Things You Can Do When You Aren't Broke, Part 2

We all say we support our military. But when you aren't broke and living beyond your means, you can really support the men & women who protect & defend our freedom. Give this video a watch, and for more on the I Like Giving campaign, go here...

Stuff You Can Do When You Aren't Broke, Pt. 1

When you have a written budget in place and live on less than you make, you get the chance to do some really cool stuff. Christy & I have never given anyone a car, but we have gotten to do a few generous giving things. And it's a ton of fun...
Give this video a watch.... For more on the I Like Giving campaign, go here...

Update on the $1 Coin

A week ago I reported that I took out $50 in $1 coins to see what it would be like to use those instead of $1 bills. You can read that post here....
I've spent about $30 worth of them at several fast food places and a couple of grocery stores. I'm kinda disappointed... For the most part none of the cashiers have batted an eye at the coins. I had spent a $1 coin a while back and the cashier didn't know what to do with it. This experience is what prompted my little experiment.
But I haven't had any unusual encounters this time around. The cashiers have taken the coins just like it was cash.
I think I'm going to keep going with the $1 coins. As part of our budget, each pay period I take out $32 for my our ending money. For a while I'm going to take that out in $1 coins.
In Canada they don't have $1 bills, just coins. There's been several attempts to do that in America, but experience with the metric shows Americans aren't big on change...

Northern' Lights, 10-12-12

We have a decent camera, but I'm pretty clueless on how to use it. So these photos don't even begin to do them justice.
The full album can be found here...

3000 were killed, 3000 were saved...

I was listing to a message from Steve Furtick today and he pointed out something amazing that I had never seen before. The link to the message is here and the action starts at the 5:50 mark...

In Exodus 32, Moses goes up on the mountain and comes back down with the laws of God written upon stone tablets. As he comes back into the camp, he discovered that in his absence the people had turned from God and was worshiping that which was not God. In his anger, Moses smashed the tablets and commanded the Levites to take up their swords and slay those who were in rebellion and 3000 were killed that day.

If you skip ahead to Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit is poured out on the believers as part of the new convenant, Peter stands up and preaches the message of the great gospel of Christ. After Peter spoke, the book of Acts tells us that 3000 people were saved that day.

The law which brings death has been fully canceled by Spirit, which brings life.

The $1 Coin

So a few weeks ago I need to spray some gunk out of the bed of my truck. I swung by the coin operated car wash place and stuck my $10 bill into the change machine. It spit out ten $1 coins. I only used six of them, so I threw the rest in my change holder in my truck.
A few days later I was at a drive thru and paid using those dollar coins... The young lady taking my money was complete confused by them. She asked if they were real money...
So I decided to do an experiment. I took out $50 in one dollar coins from the bank this morning. Some are the presidential one dollar coins, some are the Sacagawea dollar coins and a few are the old Susan B. Anthony dollar coins. I'm going to spend them over the next little bit and see what sort of reactions I get.
I've already spent $5 worth, but it was in a self-checkout line at the store...

Here's how they came from the bank:

Here's how they look in a pile:

 And here they are lined up across my dash:

Sunset Moonrise

These photos were taken on September 30th, 2012 at 8pm. Gone are the summer days of the midnight sun and not yet are the winter days of dark. To the west the sun sets and to the east the harvest moon rises. The air is crisp with promises of colder weather to come.