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Denzel Washington Visits Hospitalized Troops - 2004

An email is being circulated, and is still going around, that Denzel Washington visited injured troops at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX, in December 2004. He and his family did visit BAMC at that time. However, the email contains rumors about a charitable donation Mr. Washington made and some contain rumors that his son was in the military.

Denzel Washington and his family toured BAMC and one of the Fisher Houses, visited with troops hospitalized at BAMC, and took part in a Purple Heart ceremony for 3 Army soldiers wounded in Iraq. Mr. Washington made a sizable donation to the Fisher House Foundation after his visit. He did not take out his check book and write a check for the entire amount on the spot. Fisher House President David Coker said in a later interview that Mr. Washington doesn't generally carry his check book with him. His eldest son was not in the military at that time. He was a senior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.

I think it's wonderful that Mr. Washington and his family visited troops, supports them, and gave substantially to make their recovery from war injuries a little easier. I wish a lot more celebrities would be a whole lot more supportive of our troops, and especially our injured troops.

What I don't understand is why someone has to start rumors to embellish a good deed. Isn't the act of visiting our troops, encouraging them, making their hospital stay just a little bit brighter and making the donation the real issue? It doesn't matter if the donation was made on the spot or if it covered the entire cost of a new facility.

Fisher Houses are low-cost hotels within walking distance of on-base medical facilities for the families of the military who are hospitalized and recovering from illness, injury or disease. Everyone who is sick or injured recovers more quickly and with better outcomes when they are surrounded by their loved ones, military or civilian. Fisher Houses make it affordable (~$10/day) for military families to stay close to their hospitalized military member.



Brooke Army Medical Center is one of the top military hospitals in the world offering many specialties and sub-specialties including: Burn Unit, Bone Marrow Transplants, Trauma, Neurosurgery, General Surgery, Gynecology, Cardiothoracic Surgery and Oncology.

Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX, is known as the Home of the Combat Medic. Today, Fort Sam Houston is the largest and most important military medical training facility in the world. The role of the combat medic has grown as medical knowledge and technology have grown. They are the emergency medical technicians of the military and are the first line of treatment when a soldier, marine, sailor or airman is injured or falls ill. They provide essential treatment to stabilize and evacuate sick and injured military personnel to the next line of treatment, often a field hospital or hospital ship. More military personnel survive combat injuries and illnesses than ever before because of the expertise of combat medics. If you visit the Post's website, be sure to click on the "About" link and read the history of Fort Sam Houston. It's been a significant military installation since 1845.

I hope you will click on the links and learn more about the Fisher House Foundation and Fort Sam Houston, and how you can make a donation of money, time, and even airline frequent flier miles so family members can fly to the location of their loved one. Other programs are also available to the military and their family members. Many military families don't have the financial resources to afford travel and accommodations without assistance.

Too many Americans today have forgotten or never learned that freedom isn't free. Many young men and women gave and continue to give their lives or live with devastating life-long injuries to protect and preserve the freedoms we enjoy. The next time you want to complain about the war or protest it or even burn a flag, remember that soldiers died to protect your right to do it.

Source: Snopes.com

My Mission

My motto is "be the change that you wish to see in the world" by Mahatma Gandhi. I believe that by living as we want the world to be, we will help to change it and make it a better place. If we never change what we're doing, the world won't change either. If you want the world to change, ask yourself what you personally can do that will make the changes you want to see. Take action to create the world you want to live in and leave for the future.

This isn't some pie-in-the-sky, feel-good endeavor. What I propose is common sense, practical decisions and actions that each person thinks about and decides to act on for himself or herself. I propose actions from simple acts of kindness to serving in the U.S. Armed Forces if that is your calling.

I grew up in the 1960's, but it's plain to me that "tuning in, turning on, and dropping out" didn't do much real good until those same people cut their hair and went to work with their enlightened ideas. Those hippies became the yuppies of the late 1970's and early 1980's and became amazingly centrist after a youth of idealistic liberalism.

The Vietnam debacle didn't do much for us either. That war did more damage to our military and U.S. citizen patriotism than just about anything else I can think of. It greatly saddens me that it took a terrorist attack on our own soil to rally citizens to be patriotic again. Patriotism still isn't what it was during and after World War II. I'm not sure that it can be with the news agencies entrenched in world conflicts and beaming sound, picture and video clips around the world without much perspective on what we see or hear. We get a lot of disjointed snippets without taking the effort to make sense of them from a big picture perspective. There is so much information coming at us now that I'm not sure it's possible to put together a representative big picture anymore, but we have to try and do the best we can. Without perspective nothing makes sense.

