What’s the difference between wanting something and needing something?

Mark 12:44 is the best example I can find from the Bible. It’s Jesus' conclusion about the poor widow who put two meager coins into the offering box. He says that she has given more than all the wealthy with their lavish gifts,

“for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.”

I found this idea on Jake Seliger’s blog The Story’s Story and it seemed pretty insightful….

List the ten most expensive things (products, services, or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements, and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.

I made the two lists below; it took me several hours to think of the ten things that bring me the most happiness. The point of the exercise, of course, is to realize that Stuff (with a capital “S”) should be there to give us energy, not to take it away. Thankfully, most of the items I’ve spent money on thus far in my life are also on my list of things that have made me happy! Now, the idea is to get rid of the stuff that doesn’t, and not spend money on anything that won’t.

I’ve struggled with this post (and it’s a couple of days late) because I really don’t know what to do for resolutions this year… 2009 was the first year I ever made resolutions, and putting them online turned out to be pretty good motivation, so I wanted to do it again. But I have no idea what to resolve for 2010. I could go the comedy way, but I want to actually accomplish something. So I’ve searched teh Interwebs and taken whatever I can find.

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I did it.

2. Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
   This worked great. I highly recommend it.

3. Contribute the maximum amount to my Roth IRA account.
   $5,000 in. Good to go.

4. Build a three-month emergency fund.
   Done.

5. Get my two mile run time under 15 minutes.
   14:33 on the treadmill last week, since it was too cold to go outside. That doesn’t really count, but in the end I took more than two minutes off my two-mile time this year. That’s pretty good.

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I have exactly ten pages of the Bible left to read in December. I’m in Revelation 5, when a bunch of seals start getting opened. Talk about some crazy stuff.

2. Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
   Once again the budget saved us. Aside from having four people over for Thanksgiving (plus ourselves!) we upgraded our media center and paid almost $400 dollars to fix the truck again after the front part of the starter fell off and broke into a bunch of tiny pieces inside the flywheel housing. But it all got paid without touching our emergency savings. Hooray budgets!

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   In all of October, I’ve read just 14 pages (to page 916) but that’s included Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews 1-4. Partly it’s also a symptom of the fact that these books are so packed with knowledge and insight into our lives in Christ, but two verses came together this morning to make it clear: I need to consider Jesus (Hebrews 3:1) and pay much closer attention (Hebrews 2:1). Still very much on track to make my goal, but I want all my reading to be worthwhile - for it to bear fruit that remains (John 15:4-5).

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I’ve just finished Colossians, page 902. 47 pages to go this year.

2. Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
   The wife and I barely bought anything this month aside from groceries, so this was too easy.

3. Contribute the maximum amount to my Roth IRA account.
   Yep.

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I’m now on page 863, Romans 8. I’ve read every chapter in Romans two or three times - I’d forgotten how long it’s been since I’ve read the New Testament. There is so much more to God and the Gospel that I’ve been missing! Romans 3:10, for example. 86 pages remaining, but a lot of meaty stuff (Hebrews 5:14). What are you reading? How do you divide up the Bible for reading? Why? What are you getting out of it?

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   Another 50 pages down, still slow, but I’m pretty bogged down in everything right now. Consistency is the name of the game for me now.

2. Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
   Still going strong with no balance on the card.

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I’ve moved from page 729 to page 777 and finished Matthew and Mark this month; I wish I could say that it’s because I’m spending so much time meditating on each passage but it’s actually just because I’m spending so little time reading. At fifty pages a month and a little under two hundred pages to go, I’ll certainly finish the whole thing this year, but I’d like to be able to focus more on what I’m reading. Now that I’m into the schedule for my work training, that should get easier, but life is pretty hectic. I’ve got to do a better job of setting aside time to read the Word.

This month’s issue of Metropolitan Home (which I subscribed to for free) has a very interesting article about a very cool house.

It’s 25 feet square - 575 square feet.

My current apartment feels cozy, and it’s 1019 square feet - almost twice the size of the house in the article. But I can’t help wondering how cool it would be to get rid of all the clutter that having so much space generates. Maybe I wouldn’t go quite as extreme as 575 square feet

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23 this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   This didn’t happen. In April, I wrote that I had only read 71 pages in an entire month; this month, I’ve gone from page 485 to page 729 - 244 pages. A major improvement, but not enough. I finished the Old Testament on May 21, and it’s pretty taxing to read the entire New Testament in two days when you’re trying to get married. So I’m back to the original goal, reading the entire Bible, at least one chapter per day, before the end of the year. I’m pretty sure I can finish the remaining 220 pages of my Bible this year. While I’m not happy that I missed this goal, I know I can’t change things now so the best thing to do is keep pressing on.

