Growing up in the Christian environment caused me to be exposed to a LOT of preaching. For the most part, I had absolutely great pastors and teachers who taught me what the Bible says. I went to Christian school from kindergarten all the way through college. Some may say that is too much, I say that was such a huge blessing in my life. I was given the opportunity to learn from dozens of Christian men and women who spent their whole lives studying the Bible. Not many people get that opportunity.
However, I was also made aware of all the bad preaching in the world. People like Joel Osteen or the some of the televangelists on TV say, "God wants you to be happy and rich. So, if you pray for happiness and wealth, and obey the commandments, He will make you happy and rich." Now, there are obvious flaws with that preaching. Does God want you to be happy? Yes, but our view of happiness is mainly selfish and shortsighted. His view of happiness, is knowing Him and living our lives to glorify Him.
Does He want us to be rich? No way! He wants us to be poor because being poor means you are forced to rely on Him and therefore causes you to be a better Christian. The Bible says that "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needled than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Therefore, we are to run away from money and be poor. Right?
Well, I'm not saying I believe we are supposed to be poor, but I was pretty sure I couldn't make too much money without sinning somehow. I know, that is very flawed logic. But in my mind, being poor was more spiritual. I think the reason I thought this was because I absolutely hate "the prosperity gospel". God doesn't owe me anything! He should be enough for me. To say that God will make me rich if I pray hard enough is NOT what the Bible teaches. Because of that, I went in the other direction a little too much. That is, until God started to open my eyes a few weeks ago.
I won't go into the whole story, but I was reading scripture and few other books and they all seemed to be talking about money and prayer. The Bible says "You do not have because you do not ask". That is a powerful thing for James to say. At the time I was reading other Christian books that talked about how making money is not a bad thing, if your heart is in the right place. That if you are bad with your money, your options will be limited in how you can bless your family and other people.
Well, God seemed to be speaking to me through all of these things. He allowed my eyes to be open to the fact that making money is not a sin. Even if I make a million dollars, I'm not sinning. The sin lies in whether I love money more than Him. If I work my absolute hardest to make money, that is a GOOD thing. As long as the reason I am doing that is to give that money away and be a blessing to people. He also allowed me to realize that praying for money is not only good, but necessary. Me praying for more money is no different than praying that God will bless my marriage. Through money and my marriage, people can be blessed.
It's been an eye opening experience for me. Not only am I realizing that by praying that God will bless my work and allow my business to grow, I am coming to terms with how powerful He is. Every good thing comes from Him! So many times I would pray, "God, please bless Stewardship and give this company business... but if not that's okay!" I was diminishing His power in my own mind by not having faith He will provide. In Desiring God by John Piper he talks about how God is glorified in answered prayer. That God WANTS to answer our prayer so He can be even more glorified in our lives! Prayer is how we learn about the character and power of God. We are to be bold in our prayer lives! God wants us to come to Him with all of our requests, not just the ones we think are super spiritual.
Again, I don't think we are to be praying that God will make us rich so that we can be selfish in our spending. Be faithful with whatever He gives you. Whether it's a lot or a little, be thankful, be wise, and pray that He will bless it. More than that, pray that He will reveal His power and love in your life no matter the circumstance.
- Brian
Monday, December 9, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Why Your Credit Score is Important
One of the MAIN things that goes into the house buying process is your credit score. A lot of people don't know their credit score, or if they do, it's been a while since they looked at it. The reason this is such a big deal is because it has to do with how "risky" you are as a borrower. When a bank loans you money, they want to make sure you will pay it back! They way they can know that is if you have a good credit score or not.
When I first started working at Stewardship Mortgage, I thought that you just needed to pay all your bills on time in order to have a great credit score. I didn't realize that if you owed a lot on your credit cards, that would negatively impact your score! In fact, 30% of your score is determined by how much you owe compared to what your credit limit is. For instance, if your credit card max is $1000 and you owe $900, that will have a negative impact on your score!
