Blog Posts
It's tax season. It's the time of year where tax commercials are played constantly. From the H&R Block's "It's Refund Season" to the Jackson Hewitt "This is how we do it" commercials, we are lulled into sleep by the fact that it is a good thing to get a tax refund. In all reality, a tax refund is just the government paying you back the money that you loaned them over the course of the year.
Generosity is one of the greatest things that we can give with our time or even our money. The Lord calls for us to be generous and this calling is a calling of faith. How faithful are you? Do you trust in the Lord to provide, when you give away the money that you earned?
Many people in the United States feel like that they need a brand new car. I have heard the reasons before and these reasons deal a lot with the cost of owning an older car. Statements like, "An older car will cost too much in monthly expenses," and"I don't want that car to dollar me to death." The mindset is that a older car will cost more per month than a brand new car. The issue is that most people take out a loan to buy that brand new car. Therefore, these people have traded a false sense of security for a bunch of debt payments.
Over the weekend, I was checking my Personal Capital dashboard to see how bad the down market has hurt our net worth. As you would imagine, our net worth took a hit, just like everyone else. This does not mean that I am running to the hills and selling everything. We have to remember that retirement investing is an investment for the long haul and we can't get scared by a dip in the market. It is always important to remember this fact whenever the nightly news scares you into thinking that this is the crash to end all mankind. Don't worry, the market will recover and we will be better off than we were before.
We took out a mortgage in August of 2015 and our first payment was due on October 1, 2015. Although, we have payed all of our mortgage payments around the 15th of the previous month, because that was when we would put money in our savings accounts prior to purchasing the house. This means in 2015, we payed 4 minimum mortgage payments and we also payed 4 extra principal payments.
