The effect of money challenges on the family

Over the last three years, our family has accomplished amazing goals in the area of personal finances:

1. Sold our house at a good price before the housing dip. This enabled us to pay off almost half of our debt right off the bat!


2. Over the next 18 months, we were able to pay off the remaining debt. We became completely debt free on June 15, 2007!


3. My side business (music arranging/typesetting) had its best year ever in 2007. This enabled us to quickly pay off our remaining debt and start saving a larger emergency fund.


4. Paid a large chunk of taxes in April 2008 - fortunately we were able to cash flow this through our larger emergency fund. This completely cleaned us out, though, financially!

Even though we have accomplished these amazing goals, I have found myself completely and utterly frustrated with our financially situation. I know I should feel blessed and excited about the future, but with inflation occurring in food, gas prices, and the overall rise in the cost of goods and services, our dollars are not stretching as far as they did 2-3 years ago! I feel stuck on moving forward with our financial goals when the money coming in is not going as far as it once did.

OK, so with all of these frustrations weighing on me on a regular basis, little disagreements on spending between my wife and I have been occurring more and more frequently over the last several months. Unfortunately, these disagreements are happening in front of our children.

Over the last two years, my wife and I have seen disturbing behavior problems in our oldest daughter. These behavior problems have escalated to the point that we have sought family counseling to intervene in our situation. I know that I'm personally responsible for my daughter's issues right now, especially in my possibly obsessive compulsive patterns regarding our finances. I believe the more I can relax in these areas of personal finances, I will communicate a more relaxed household.

I'll be working on this area of my life for the next several days, weeks, and months to come!

It's time to get serious about gas

It's time for this country and our government to get serious about gas prices. We can longer afford the stranglehold that the Middle East, Central and South America have on the United States.

Over the last few days, I have heard a couple of news reports regarding a number of options we could pursue domestically to begin getting control of the current price of oil and our dependence on foreign oil. Here is what is being currently suggested:

1. Federal and State reprieves on gasoline taxes. In the State of Missouri, the State House has already given initial approval of this and, of course, the presidential candidates are all chiming in on the Federal gas tax.
2. One northern state governor (Montana?) is proposing to process coal to create gasoline; apparently this is very doable.
3. A large oil deposit has recently been discovered in North or South Dakota (?). Apparently, this oil deposit may be larger than the one in Saudi Arabia. Of course, the environmentalists have issues with this one. I say, it's time to start pumping some oil!
4. Anwar up in Alaska has a large oil deposit that we can't access due to environmental restrictions.

We need to start putting some pressure on our federal and state governments about taking proactive action to get our current gas prices under control. These gas prices are really beginning to crunch/crush the budgets of middle income and lower income families.

It's also time for environmentalists to get realistic about the needs of the citizens of this country and its overall economy. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!

Here's what President Bush is proposing, but he's getting stonewalled by Congress:

(In a Rose Garden press conference, Bush recommended a host of economic fixes:)
* More oil drilling in the United States.
* Turning mothballed military bases into oil refineries.
* Passage of the Colombia free-trade agreement.
* Eliminating farm subsidies for multimillionaire farmers.
* Additional investment in alternative fuels and nuclear energy.
* Possibly suspending the federal 18-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax.

The Gas Bubble

I'm sure all of us have noticed over the last several weeks, that gas prices keep slowly and steadily getting higher and higher with no relief in sight. Along with gas prices, we have seen the cost of goods and services go up as well due to the cost of gas and diesel fuel.


As I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to one of our local talk shows on the radio (The Darla Jaye Show), and there was a special guest expert on this particular program giving his take on the current gas price rise.

He mentioned that there were 2 main factors driving up the cost:

1. A declining dollar value
2. Oil speculation by commodity traders

This particular expert believes that if the dollar begins to strengthen, again (and it is showing signs that it will soon), then oil speculators will get out of the market, and "The Gas Bubble" will burst, causing gas prices to dramatically fall.

Let's hope this bubble busts, soon!

To read more of this story on Darla Jaye's show blog, follow this link.

Food prices are definitely on the rise!

For those of you "nerds" out there that attempt to budget for food (groceries and a little for dining out), I'm sure you're probably like me and become frustrated when your spouse comes home from the grocery store having spent more money than you budgeted for. You may have seen this happening over the last several months.


Or, you go to a restaurant and notice your final bill is $5.00+ more than it used to be, and you start over spending your dining out budget line item. I really noticed this starting to happen a few weeks ago when we ate at Chipotle. Our family of 4 could normally eat here for around $18.00. When we ate there a couple of weeks ago, the final bill was around $24.00. We ordered what we normally eat there.

So, I think that gas prices have finally caught up with the prices of our normal goods and services! Hopefully, with gas prices continuing to rise, we won't get hit with too many more food price increases in the near future. They can be real budget busters.

Larry