One of the things I love about my job is creating a plan for someone as they are thinking about buying a house. A lot of times, they have a good, but not great, credit score. A LOT of what is holding them back usually has to do with their credit card debts. When you think about buying a house, it's more than just the down payment and getting a good monthly payment, you want to make sure you have a high credit score so you can get a better interest rate (which will lower that monthly payment).
It may sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't realize that having high credit card balances is hurting their credit score. Even if you are making the monthly payment, you still need to lower that balance! If you are carrying a high monthly balance on your credit card, you might as well be chucking money down the toilet because of that interest rate. Pay that card off, increase your credit score, and start saving for a down payment!
Finally, some people would advise cutting that card to pieces, closing the card account, and moving on. You want to be careful when you do that. The reason is that banks want to see that you have a few open lines of credit. Once that card is paid, just use it for gas or coffee, something small. Be disciplined in your spending.
Paying off debt is AWESOME! As you are making your budget, try to put more and more money towards paying off your debt, especially the debt with high interest rates.
As always, if you have questions about buying a house, please let me know! It would be my honor to help you :)
- Brian
When I first started working at Stewardship Mortgage, I thought that you just needed to pay all your bills on time in order to have a great credit score. I didn't realize that if you owed a lot on your credit cards, that would negatively impact your score! In fact, 30% of your score is determined by how much you owe compared to what your credit limit is. For instance, if your credit card max is $1000 and you owe $900, that will have a negative impact on your score!
One of the things I love about my job is creating a plan for someone as they are thinking about buying a house. A lot of times, they have a good, but not great, credit score. A LOT of what is holding them back usually has to do with their credit card debts. When you think about buying a house, it's more than just the down payment and getting a good monthly payment, you want to make sure you have a high credit score so you can get a better interest rate (which will lower that monthly payment).
It may sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't realize that having high credit card balances is hurting their credit score. Even if you are making the monthly payment, you still need to lower that balance! If you are carrying a high monthly balance on your credit card, you might as well be chucking money down the toilet because of that interest rate. Pay that card off, increase your credit score, and start saving for a down payment!
Finally, some people would advise cutting that card to pieces, closing the card account, and moving on. You want to be careful when you do that. The reason is that banks want to see that you have a few open lines of credit. Once that card is paid, just use it for gas or coffee, something small. Be disciplined in your spending.
Paying off debt is AWESOME! As you are making your budget, try to put more and more money towards paying off your debt, especially the debt with high interest rates.
As always, if you have questions about buying a house, please let me know! It would be my honor to help you :)
- Brian
Monday, December 2, 2013
How do you budget?
First of all, budgeting is annoying. However, there are ways to make it LESS annoying. A lot of times people get overwhelmed at the idea of a budget. I have talked about the importance of a budget, but how do you start the process? I think we can all agree that it is important to keep track of what you spend, but now what? How do you make sure you are doing it right? Are we just supposed to save a million receipts and always have a calculator handy in order to make sure we don't bust our budget?
Those are all questions Stephanie have asked ourselves. We have tried a lot of different methods and are still trying new things! It's important to know that you need to find a system that works for you. If you have a set yearly salary, you will budget differently than someone who works on tips or commission. One size does not fit all when it comes to money. Secondly, you need to try different methods of budgeting. If you feel like what you are using now just isn't working, then change it! There a million different apps and tools you can use for free that can help.
I thought I would share a little bit of exactly how Stephanie and I budget and keep track of our money. When we first got married, we wrote out our budget on a scrap piece of paper at the beginning of every month. Well, we would ALWAYS forget like 10 things because we weren't really keeping track. It would be a different budget every month and we hated it. Some people can do that, we can't. Especially since she gets tips and I work on commission. Our income is so different every month there is no WAY that will work.