Here's what I'm doing to be the change

I help people get out of debt through my financial planning business and make better decisions with their money. When I can, I'll take personal finance education to high school and college students. It will change their entire future. People need to be debt-free and make smart money decisions to have a decent standard of living. Debt spiraling out of control is doing more damage than good to everyone.

I support our troops. They are making great sacrifices in their personal lives to serve us to insure our freedom. We live in a far more dangerous world than we did during the Cold War. At least back then we had a direct phone line to the people with the nuclear weapons. Now we don't even know where all the fissile material is. Some of it is missing and hasn't been found. I'll write more on that later. Our military out there defending our freedom and way of life is why I can write this blog and say whatever I choose to say.

I help educate kids in math and science through tutoring. The global world we live in needs workers well-schooled in math and science because we live in a technology-based economy. Better education generally translates into better jobs and better earning power.

I vote in nearly every election we have, and Louisiana has a bunch of little elections throughout the year for filling offices to voting on changing the State Constitution. Our State Constitution is written in such a way that it requires a vote of the people to make changes that other states can make through their state government. It's a really long story and I'm not going into it here, but big or small, I don't miss an election unless there is no way I can vote early or get to the polls because of serious illness or family emergency.

I drive less, consolidate trips to conserve fuel and recycle as much as possible. I conserve on electricity, gas and water usage. The cool thing about that is it's in our own immediate best interest. It saves us money if we conserve energy and recycle. I recently started putting compact fluorescent light bulbs in the high usages areas of the house. Compact fluorescent bulbs are much better than they used to be and often pay for themselves multiple times in much longer life and much lower energy use. They are also available for special fixtures such as ceiling fans, bathroom vanities and standard exterior fixtures. A 14-watt compact fluorescent bulb puts out the same number of lumens that a 60-watt incandescent bulb does and lasts for about 2 years (used 12 hours per day, 365 days per year). An incandescent bulb usually lasts 3-5 months (at least in my house).

We need to be better stewards of the planet. Global warming, climate change, and mass extinction theories aside, you can't convince me that more than 5 billion people aren't having some kind of impact on the natural order of the Earth. As Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts we were taught to leave things in better condition than we found them. That's wise advice no matter what the circumstance.

We need to be more tolerant of each other and we need to create equal opportunity for everyone. The U.S. currently has 42 million people who have no health insurance and households headed by full-time workers who are still below the poverty line. Poor children are poorly educated because the better teachers won't teach in poor districts, whether inner city or rural. This is unacceptable in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

The United States is 19th in the world on infant mortality. Our rate is 6.4 deaths prior to age 1 year per 1000 live births. Eighteen other developed countries beat us hands down on this statistic. This is also unacceptable in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

I decided to pay as much as I can forward by giving my time and prosperity with the only condition being the person receiving the gift give it to another who needs it in the future. I strongly believe that if everyone paid something forward, from money and other gifts to kindness to volunteering their time, the world would change for the better very quickly. We would all be thinking of something larger than ourselves by taking individual actions that, when added together, make a big difference. When we think and act for the greater good, the greater good happens and we all benefit.

I challenge you to find a cause you care about and take action to help change the world.

A Degree With a Pedigree? Don't Waste Your Money

Seth Godin posted a great article on his blog about attending top colleges vs. regular colleges and their outcomes. I gotta say kudos, Seth! You got it right.

I'd pit my public primary and secondary school education and my state public college education and degree against anyone's. And I didn't go into a ton of debt to get it either! I was able to work my way through college. My very small student loans were paid off within 7 years of graduation on a modest salary. My loan payments were less than most people's minimum credit card payments.

After you have a degree, nobody cares where you got it or even what your GPA is for long. What people care about is if you have the knowledge you need and if you can apply it, know how to get more and think to accomplish your work for your employer or in your own business. Your performance is what matters.

Given the choice, I'd hire a B-C average student from a local college because they probably had to work hard on studying to get those grades, or they had to work a job part-time or full-time to get a degree at all. They already know how to work. I wouldn't even consider a student from an Ivy League school. They wouldn't stay long enough for me to waste my time, energy and money training them. I'm a small business with no clout. Why would they even look at me as a potential employer? I believe they'd leave as soon as a more prestigious opportunity came along.

Stay Away From Payday Loans!!!