Seth Godin has a great post today about the difference between luxury goods and premium goods. His insight into luxury goods - “Luxury goods are organized waste,” is spot on. Luxury goods are when you pay more for a designer’s logo. I don’t buy luxury goods. Premium goods, he writes, are “Pay more, get more.” I own a $200 Benchmade knife. While it probably didn’t need to cost that much, it is very high quality. I wanted a premium knife when I bought it. There were plenty of $500+ luxury knives on the Benchmade website, but none of them would have performed any better than mine.

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   At the end of March, I was on page 414 of 949, starting Psalms. Today I finished Psalms, and I’m on page 485. Nothing near the 300 pages I had planned to read this month, so I’m way behind. No excuse. I have to make time for God in my life, and that means I have to make time to read, study, and meditate on His Word.

1. Read through my Bible this year before I get married May 23; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I’m on Psalm 1 today, and I haven’t done today’s reading yet; page 414 of 949. I’m slightly behind the curve for finishing before May 23, but it’s definitely still an achievable goal. Gotta hit the Book!

2. Use my credit card whenever possible but never carry a balance.
   Going well so far!

I’m three days behind again; maybe I’ll claim I thought it was February 31st?

1. Read through my Bible this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   I’m on page 310 (I Chronicles 1:1) of 949, or 32.6% finished, not including what I’ll read this afternoon. That puts my average at just over 5 pages per day, finishing on July 5. I’m upping the ante. I want to finish the entire Bible before May 23, my wedding day. I’ll need to average just under 8 pages per day to get there, but it’s doable. Way doable. And the reading I’ve done so far has given me a lot of insight, like I Kings 14:8. It says that David kept God’s commandments and followed Him with all his heart… so they’re two different things; not that you can follow Him and not keep His commandments, but it’s possible to keep His commandments halfheartedly. I want to be like David and do both!

I know, I’m getting married. But we all get carried away sometimes by marketing hype… what office worker can resist an Embody Chair? I think the next big step for me in living a frugal lifestyle and building wealth is to ditch the marketing. It’s amazing to me that I somehow still fall for marketing, since I browse ad-free, I don’t watch television, and most of the ads on Hulu (where I watch Bones with my fiancé) aren’t even for purchased products - they’re for stuff like Feed The Pig, which, ironically enough, is a website devoted to saving! So how do I get caught up in marketing hype? Somehow it happens.

Well, it’s already February 3, so I’m a few days behind, but here’s my monthly update on how things are going with my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions, point-by-point.

1. Read through my Bible this year; the entire thing, cover to cover, reading at least a chapter every single day.
   Well, I missed a few days here and there, but none in the last two weeks. I finished Numbers and started Deuteronomy this morning, and I’ve been struck by some of the things I never noticed before, like the fact that the Ark of the Covenant had a cover over it whenever Israel moved, so all those movies where you see the ark itself being carried are missing something. Anther verse I found particularly interesting was Deuteronomy 4:9; it points right towards one of my favorite sermons, that forgetfulness is like faith cancer. As soon as the nation of Israel began to forget the things God had done for them, they strayed from the path… In Deuteronomy 4:9, Moses implores them not to forget, but to tell their children and their grandchildren about the goodness of God!!!

This weekend I found, by way of Get Rich Slowly, a post from Coleman Unlimited that intrigued me about the usefulness of credit cards. The post’s basic point, lost on me when I made my New Years’ resolutions, is that some credit cards do, in fact, pay you money!

Upon checking my account online, I found that my credit card has earned between 0.35 and one percent cash back on all my purchases. My debit card, for comparison, earns half a percent.

I’ve never made New Year’s resolutions before, but I think this is a great year to start. Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.” I know that there are a lot of things in my life that aren’t even right in my own eyes when I look back on them, and if even a fool thinks his way is right, what does that make me?

Yes, I have a degree in computer science. Yes, I own my own domain(s). No, I don’t host my own website.

It’s fantastic.

Lifehacker, one of my favorite websites, ran an article on hosting a domain with free tools. I’m all about free stuff. So here it is.