Category: personal

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Walk Your Way to Savings :)

On one of the many podcasts I listen to I heard a couple talking about how they handled their different approaches to money and I liked what they did. You see money has different emotional meanings to different people. For one person $1,000 in a savings account for emergencies seems like an impossible dream and for another person $10,000 in a savings account feels like tittering on the edge of destruction. Some are spenders, some are savers, and for some it depends upon the item for which they are saving and spending. So this couple decided to use their monetary tendencies to their advantage.

One person in this couple tends be a spender and the other tends to be a saver. So on projects this couple agrees to a budget that they won’t go above and then the spender gets to shop to find all that he or she can find for the project within that budget. Taking it further the saver gets to establish savings techniques to meet the project budget. I really like this. It works for both people.

Pam and I have kind of done this for years. She loves to plan vacations and I appreciate that she has an amazing ability to do great vacations for less money that we had planned. Seriously she is incredible. The trip we took to France in 2018 was much less than I thought she could have done it for. Pam has a gift.

This year we are using this approach for a semi-regular college friends trip. Pam and some friends form college have talked about going to Alaska, where one of our friends lives. We talked about a budget and then I got excited because I have wanted to try out one of the high yield online savings accounts that have been popping up and this offered an opportunity to do so. Pam loves to discover deals on traveling and I love to learn more personal finance stuff. I went with Viobank at 2.52% APY. I’m really like it thus far and I added an incentive for bringing my lunch to work. When I bring my lunch I get to add $2 to the high yield savings account in addition to the planned contributions we’ve discussed. It incentivises me to eat healthier and cheaper.

So that was a long way of getting to what I really wanted to write about. I was recently talking with a friend who is exploring using a high yield savings account and asked if I would recommend the bank I am using. I would. However, I also decided to search Magnify Money for their present list of recommended high yield savings account. It is here (September 2019). That’s when I discovered Fitness Bank on the list.

I so wish I had heard of Fitness Bank when I was considered this best rates for a high yield savings account. Their gimmick is awesome. The more steps you take the higher your interest rate. How cool is that?!?!?!

12,500 steps = 2.75% APY
10,000 steps = 2.50% APY
7,500 = 1.75% APY
5,000 = 1.25% APY
0 = 0.50% APY

Again, how cool is that!?!?!?!?!?

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They Have Started on the Garage

Our restoration company has begun to work on the garage from the damage that occurred due to the storm six weeks ago. There was so much damage around here that they have been incredibly busy. I know of circumstances where people’s homes will not be ready for Winter, which is a big deal up here in Wisconsin. Our contractor had a person call them last week just to start the initial estimate for their work. They will be in for a big surprise with how long this is going to take.

Our tree debris was finally removed yesterday. As I talked with the guy doing the removal he talked about how the wood market has collapsed as a result of all the wood on the market. Why would someone buy some wood from you when they can get it for free from someone who had a tree collapse in their yard.

We are still at least a month a way from roofed garage but it is at least cleaner now, looks a little more respectable, and isn’t as big of a hazard to be around anymore. I am so ready for this to be over or at least fixed to the point that I can park our vehicles in a roofed garage.

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I Really Dig My Wife & Watching Her Lead is Cool

Pam is Really Cool

I have a break and thought I would brag on Pam for a second. Over the past few weeks I have been I’m preparing a seminar with her and it has been an amazing reminder of how awesome the woman I am married to is. Pam is really cool.

One of the companies that I chaplain for does random seminars for life. They have a core value of “Learn & Grow” and last year they purposely expanded the idea of “Learn & Grow” to areas of “soft skills” and other areas of life outside of work. So they asked me if I could do a course on relationships. After 4 weeks of discussing how to have healthier relationships a few people asked for a parenting seminar. I mentioned Pam’s credentials and expertise from her field to the company and they thought it was a great idea. So yesterday Pam and I led a seminar at this company on the subject of Parenting.

She has a wealth of experience, both personal and professional, as well as a good grasp of research on the subject. We have both thought about what we would lead during the seminar and really started finalizing everything this past weekend. Yesterday we led the seminar for the company and it was really cool watching her lead a group of people that she had never met before and them discovering what an amazing person she is. She knows her stuff and it showed yesterday.

On another note

One of the things leading this seminar reminded me of is the desperate fear that so many parents walk around with that they will somehow, unknowingly, screw up their kids. Often parents of all ages live without much deep interaction in the lives of other parents and thus can have no idea what is a normal struggle and what isn’t. What kids will grow out of and what is an actual danger sign. Because of the size of our families now we aren’t around significantly younger kids much anymore till we have our own kids. I, for one, didn’t spend much time at all around babies till I was the parent of one and thus I live with a constant fear that I was somehow going to “break” Adam for the first few months of his life.

Used to be you would have been involved in the “parenting” of much younger brothers or sisters if you were one of the older kids in the family, or if you were one of the younger kids you would have been involved in helping your older siblings with their first kids. We had lots of “practice” at parenting just through our daily lives. Most people don’t now. Thus parenting is often an initially foreign skill set for parents and to make matters worse many don’t have a broad social group around them to help them face these new challenges.

