austinklee

Well, quite a few people are playing along with our personal finance series, so I thought I would provide this post so you can come back and reference or share with friends.  Each time I add a new post I will also link to it here so that everyone can find what they are looking for.

• Intro to Personal Financial Management
• Tools to use for Personal Financial Management
• Starting to dig out of the debt mess
  

Now that you have some tools and have hopefully had a chance to check them out for a couple of days we need to put those tools to work.  The first thing I suggest is making a list of all of the things you spend money on each month.

Here is a list of things you might have on your list: Groceries, Rent/Mortgage, Car Payment, Insurance, Fuel, Lawn Service, Cable, Cell Phone, Internet, Public Transportation, Tithe, Clothes, Eating Out, School Supplies, Books, Coffee, Credit Card payments, etc.

Write it ALL down.  Your next step is to separate things that are necessary from that which is nice to have.  For instance, you need to pay your rent/mortgage each month, but you don’t NEED cable television.  This is a really hard step.  We can come up with all sorts of reasons why we just can’t live without things that are not necessary.

The key to getting yourself out of debt is to sacrifice.  This will be hard because you don’t get into debt by sacrificing.  So, this will require you to shift the way you approach your life.  If you are married or engaged to be married this will be difficult if not impossible if your spouse or fiance is not completely on board. Continue Reading…

Dear God,

Yesterday my parents made the trip home to Fayetteville, NC from Chattanooga, TN.  My Grandfather walked them to the door, watched them climb into their car and drive away.  Since my Grandmother passed away last Wednesday, my Grandfather hasn’t been alone at the house.  What was he feeling as he walked back inside?

Did he close the door a little more slowly than usual?  Did his eyes well up with tears as he turned around to lock the door?  Was he overcome with sadness seeing her motorized wheel-chair in the corner?  Did he recognize for the first time that it was real, that he couldn’t go to the nursing home to visit his wife of 54 years?

Did he get her belongings from the funeral home and wash her clothes one last time?  Folding them neatly as he has always done and placing them carefully in the drawer?  How did he feel as he looked at her half empty bottles of pills?  Did he throw them away yet, or will he hang on to them for a while?

Is he already lonely?  Does he feel isolated or afraid?  Does he think that there is no one that can understand the depth of his pain?  Has he even admitted to himself that he is hurting?  Did he sit in his favorite chair and watch TV to numb the pain?

When he went to bed last night did was he restless?  Did he toss and turn all night?  When he woke up this morning was he more sad than the day before?  Did he go through the motions of getting dressed while wondering what the point is?

Help me know how to minister to him.  Give him peace and the knowledge that we all love him and are with him in his grief.

Forever Yours,

Austin

Let’s start with a Bible verse.  (I refer to this as the Dave Ramsey verse because I think he is contractually obligated to say it 2.5 times per hour.) In The Message, Proverbs 22:7 says, “The poor are always ruled over by the rich, so don’t borrow and put yourself under their power.”  Other translations read, “the borrower is slave to the lender.”

This is the most important thing to remember as we go along.  Stop for just a second and, if you have debt, think about your debt.  Don’t you feel a tug on your spirit because of that debt?  Don’t you think to yourself sometimes, (even if you won’t admit it to anyone) “I feel like this debt is hanging around my neck”?  Dave Ramsey found a great verse to use to describe our relationship to debt.  It does feel like we are under the power of someone else when we owe them something.

Another thing happens, however, when we choose to take control of our personal finances and get out of debt.  That dreadful feeling lessens a little each month as those debts become smaller and smaller.  So, how do we get to the point where we have complete freedom? Continue Reading…

I get questions about personal finance quite a bit since most people know that I used to be an accountant.  (Apparently many people think that a masters degree in accounting makes people immune to poor financial decisions…how I wish they were right.)  The truth is that when you go through accounting programs they teach you how to account for the money that has already been spent, earned, saved, or destroyed.  They don’t really teach you very much about how to handle someone’s personal finances.

So, over the next couple of days we will explore how you can dig your family out of a financial hole or, for those not in a hole, how to avoid getting yourself into a hole. Continue Reading…

He’s driven to the hospital hundreds of times in the last 30+ years of ministry.  He has spent time with people as they have taken their final breath.  He has worked through the grief process with countless numbers of families.

I have often said that while I think my dad is a great preacher and teacher, his greatest gift is the ability he has to be at his best when others are at their worst.  I have seen him comfort small children, teens, adults, and senior citizens alike with just the right words at the right time.

He helps families determine funeral arrangements, pick out caskets, meet with funeral home directors, and with their grief and pain.

Yesterday my dad took a very different drive to the hospital.  He drove 8 hours to Chattanooga, TN.  This time it was his mother that was dying, he was the one losing a family member, he was the one that needed to start grieving.  This time he is helping his own father pick out a casket, make arrangements, and plan a funeral.

This time it is our family that will be grieving and our family that needs support and love.  And this time my Dad needs someone to be at their best for him.

I have succumbed to the peer pressure from @tomsfoolery and @brettbarner.  I have removed IntenseDebate from my site.  It was a hard decision because like Brett, I never had any real problems with IntenseDebate.  I do like the Standard Theme commenting with Gravatar support…plus I don’t have to go in and change up all of the CSS inside IntenseDebate to make it readable on my backgroud.

So, welcome to the new commenting on austinklee.com…I guess I am just a follower.

There are things in life we all want to avoid.  I want to avoid illegal activity, going broke, getting hurt, getting in an accident, and a whole host of other situations.  Lately, however, I have been avoiding something that is completely unavoidable: The declining health of my grandparents.

I turn 30 later this year and until a couple of years ago I thought it was normal that I had all four of my grandparents still living on their own.  (Well, for that matter, living in general.) I had no idea that this wasn’t normal…it’s what I lived my whole life.  I guess deep down I knew that one day I would have to deal with declining health, but that would probably be a long way off.

My paternal Grandmother has now been in a care facility for around 100 days.  I visited her there just after the first of the year with my parents, brother, and Courtney.  I didn’t say much that day.  Truth be told it was the first time I had to think about the eventual loss of one of my grandparents.

I have been avoiding thinking about it ever since.

Do you ever avoid things in your life?  Unpleasant things that you know you have to deal with…but put off?  Do you think (like me) that maybe if I put it out of mind…it won’t happen?

Well, it’s Easter week and that means Jesus is popping up all over the place this week. There are TV specials, email chains, more Jesus tweets than on an average week, and now a Jesus video game.  So, I was looking around on LikeCool and ran across a Jesus video game.  Here is a YouTube video of the game:

(If you are reading this on Facebook, go to austinklee.com to see the video.)

Not sure that I like how it ends with Jesus on the Cross instead of resurected, but an interesting diversion none the less.  If you want to play the game yourself you can play it at the creator’s website.  (Note: Click on the image and hit the space bar to start.)

What do you think about stuff like this?  Sacrilegious or an interesting way to get people to read more about Jesus?  Are you offended that miracles are reduced to “Do Jesus Stuff”?

Sometimes you think you got it…whatever that “it” is in your life. For me its the written word. Yesterday I could have written an entire novel and today I can barely put two sentences together. Its not writer’s block. Its just that all of the sentences I have are lacking the “it” factor. That intangible quality that makes them really rock.

What’s the “it” in your work/life and how do you get “it” back when you lose it?