Live [Simply] Free

• Home
• About
• Twitter
• Contact

10-26-11

kingdom currency

I first heard the phrase “king­dom cur­rency” used by a friend while I was in Kenya. He was refer­ring to the body of Christ shar­ing out of the same pocket. That’s exactly how our mis­sion team func­tioned the whole month in Kenya. Some­times I paid for everyone’s bus tick­ets, and then other days dif­fer­ent peo­ple paid for all my meals. No one kept track of money, we just paid for things as it came along. I have no idea how much I spent on oth­ers or how much was spent on me. It was a unique way of liv­ing, but what I con­sider a bib­li­cal way.

Like I said, that was unique. There were dif­fer­ent vari­ables on that trip that made that type of liv­ing con­ducive. Here in the States it can’t work exactly that way. How­ever, that same con­cept of one purse is healthy. I love being gen­er­ous. I’m always buy­ing peo­ple cof­fee or help­ing out where I can. I never look at the total or take a receipt. I don’t expect peo­ple to pay me back or return the favor. I just want other believ­ers to have the same will­ing­ness to give from their pocket.

It’s such a touchy sub­ject. I know bud­gets are a good thing, and you can’t spend with­out keep­ing track of your expenses to some extent. I gen­er­ally know my lim­its, and I know I’m not going to go broke by doing sim­ple things like buy­ing peo­ple cof­fee or a meal. Chris­tians need to real­ize that what we have is ulti­mately God’s, and there­fore if we see a need, we need to be more lib­eral than we prob­a­bly are with our money. It’s king­dom cur­rency and I choose to live it out.

09-20-10

Debt is Debt

One of the best deci­sions I ever made in my life was to make a con­scious deci­sion to be finan­cially independent.

DEBT IS DEBT

To me there is no such thing as good debt, it just sounds like mar­ket­ing nonsense.

It’s sim­ply a way for banks to lull you into a false sense of secu­rity to make you think that overex­tend­ing your­self finan­cially by buy­ing a house out of your price range is a good thing. Yeah right.

Whether you owe because you went col­lege to get a bach­e­lors, or whether you maxed out your credit card for a splashy vaca­tion — it is still money you spent that you didn’t have to begin with, and you now owe it to some­one else.

JOB DEPENDENCE IS A FORM OF INDEBTNESS

If you live on the finan­cial edge, heav­ily in debt but with­out any sav­ings, you will always be a slave to your job, because you will always need the money to make it to the next month.

Liv­ing pay­cheque to pay­cheque is not a life, you are not a slave to any­one or to any com­pany unless you make your­self one.

YOU CANNOT BE FREE IF YOU ARE TIED TO FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS

If you find your­self think­ing about your credit card bal­ance as you are try­ing to fall asleep at night, it is a sign that it is a dark cloud that is chok­ing your qual­ity of life.

Think­ing about your debt, lack of sav­ings and lack of finan­cial secu­rity for the future is not what mod­ern life is sup­posed to be all about.

5 STEPS TO FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

1. Get out of debt
Face your num­bers, make a plan, muster up some dis­ci­pline and stick to it. This is not as dif­fi­cult as one might imag­ine, and there is a plethora of infor­ma­tion out there on how to build a bud­get. You can start here with all of my best posts on debt and saving.

2. Stop bor­row­ing
Cut your­self off from access to easy money; this means credit cards, lines of credit, bor­row­ing from fam­ily mem­bers or friends and going past your bank account limit.

If you never stop bor­row­ing, you will never be able to dig your­self out of the hole.

3. Live below your means
If you spend $2000 a month now, think cre­atively on how you can cut it down by half.

It might seem impos­si­ble to many of you: “HALF!?”, but it is a solid, quan­tifi­able goal that will push you to go far­ther than just vaguely say­ing you want to spend less money.

It is very pos­si­ble if you re-​​evaluate your mind­set of why you should spend what you spend.

Start shop­ping smarter by sav­ing at the gro­cery store, cook­ing at home rather than eat­ing out, and learn­ing how to tell your­self “No” when you are tempted.

4. Start sav­ing
Even $10 a month is bet­ter than noth­ing, and with the magic of com­pound­ing inter­est, you could have $1000 in approx­i­mately 7 years.

Imag­ine if you saved $100? Or $500 a month? Think about it. You could have a lot more, sooner.

5. Ignore naysay­ers
Peo­ple will tell you that your lifestyle is unsus­tain­able.. and it most cer­tainly it is, but not for you, for them.

If you can do it, go for it.

Peo­ple told me all the time that putting 50% of my pay­cheque towards my debt was nuts, and I would never be able to do it.

Don’t be trapped by what peo­ple think you should do or buy. There are NO lim­i­ta­tions to how far you can go because you are the only one who can judge your own com­fort level.

Another good exam­ple is my lifestyle:
I’m a min­i­mal­ist, so I don’t like to spend money on fur­ni­ture because I don’t see a point for it in my life; all I own is a Japan­ese futon for the floor, a fold­ing table and fold­ing chairs.

I save a lot of cash doing this, because I never have to pay for mov­ing costs (my mini­van is enough), I don’t actu­ally spend money on fur­ni­ture, and I don’t need to main­tain it.

How­ever when I men­tion this, peo­ple look at me askew and I hear a lot of:

“How can you live like that?”

“You should get your­self to an IKEA, because they have cheap fur­ni­ture if you can’t afford any­thing better.”

Does it hurt to hear that kind of neg­a­tiv­ity? Sometimes.

It’s hard not to feel defen­sive or attacked, when peo­ple auto­mat­i­cally assume that you’re poor just because you don’t own a couch, a flat screen TV, lots of fur­ni­ture and you would rather rent than buy a home.

You have to keep in mind that it is your life, not theirs, and you not want­ing to do or buy things you are sup­posed to, doesn’t make you weird because there are plenty of oth­ers like you.

05-31-10

The #1 Tip for Becoming Rich

To “live free” through sim­plic­ity implies many things includ­ing finan­cial free­dom.  It doesn’t come with­out dis­ci­pline, but it’s worth­while.  This is accom­plished through use of cer­tain vocabulary.

“No” - we’re hard wired to think when there’s buy 1 get 1 free, we’re get­ting a deal when actu­ally, you’re still spend­ing money

“Not now” — legit­i­mate needs aren’t always imme­di­ate needs

“I don’t need it” — some things we just plain don’t need. I sug­gest try­ing the 30-​​day challenge

A per­son asked me how I’ve made so much money in such a lit­tle time.  “Easy”, I said, “I don’t spend any of it.”

03-31-10

the completely achievable path to generosity

Link: the com­pletely achiev­able path to generosity

i have never seen a study on pos­i­tive qual­i­ties that peo­ple would like to have, but i bet if we asked ten peo­ple if they wanted to be con­sid­ered a gen­er­ous per­son, ten would say “yes.”…

03-23-10

The Simple Guide to Making Money Online

Link: The Sim­ple Guide to Mak­ing Money Online

5 Steps Toward Addi­tional Income Streams In Order to Quit Your Day Job.

Writ­ten by Everett Bogue | Fol­low me on Twit­ter.

This is the sec­ond post in a series on quit­ting your day…