I’m going to keep this short and practical. I realize budgets will vary from city to city and based on circumstances, but I think we can have a fairly frank talk about the amount of money we are spending. I’m not saying we’ll settle on a ‘Jesus says you should live by this budget’, but we will hopefully have a honest discussion about things. I’ll just throw this out off the top of my head to get the discussion going:
Monthly Budget 

Rent/Utilities/etc- $500
Food- $100 (per person)
Car (insurance/gas)- $100
Miscellaneous- $100
Emergency- $100
Fun Money- …

It’s YouTubesday again, which means will look at some videos. I’ve put five videos on the player below, all related to finances and the church. Here’s a quick rundown of what you have to watch below.

Nooma – RICH 01:29
To most people in the world, what we have would be more than enough. Maybe what we have is enough.
Eight Dollar Hot Dog 04:25
Are God’s children caring for one another? Pastor and author Chris Seay discusses the tension between eight dollar hot dogs and children dying every fifteen seconds because …

The brief discussion last week about paying off a home mortgage quickly, has me realizing we need to talk a little bit about finances here. I’ve talked finances many times before and I think now would be a good time to start the discussion up again, both to articulate my views and to encourage discussion about them.
From what I can tell the readers of this blog come from a lot of backgrounds, stages of life, income levels, etc. So, there isn’t a great way to address all of our situations …

Well, it looks like we’ll be on the road for the next nine days or so. Some exciting stuff, visiting friends and family, attending the CCDA conference and taking one last getaway before we start ‘real’ life up here in Minneapolis. I’m not going to try and post every day while I’m gone, though if I have a chance I’ll put something up. I’m really enjoying the housing conversations and I’m thinking about it quite a bit.
Look forward to chatting more when I get back about October 14th.
p.s.  It’s my …

Thanks for all the feedback on the last couple house posts everybody! I’m realizing there are quite a few more interested parties then I originally realized. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons we are excited about doing this, and taking seriously paying off our debt, is that we want to have an opportunity to serve as an example to others of taking debt seriously and paying things off. The ultimate goal for us, is to live on only what we need (more discussion here later) and to continue …

We plan on paying off our mortgage in no more then five years (possibly a little more if you include school loans). This is not something that is encouraged or supported in our debt-driven culture. Even with hundred’s of debt relief books and websites out there, I’ve rarely, if ever, heard encouragement to pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible. People always seem to speak of a house as an ‘investment’ and ‘equity,’ rather then acknowledging that it is also debt.
We’ve decided to purchase a home and we’ve decided …

part 1

part 2

I think I might dub Tuesdays, ‘YouTubesdays,’ and post a video I’ve found interesting in the recent weeks. Today, I wanted to post some informational video about the current housing market. I couldn’t find anything more engaging and still informative then a basic interview, but I think you might find it interesting.I won’t really get into it here, but this current time period is one of the reason’s we think now is a good time to purchase a home.

Sometime in the next couple months my wife and I will likely purchase our first home. As a friend of a friend said concerning that and my values which I clearly convey on here about money and community, she said:
“Isn’t that Hypocritical?”
The honest truth is, it might be. For the next few days though, I want to try and articulate some of what has gone into the decision and where we hope to go in the future. In hopes that even friends of friends will continue to hold me to …