I feel the bondage of debt, and I don't even have that much. I have student loans, and a very small amount of credit card debt. You hear all the time about people with tens of thousands in credit card debt, car payments up the wazoo, just barely squeaking by in their heavily mortgaged house with every modern convenience known to man. The problem with all that is not the consumerism, as we're often told. Stuff is not a problem in and of itself. However, the people with the most stuff se...

So I started my debt reduction program. Since it's tax refund time, that went immediately to paying off the midwife for my new baby's birth, and an older debt, a matress I had bought on credit that was supposed to have been paid off with last year's tax refund. I haven't actually paid the midwife, though. The other debt was an under $20 medical bill that we just never got around to paying off. But now it is! 2 down, many more to go. I also got my first ever bonus check from work. I...

So, yeah. Here we are again, with actual proof that poor people live better than middle-income people. There was no category for stupidity, by the way, or it would have gone there. Someone I know, who make less than me, has 4 kids under the age of 5, and a wife who always complains that they are running out of food at the end of the month even though they're on food stamps, WIC, and any other government program... has now purchased (on credit of course) $6,000 worth of brand new furnit...

I recently read a book called Raising a Modern Day Knight . This book pretty much said that ceremony is a great way to mark the passage of boys to men, and throughout the long transition. For example, when a boy is hitting puberty, it is a natural right of passage. However, adding a meaningful ceremony, during which the passage to manhood is explained, and the expectations of being a man are laid out to him. An example ceremony was simply taking the son out to dinner, with the following ...

So, last time we discussed how awful debt is. So today we will discuss how to get out of it. First, you have to be current with all your bills. Pay your rent, tithe, electric, heat, credit cards, student loans, home mortgage, everything up to the minimum you have to pay. Until you do that, you shouldn't be worried about paying stuff off. If you don't have the money to get current, sell something. If you are renting to own something, and are not even close to owning it, take it back to...