taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class. It’s a 13 week course focused not only on teaching people how to manage money, but helping break some of the strongholds years of habits have formed in peoples’ lives. The more I learn, the more I am convinced, many people are poor, and living paycheck to paycheck that do not have to be. They just routinely making choices that keep them there. Most are doing things they only way they know how, most have never learned any better. Most live broke, and will die broke.
I do not want to be like most people.
I am daily choosing to live like no one else, so that later I can LIVE like no one else!
I am now living a different kind of paycheck to paycheck. When I got paid at on September 30th, I paid off my first credit card.
That same card that I opened years ago so I could live like all my friends. That’s right, it’s history. Like the lifestyle I chose to create it in the first place.
I did some projecting that night, and realized, that with my next paycheck, on October 30th, I will pay off the next one. I have been looking forward to the next paycheck all month!! In a few months, I should have paid off the next one, and be on to knocking out my student loans.
I have a brand new perspective on what it means to live paycheck to paycheck. This perspective is WAY more fun, and WAY less stressful. The longer that I live this way, the more I am convinced that our country would be in a very different place if people chose to pay themselves first and not be a slave to debt.
I still have a long way to go, but I’m getting there– paycheck to paycheck.
Tags: dave ramsey, financial literacy, financial peace university, paycheck to paycheck
I love strengths. I love anything based on positive psychology and helping people learn to be their best selves. So when I had the chance to review Marcus Buckingham’s newest book in this area titled Find Your Strongest Life I jumped on it.
Buckingham’s newest book originated from a realization he had while visiting the Oprah show– that despite progress in women’s rights over the last several decades, women are profoundly unhappy and under a great deal of pressure. Reading one personal story after another, Buckingham set out to determine what makes women happy and successful- what is different about those women than other unhappy women.
I have to admit– I found this book rather slow moving. I took the “Strong Life Test” before I got the book to discover my “lead” and “supporting” roles. I was anxious to discover more about those and how to apply them to my life. However, the chapter with this information did not even begin until 97 pages in. Leading up to the 97th page was a lot of information about how unhappy women are and why living a strong life is important. I liked the information about the different roles, but I think there is still a lot of room for developing these roles deeply like StrengthsQuest.
I will say that I felt my results of the Strong Life Test were pretty spot on with who I am. My lead role is caretaker and my supporting role is creator. I would have liked to see Buckingham expound about each of these roles more than he did, but I do think that they make sense and help affirm things I do well.
Overall, I think that Find Your Strongest Life is an interesting book, and that the Strong Life Roles seem to make sense. I would like to see further development of these things, including a better test, and more research on validity of the tool. Find Your Strongest Life is not my favorite of Buckingham’s book, however, it is still somewhat helpful in the quest to better understand one’s self. Overall though, I think this book is really best for working mothers, but there is not much for women who are single career women.
Michael Kelly recently posted an entry responding to the accusation that Christianity is a crutch for the week. This is a claim I’ve heard many make. I have always struggled in answering it. I think Kelley makes a great argument and it stirs my heart. I encourage you to check it out. His post still leaves me wondering, how do we answer such statements? Perhaps the power of the Gospel message is enough (as it should be).
How do you respond to such arguments?
My friend Tiffani posted this link on her blog today where you can find out information about your name. More specifically, how many people are in the US with your exact name.
Here are the results!
| HowManyOfMe.com | ||
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Apparently there are 7171 people in the US with the last name Mudd, and it’s the 5116th most popular last name. Ha ha. Sarah is the 58th most popular first name, and don’t worry, 99.9% of those named Sarah are female
It goes without saying that we have all found ourselves paralyzed by fear at one time or another. Whether it was based on real life circumstance or paranoia that a fear might come, we can all sympathize with the grip fear has on our lives. I just finished reading Max Lucado’s newest book, “Fearless”, which focuses on many typical areas of fear that often paralyze us. In each chapter Lucado offers witty over-exgagerated examples of each of these specific fears and supplements them with a Biblical example when believers are encouraged to trust God’s hand and provision.
Tags: fear, fearless, max lucado, Thomas Nelson
Remember back when spent a week as a Camp Director for Line Camp here at Baylor? There was a writer for the Baylor Magazine who shadowed us that week to learn what Line Camp was about. I have been waiting anxiously to see the result. Tonight, it appeared on my Facebook News Feed: “Right From the Start“.
Read it.
Learn the story of how I came to fall in love with Baylor as an A&M graduate student more than two years ago. How blessed and thankful I am to be here.
Tags: Line Camp