After that, we tried using the Dave Ramsey online budgeting system. Now, this was cool, but we got frustrated with it very fast. At the time, it didn't have an App, so we didn't keep close watch on our budget. You had to manually put in everything and it was a little clunky for us. Also, you have a to pay a monthly fee for it. I think for some people, this is perfect as it takes a little bit of time and effort which means you are really analyzing your money. However, for us, we didn't like it. We weren't held accountable as we didn't always know the amount of money we had left for each budget item.
We then tried our Mint.com. This is a free App you can use that actually links up with all of your online banking. So, when you buy something with your debit card, it instantly tracks it on your Mint App. We actually stuck with this one for 2-3 months. We both liked that it tracked everything in real time and we always knew where we were at in the budget. The thing we didn't like, was that it automatically assigned categories for each purchase. Usually, it was WAY off. So, you had to, one by one, change the category to properly reflect where you spent that money. Again, I know people how LOVE this, and it is free, but it just wasn't for us.
Recently, I decided to just start budgeting on an Excel spreadsheet and track it all myself. It makes us look at our bank account every day and actually subtract the amounts. Instead of wondering how much is left, we know! It's tedious, but it really puts keeps those amounts in our heads so we don't lose track. Now, this is very time consuming. I'm trying YNAB.com on the recommendation from my sister, but it's not super user friendly and it costs a monthly fee. I'm on a free trial so we will see if I stick with it. It gives you a full free month which is nice so you can really see if it works.
Anyways, as you can see we are still feeling out our own budgeting method. It's all about doing a budget and finding a method that works for you! What are some Apps or tools you have found helpful? Anything you have been using for a while and would recommend?
Those are all questions Stephanie have asked ourselves. We have tried a lot of different methods and are still trying new things! It's important to know that you need to find a system that works for you. If you have a set yearly salary, you will budget differently than someone who works on tips or commission. One size does not fit all when it comes to money. Secondly, you need to try different methods of budgeting. If you feel like what you are using now just isn't working, then change it! There a million different apps and tools you can use for free that can help.
I thought I would share a little bit of exactly how Stephanie and I budget and keep track of our money. When we first got married, we wrote out our budget on a scrap piece of paper at the beginning of every month. Well, we would ALWAYS forget like 10 things because we weren't really keeping track. It would be a different budget every month and we hated it. Some people can do that, we can't. Especially since she gets tips and I work on commission. Our income is so different every month there is no WAY that will work.
After that, we tried using the Dave Ramsey online budgeting system. Now, this was cool, but we got frustrated with it very fast. At the time, it didn't have an App, so we didn't keep close watch on our budget. You had to manually put in everything and it was a little clunky for us. Also, you have a to pay a monthly fee for it. I think for some people, this is perfect as it takes a little bit of time and effort which means you are really analyzing your money. However, for us, we didn't like it. We weren't held accountable as we didn't always know the amount of money we had left for each budget item.
We then tried our Mint.com. This is a free App you can use that actually links up with all of your online banking. So, when you buy something with your debit card, it instantly tracks it on your Mint App. We actually stuck with this one for 2-3 months. We both liked that it tracked everything in real time and we always knew where we were at in the budget. The thing we didn't like, was that it automatically assigned categories for each purchase. Usually, it was WAY off. So, you had to, one by one, change the category to properly reflect where you spent that money. Again, I know people how LOVE this, and it is free, but it just wasn't for us.
Recently, I decided to just start budgeting on an Excel spreadsheet and track it all myself. It makes us look at our bank account every day and actually subtract the amounts. Instead of wondering how much is left, we know! It's tedious, but it really puts keeps those amounts in our heads so we don't lose track. Now, this is very time consuming. I'm trying YNAB.com on the recommendation from my sister, but it's not super user friendly and it costs a monthly fee. I'm on a free trial so we will see if I stick with it. It gives you a full free month which is nice so you can really see if it works.
Anyways, as you can see we are still feeling out our own budgeting method. It's all about doing a budget and finding a method that works for you! What are some Apps or tools you have found helpful? Anything you have been using for a while and would recommend?
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