Payday loans are one of the worst problems in modern money culture. They should be illegal.

Here is a link to an article I wrote about payday loans:

The Predatory, Parasitic Problem of Payday Loans

Listen to the following podcast from the Dave Ramsey Show:



Never ever never ever never get a payday loan!

If you already have one, make it the first thing you pay off, even if you have to let other unsecured debt payments slide for a month or two.

You Really Can Live Without Debt

The banking and finance industry has advertised and talked up debt, and then extended credit where they shouldn't have for decades. They've been saying "you need debt" long enough and loud enough that most everyone believes it's the truth. It's not the truth.

Is it really possible in today's world to live without a credit card? Can you live without debts of any kind? The banking and finance industry would like to answer with a resounding NO! My answer is a resounding YES YOU CAN! You can indeed live debt-free. And now that they've invented debit cards, you don't even have to have one credit card for non-cash, non-check transactions.

What Too Many People Believe

Too many people believe the banking and finance industry. They believe they just can't live without debt.

• A good credit score is essential for survival in the modern world
• You can't have a car without car payments
• You can't live without debt
• Most people are doing okay financially

The Truth

"Most people are doing okay financially" is the biggest myth the American people have swallowed; hook, line and sinker. Most Americans make a good living, but are up to their eyeballs in debt, or worse. The current U.S. savings rate is -2.2%. That means the average American is spending more than he or she is earning.

We, as a country, are not doing okay financially at all.

What can be done to remedy this serious problem? Dave Ramsey, bestselling author of the book The Total Money Makeover, and host of his popular radio talk show has a great plan. I'll summarize it briefly for you here, but you'll have to read the book to get the full affect and benefit. He has 7 baby steps to take to win with money. I'm on his plan and it's working.

Live Below Your Means

"You can't live without debt" is a myth. You certainly can live without debt, and thousands of people do so each day for their whole lives. Many more are getting out of debt and continuing their lives completely debt-free. Want to know who those people are? People who spend less than they make and save up and pay cash for what they want to buy. If they can't afford to pay cash, they don't buy something until they can afford to pay cash.

Do you want to know why rich people stay rich? Rich people stay rich because they make more than they spend, and they don't buy on credit. They pay cash.

Can an average, middle income person live without debt? You're damn straight they can! It comes down to delayed gratification. If you want something and you can't afford it, you don't buy it until you've saved up enough money to pay for it with cash.

Before embarking on paying off all your debts, save a minimum of $1000 or some amount that you know you will need above that in a savings account to pay for emergencies while you're paying off your debts. If you know you're going to be laid off, put your efforts into an emergency fund to take care of expenses while you find another job. If you have a baby coming and you'll need a few months expenses while one of you takes parental leave from work, save up the amount that parent won't be making during that time.

If you're in debt, you can get out of debt by living below your means and using the money you save by reducing your lifestyle to pay off your debts.

You can temporarily get a second job at night or on weekends, or whenever your schedule allows to make extra money to apply to the debt until it's paid off.

You can also make money to pay off debt by selling some of the stuff lying around your house that you don't need or want anymore.

The harder you buckle down and the more you stick to necessities while paying off debt, the faster you'll have it paid off.

Cash for Emergencies -- Who'd a Thought That Was Possible?

Once you're out of debt, except for the first mortgage on your primary residence (which doesn't exceed 25% of your take-home pay), you need to build an emergency fund of 3-6 months of your monthly expenses (I prefer 6 -12 months) that sits in an interest-baring money market account until you need it for an emergency. Then you pay back the account instead of incurring debt on a credit card and having to pay interest on top of principal. Your emergency fund in the money market is like insurance and it needs to be thought of as insurance. It's not an investment. It's there in case you need it. It can earn interest, that's fine, but it needs to be readily accessible and not subject to fees and penalties to cash it out or the whims of the stock market.

Pay Yourself

Now you're out of debt and you have enough money to tide you over in an emergency. Now what? Start paying yourself for what you'll need to buy instead of paying credit bills.

You need to save for some long-term goals and you need to put money away for when big-ticket items need to be replaced. That means you need savings accounts for:

• homeowners insurance deductible (if it's high, which mine is)
  
• car replacement (should also include your car insurance deductible)
  
• furniture and appliances
  
• vacations
• irregular expenses
• gifts (including Christmas)
• blow money (if you can afford it)
  

Each month you pay into those savings accounts instead paying credit card bills. The bonus is if you put these accounts someplace like ING Direct, you can have a single customer number and a separate interest-baring savings account linked to your checking account for each item.