I’m not trying to romanticize the past. Various aspects of the past were better in some manners, and WAY worse in others. The same is true for parenting in the past. Some of it was better and some of it was worse.

I guess what I am saying is perhaps we older parents should invite younger couples with kids over for supper often, not lecture them about parenting but just to be with them, listening to them, and maybe help them bare the fear and worry of parenting, so they can better experience the joy and wonder that is also there.

Hey young parent. Let’s hop your kids up on sugar.

Or maybe cook s’mores with them. That would be real helpful. Let’s invite younger parents over and fill their young kids up with sugar. That should be helpful. 🙂

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Quoting Yourself

I know a surprising number of people who quote themselves. This isn’t really a large number of people (OK it is 3) because most people don’t quote themselves, but in my opinion it is still a surprisingly large number (do you know more than 3 people that do this?). Plenty of people say things like “well, you know I always say …” or “I like to call you this …”, but I am not talking about that kind of statement. Nope, these are normal people who full quote themselves as words of wisdom in posts they make on social media. Seriously creating those graphic images for quotes that they made themselves or lists their own words in sections of their favorite quotes (Facebook has this under the “Details” portion of your “About” section).

George Bernard Shaw used to do this. For example, he said:

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”

But he was famous and you can get away with such stuff when you are famous. See it didn’t feel odd for me to quote George Bernard Shaw, but if I had quoted myself that probably would have felt different.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with quoting yourself. Just seems weird to me that all of the people I know who do this are ex-pastors. I’m not sure what this means, if anything. Probably nothing.

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The Before & After photo I mentioned today at Tapestry

I mentioned this photo today during the message at Tapestry. It was an unplanned mentioned so I did not have the message PowerPoint setup to display the image. Therefore, I thought I would share it on my blog.

Here’s the BBC article discussing the photos, as well as the Mom (or Mum) and daughter’s interaction. I loved the daughter’s (Lucie) statement when asked what she had been involved in that brought at this look. Lucie’s answer was “nothing much.” That has to be one active elementary (or primary for them) student.

That second photo is proof either of the best or the worst first day of school.

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A Smoke with Dad?

I just walked into Ruby’s Coffee Roasters to finish up the sermon for tomorrow and I am at a standstill because I am desperately trying to figure out what the barista at the counter just said to his customer. To me it sounded like he said

“I’m taking a Nazi out for a smoke with my dad.”

I know he didn’t say that but I can’t figure out what he actually said.

I’ll go back to working on the message now.

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Martin/Candy Dance Off – Google Photos Animation Accident

Sunday during the message I will be using a clip from the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I load such files onto the church’s Dropbox folder and I have my Google Photos account setup to backup all photos and videos put into that folder. Every now and then I get an interesting creation from Google Photo’s Assistant from the files that are backed up to my account from the church’s Dropbox folder. The above GIF is one such creation. I have a hard looking away from it because it looks like Steve Martin and John Candy randomly decided to have a dance-off in the middle of the movie.

Anyhow it makes me laugh.

Conor H you would be thrilled because I am also using a video this Sunday from Rene August, who is a priest from your tribe.

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Seeing as a Tourist

Harry’s New York Bar in Paris may have been “old hat” to Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway but it was brand new to us … so we saw it like a tourist … because we were tourist.

I recently read an article briefly talking about the difference in experience of the world between children and adults. The article postulated that adults don’t so much experience what is going on around us as much as we do predict what is going on around us. We have been through similar situations before and as a time saving mechanism our brains looks for patterns, determine what patterns our present situations fit into, and lead us to respond in a manner that fit those patterns.

Predicting what is going to happen is a very useful tool. It enables us to see patterns of danger and opportunity and sets us up to respond to such opportunities when they arrive. Driving is based off this. If I had to think through and experience everything that is happening around me when I drive then being on the road would be one long, continuous wreck. Instead, my brain kicks into pattern recognition and I can simply drive and enjoy the environment around me. Remember how nervous you were when you first started to drive and didn’t have the wealth of similar experiences for you brain to recognize patterns from?

Clive definitely experiences the world.

Of course, this great gift of pattern recognition and the predictive behavior that comes from it often keeps us from experiencing the wonder that is around us.

Children, especially young children, on the other hand are constantly experiencing wonder in the world around them and the author suggested this is because they often don’t have previous patterns or experience with what they are encountering and thus don’t responded to it based on predictive behavior. They respond in wonder and awareness because they are experiencing whatever is happening for the first time. Once they have encountered enough similar situations they will begin to recognize patterns and move from experiencing wonder to predicting the event.

This experiencing versus predicting phenomenon is why we tend to have such a sense of wonder when we travel. We are experiencing new things that we are not capable of predicting. Everything is new and when everything is new your mind can’t find the pattern and has to stop being a predicting machine. One of the great things about being a tourist in a town is that you have the freedom to ask questions concerning all that is going on around you. You aren’t expected to know anything because you are a tourist, This also means that you are free to get excited about everything that is different . This allows you to experience and enjoy what is going on around you. It isn’t that this new place is so much better than what you are used to, but is instead the fact that it isn’t what you are used to it that leads to you and I enjoying it so much.

