So recently (over the past 6 months), I have some to realize my own financial cluelessness. (Don't worry, obviously not in the same ball park as my father.) It's amazing. I went to school for 6 years and had only a single 45 min lecture on personal/ family finance. Back in June, we got a copy of our credit report. I was absolutely shocked. We were paying mass quantities of our income in debt, not including student loans or our home. Our payments were equal to our mortgage payment. It didn't really even know how it happened. (I have since slowly come to understand. Ironically- Most of it came out of simple ignorance and not knowing how to plan.) Fortunately, we had a copy of "Transforming Debt into Wealth" by John Cummuta. I had listened to it before, and we had made modifications accordingly, but I guess this time, we were ready. Basically, he presents a plan similar to "One for the money" that the church publishes. Only this program provides a lot more education in the process. Well, 6 months later, we have recovered much of those resources, and by April, we will have recovered the remainder. And in the process of our learning, we have discovered something amazing.... the path to financial security and freedom. I think there's some hope for us.
Even better, if we stay on target and don't loose our way, Ian will have something I don't have... Parents to are comfortable in their retirement- and can take care of his college- so he can focus on doing great things with his life.
Maybe, in the distant future, we will even be stable enough to make a real difference for my father. In the meantime, I'm satisfied with learning to manage finances myself. It's already made a huge difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment