Posts Tagged ‘Catholic school’
Doubting Thomas
I’m going to go somewhere on this blog that I really haven’t before — church. As you all know, my daughter attends Catholic school. Part of that deal is that we attend to church on Sundays (not that we didn’t do that before. However, I do have to admit that we go more now that she goes to school there). I try not to go into too much religion here, because I don’t want to offend others that aren’t my religion. However, our priest brought up something in our homily on Sunday that mirrors life too much that I can’t not comment on it.
In the Catholic Church, we are in the Easter season. Our readings and homily were about Thomas and how the term doubting Thomas has come around. Father Wayne talked about how many of us have seen Jesus (nobody raised their hand of course). However, even though we’ve never seen God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, we all believe in them. (There was more to the homily than this but this is jist of it).
Last night, Bill made the comment to me about how real life right now is mirroring this homily. The news was lamenting on about how Obama isn’t going to release the pictures of a dead Osama bin Laden. How does this tie into the homily (if you haven’t caught it yet)?
Our government has said he’s dead. I have to go on the faith that they are telling the truth. Even though I can’t see with my own very eyes (like I can’t see Jesus), I have to believe that he is. I’m not a Doubting Thomas.
Personally, I don’t want to see these pictures, and I do not think they should be released. Just because we are citizens of the United States doesn’t mean we are privy to things like this. Plus, those people who are clamoring so much for them aren’t going to believe that the pictures are real anyway (remember Obama’s long for birth certificate).
What are your thoughts? Do you believe Osama is dead? Do you want to see the pictures? Why? And if your Catholic, do you have a homily that really struck home for you?
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Managing Your Finances
Thank you to TurboTax for sponsoring my writing about household finances.Learn more about how TurboTax can help you find every tax deduction you deserve. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.
Managing your finances is something that every family strives to do. I think in these times it is especially hard since so many people are out of work. Even Bill’s company has done layoffs, and they weren’t based on seniority. It is definitely a time that puts everyone on edge, because from day to day, you don’t know if your husband, your friends, or if your other family members are going to keep their jobs.
That being said, there are certain things you can do to help manage your finances. Something that has worked well for my family is that we hid money from our ourselves. I use a program on my computer to balance my checkbook. What I have done is that for our savings account on there, I’ve created “fake” accounts. For example, I have a “Christmas/Vacation Fund”, a “Tuition” fund (this pays for Madison’s Catholic school tuition), car insurance fund, homeowner’s insurance fund, and even a “TV” fund. I know, what’s a TV fund. We don’t buy big ticket items (like Bill’s big screen tv that’s downstairs) without having the money first. What we do is hide the money in our savings account and take the free financing. In the meantime, we are collecting interest on this money (plus it is available to use in an emergency situation).
Something else we do is charge everything. I know — you are screaming “WHAT!!??!!”. The key to this is being able to pay off these credit card charges every month. The reason we charge everything we can is because 1% of whatever we charge is taken off the principal of our mortgage. We do nothing — it automatically gets transferred there in $25 increments. This is better than any cash back or point system we’ve ever used. We slowly are paying down our mortgage doing something that we would have done anyway. We even charged the new siding we put on our house last year!
Every family has to do what works for them. Not everybody is able to hide money from themselves and NOT spend it. We are able to, and that has helped my family manage our finances. What do you do?
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