One of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible, has the motto “always read the plaques”. Jeff T, my friend and manager in chaplaincy, likes to tell those he manages to “walk slowly through the people”. Both of these are great statements to actually be aware of what is around us and trying to make sure that we experience rather than just predicting what is happening around us. When I remember to do either of these statement I moved from thinking that I know everything that is going to happen, to just experiencing what is happening.

This is why I titled this post “Seeing as a Tourist”. I believe tourists often get a bad rap. It is not uncommon to hear someone going on a trip and wanting to avoid looking or acting like a tourist. I have a relative who goes on trips and desperately wants to look like a native. I think this is mainly the fear of standing out as someone who doesn’t know what is going on. Yet tourists get to respond in joy and wonder to what is different exactly because it is different to them. One of our family’s favorite things to do when we go to a new spot is go to a grocery store. It is amazing how different something so familiar can be. When we went to France last year we stayed in AirBnB’s and thus got to cook some of our meals. Therefore, we went to grocery stores to buy supplies. So much was incredibly different, from the products to the way you actually did your shopping. It made going to the grocery store an experience of wonder. Seriously I had a goofy smile on my face most of the time I was in the store. Tourist see things as new and therefore experience it rather than predicting it.

This is something that is good to do in our normal, boring lives. To put ourselves in situations where we have to experience rather than predict. To force ourselves to see our lives and our homes as a tourist would see them. To find the incredible stuff that we have blindly walked and driven by. Our God created a world that is full of wonder if we can only experience it. But we walk blindly past so much of it during our normal daily lives.

Here are two things that I think are wondrous in our area that many people walk or drive by. Did you know that there is a Frank Lloyd Wright house right off of Post Road (technically it is Springville Drive but you can see it from Post when you drive by)? Or that you could become a member of the 45-90 Club by visiting a site 50 miles North of us (one of only 4 such sites in the world and one of only 2 on land). There are amazing experiences and things all around us if we will moved from predicting to experiencing.

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My Small Group is Better Than Yours

Ok it probably isn’t. I’m sure your small group, if you are involved in one, is fine too. I’m just really loving my small group right now.

In case you don’t know what I mean when I say small group is is church talk for a group of people who get together regularly and discuss how our faith affects and interacts with our lives. We help each other follow Jesus. Some churches call them “grow groups”, or “life groups”, or “DLT – Doing Life Together”, or any number of other names that I’m not cool enough to come up with. They were called “small groups” when I first experienced one in the late 80s/early 90s and thus they are still small groups to me. I believe they are incredibly helpful and I personally encourage every believer in Jesus as Lord to have a group of people that they regularly meet with to talk about faith.

Pam and I have been a part of this group for around 10 years and while we have loved it for a long time (I’ve posted about it before here and in several other posts). We usually swap between reading through a book of the Bible (right now we are reading through 2 Samuel) and reading some devotional writing together (for example Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together“). I have loved our small group in the past but a couple of things have happened over the past 6 months that have caused me to love it all the more. They are:

  • We started eating a common meal together. Not really a potluck as much as a themed meal. We pick a theme and everyone brings a part of the meal. For example, yesterday the theme was pulled pork, which Pam fixed, someone brought buns, another person brought chips, another coleslaw, etc, etc. We meet at 6 so the meal is always nice and easy so no one has to rush to make something complicated. Eating a meal together with this group is one of my favorite parts of the week.
  • We have a great deal of diversity in age ad experience. From almost retired to born only a few months ago. Our kids, well except for our youngest group member, contribute to the conversation. I print out kid bulletins pertaining to the passages we are reading (we typically read 3 chapters a week from a book of the Bible to discuss) so they have something to do if they get bored, but usually they sit with us and add to the conversation about the subject.

This group of friends is fun to hangout with but they also help me to think about, know, and, more importantly, follow God better. During this Summer we have usually sat outside on our patio, eaten together, talked about scripture and faith, prayed with and for each other, and then often cooked smores together. I appreciate them so much.

I hope you have such a group. If not I hope you find one. If you are in the Point area you are welcome to join us. You may even get the Special Red Plate and therefore get to wear the small group crown that we have (yep we have a crown. It is pictured above)

SIDE NOTE – I think one of the most beautiful things in faith is a diverse group formed around nothing other than their common Lord eating together. I don’t mean friends, though that too is beautiful in a different manner, but instead people who aren’t eating together because they like each other’s company but because they love their Lord. Friends get together because they like spending time together. The Church gets together because we have a common Lord and there is something very beautiful when believers share a meal together. We grow to like each other because we realize Jesus loves the other person and we need to love the ones that Jesus loves. It is a different kind of meal.

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That Kind of Talk is UnAmerican

Recently I have seen some of my friends posting this poster of Superman telling some children that talking against a classmate because of his religion, race, or national origin is unAmerican. I can understand why they like the poster and why the would share it. I also worried that it might be a little too good to be true.

It isn’t.

In fact the real story is even better. It wasn’t initially a poster but a book cover. This image and message was created for kids to cover their books and walk around there schools with. Here’s the book cover.

You can read the full story HERE.