Earning It's Keep

I guess I should have known that Barbara would have the tractor earning its keep.  We are working on a retaining wall and I am busy moving rocks and dirt.  The kind of fun thing is to maneuver the tractor between the Ford, the trees and get the rocks close enough to where they are going to finally be.  I swear that my hands are busier than a teenager at a Drive-in Movie.  I may need to take up Yoga to get limber enough to watch in front and behind as I maneuver the beast.

Dave Ramsey is doing a piece about trivia in our lives that gets reported over and over.  He call it "Stupid Butt Stuff" that gets reported on Facebook, e-mails and reality TV.   Some people become so tied up with the daily trivia that we become enslaved by it.  He says the cure for the enslavement is to work on having real goals and working on important things not the unimportant.  He also points out that Scopes is the place to look up the stupid things before tying up the net with trivial things that are wrong.


On the other hand, many of us have goals and don't have a clue how to actualize them.  Starting on the biggest goal, you need to break that goal down  into smaller steps and then figure out what you can pay for this year and then the next.  That becomes you program and then you need to budget your money to make them happen.  The biggest mistake people make is to be over aggressive with their budget and lose focus on what you are doing.   Giving up is a whole lot easier than working hard.  


Barbara and I have been paid once a month for most of our life.  I am pretty sure that this helped us understand the value of spending less than we made.  I have watched her build up our "Emergency Fund" each month until she could start moving the extra funds from a checking account to our savings account.  I think we always talked about what we wanted (goals) and what we are spending our money on (budget).  

I am always reminded of the poster on the back of the bathroom wall Mom had in Arkansas. " Happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you have."  

My Mother in Eldorado, KS

Had she lived, Mom would have been 90 yesterday.  We ate a piece of pie in honor of her birthday.  

MUD