Michael & Liz are Bloggable

This first section is called "Commitments". There is so many ways in which I can write this post and I know that I am going to leave something out so bear with me. Within the past two days, two books have caught my eye and they are the source of this blog post.

Every Sunday I have an hour between the time our church service ends and the time I pick Liz up from choir. Yesterday I decided to go to Borders books and just browse around the personal finance section. Ever since Jacob gave me two Dave Ramsey books and two of Dave's videos for being a groomsman in Annie and Jacob's wedding, I have been obsessed with personal finance. I created a budget for our family. We have dumped our credit cards and haven't used them since May. We really have started to head on an awesome path to financial success. Yesterday when I went to Borders, it was to find more motivation and more information on things that Liz and I can do to continue to improve our situation.

I came across a book called "Debt Cures" by some guy named Trudeau. The premise was ways in which you can work to get out of debt. Granted we have no credit card debt, but we have payments on things like my car and we are working to pay off that debt, so this book understandingly intrigued me. I very quickly realized that this book is the complete antithesis of who I am as a person and every approach he suggests on getting out of debt goes against every intuition I have. It had chapter after chapter of "tips and tricks" to "cutting your $30,000 debt in half" and "becoming free of the burden of debt". At one point he actually said "your debt is not your fault". I'll admit, in the hour of time I had, I didn't read the whole book but in skimming through the chapters, reading all the tricks, and getting 4/5 of the way through, I can honestly say that the one solution I expected to find was no where to be found. ACTUALLY PAY IT!! I wanted to scream at the book and throw it down. It makes me so angry that anyone would follow these suggestions.

The other book doesn't have a long story behind it. Today Liz and I went to the library and in skimming the personal finance section, I found the book "Beat Your Ticket: Go To Court and Win!". It's the exact same concept. Instead of being a citizen and paying the penalty that you incurred, go waste someone's time and you'll be OK. It's like spilling coffee on yourself and being angry that it's hot... and somewhere someone is a millionaire for it.

People say college is the place where you find yourself and you figure out who you are. Honestly I don't think I found out who I was in college but instead after I was done with it and I had free time on my hands. One characteristic I found in myself is that when I find a passion in my life, I wrap my mind and body around it as much as possible and relentlessly dedicate and commit myself to it. It's irrelevant whether or not that leads to success because sometimes it doesn't. Liz over the past couple months has said to me "can we not talk about finances anymore?" because it has become a passion of mine and it's all I think about. When I commit to something, it consumes my brain during any free moments of the day. There are SO many examples and personal finance is just one. It happened and is currently happening with running. It happened with every website I've ever developed. It happens with every with New Year's Resolution (Liz and I haven't had a soda since 2007). It happens all over my life and that's just part of who I am.

So it's the characteristic of commitment that drives me crazy about those two books. They are directed toward people who don't want to take responsibility for the burden they committed to. I know that a speeding ticket is not a commitment but it's denying your responsibility as disappointing as it may be to you. As a citizen, you need to suck it up and just pay it. Reading through it opened my eyes to who I am as a person so at least I got something out of it.

This second section is called "Challenges". One thing that has been on my mind for the past two weeks that the "debt cures" book made so incredibly evident is that I love challenges. I love difficult challenges. I'm going to use the example of running because of how difficult it is. If running a marathon was easy, then everyone would do it. But it's not easy. It's actually excruciatingly painful. Most of the time I don't enjoy running past 3 miles. I usually grumble when leaving the house. I'm not going to joke that running a marathon is fun. I don't think I've ever actually answered the question "why do you do that?" What I've realized, it's because I thrive off challenges and I'd rather not just wait for life to throw challenges at me. Without trying to run a marathon, I wouldn't have ever had the feeling of crossing the finish line in Nashville. I put everything I had into it and I crossed with tears and sobs of joy. It's really a unique feeling that would take forever to describe.

I think the other reason I love the challenge of marathons is because when my body has gotten old enough that I can't do them anymore, I don't want to feel like I threw away my best athletic years and look back wondering what I did. I know there is going to be a day when I want so badly to run and my legs will just say no. At that point I can at least take solace in knowing that I did it when I could.

I love the challenge of staying on a budget. I love the challenge of rebuilding my deck even though I know very little about deck construction. I love the challenge of paying off a debt early and going against the grain of payments. I love the challenge of going a year without a soda. I love the challenge of teaching a stubborn dog to just set it's butt on the ground when I tell it to.

So commitments and challenges. They have caused me to think about things in the future I want to accomplish. Some are short-term obsessions and some are long-term challenges.

• Run a marathon in a foreign country (maybe Paris or Athens?).
• Accomplish the financial goals Liz and I set out for ourselves before 2012.
  
• Finish the deck and plant bushes around it.
  
• Organize the garage with shelves. (this was a new years resolution too, but our budget killed that idea for a while).
  
• Run a marathon under 4 hours.
• Take my lovely Liz on a 2012 Europe trip.
  

I don't want this list to get out of hand or become unreachable and I've said enough in this post, so I'll stop there.