Yes, You Can Have a Car Without Payments

When it's time to buy another car, you use the money in your car replacement fund plus any amount you can get on your old car as a trade-in or sale to purchase a newer car with cash. That may mean you can't buy a $25,000 car the first time you buy a car with cash. You may have to trade in a $1000 car for a $5000 car. Then save up again and next time you'll be able to trade up again. Remember, you'll have plenty of money to save for the things you need and want to buy because you won't have any debt payments except your first home mortgage which accounts for a maximum of 25% of your take-home pay.

Saving for Your Retirement

You should save for your own retirement before you save for your children's college education. There is no financial aid for retirement, except social insecurity. I'm not counting on getting any of that when I reach age 67 in 20 or so years.

How much? 15% of your gross pay, not including any company match. The company match is extra and will make you wealthier, but don't count on it. If you have questions about that, just ask someone who used to work for Enron or Worldcom about the company match. Their's went away with the company's failures. The employee contributions were still there, however, depending on how much was invested in company stock, that is. Don't invest your contributions in company stock. Invest it in the best mutual funds they have available in the plan. See a fee-only registered investment adviser for recommendations about which options you should pick in your employer's plan.

If your company doesn't allow a 15% contribution, put the money into a Roth IRA if you qualify, or a Traditional IRA if you don't. If that still doesn't add up to 15% of your gross pay, put the rest into a regular brokerage account with good, solid investments with long track records of performance above that of the S&P 500 index.

Use a discount broker or put your money with Vanguard, Fidelity or T. Rowe Price directly. A full-service broker will break you with commissions. Depending on the amount you have to invest, you might considered an assets-under-management arrangement with a wealth manager. Your assets will be actively managed and you pay an annual percentage of the balance of those assets. Pay no more than 1% of your asset balance as the annual fee. If you're paying more than 1%, you're paying too much, no matter how well your investments are performing.

There is a humongous amount of college financial aid from grants to loans to work-study jobs, to scholarships to the GI Bill. Pay for your own retirement first!

Saving for the Kids' College

First off, no parent owes a child a college education. I hate to sound like my grandparents, but I walked to school in the snow, bare-foot, 5 miles, uphill, both ways. No, that's exaggerated. But I did put myself through college and incurred less than $10,000 in student loan debt. My sister paid her way through, too. Our parents couldn't afford college for us. They helped whenever they could and they helped big-time by keeping us on their medical and car insurance policies. But as far as room, board, books, supplies and tuition, we were on our own. We got very cozy with the financial aid office in a hurry, and we qualified for lots of it, including work-study jobs. I went to college a year before my sister.

When my sister and I were both in college at the same school, we had the extra car from home to share. It was a 1972 VW Beetle and we were driving it in the early 1980's. We had $5/wk from working on-campus jobs for gas. We only drove when we had to. After spending a couple of years in dorms, we lived in the same two-bedroom apartment within walking distance of school (and it was on the bus route) with a third room-mate. It was cheaper than living in a dorm. We bought meal tickets to eat on campus because groceries were more expensive than eating on campus. We did eat cereal at the apartment and we had to cook on weekends because the cafeterias were closed, but we ate lunch and dinner on campus Monday through Friday. It not only saved us money, it saved us time. If you've been a full-time college student, you know how valuable time is.

The best way to save for your kids' college expenses is in a Coverdell Education IRA. The IRA should be the first investment because if the child doesn't go to college, community college or technical school after high school, it can become a Traditional IRA for their future retirement. If you live in the state of Louisiana, and you're pretty sure at least one child will go to college, the state-run 529 plan is the top one in the nation. It's called START for Student Tuition Assistance and Revenue Trust. It's run by the Louisiana Tuition Trust Authority or LATTA. Louisiana has a state tax deduction for contributions to the accounts and an incentive program that pays a percentage from the state treasury based on your adjusted gross income each year. It's a grant on top of the account's earnings and your contributions. The lower your AGI, the higher the percentage of your annual grant. People with an AGI over a certain amount don't receive the grants, but they still get the state tax deduction for contributions they make to the accounts.

Lots of people argue for the use of 529 plans hands down. They shouldn't. Other states don't offer the tax deductibility of contributions or grants for poorer residents who save. Many are under-performers with unacceptably high expenses and parents would do better to just put money in a regular investment account, even after the tax savings of withdrawing the money tax-free for qualified college expenses. You can put much larger contributions into a 529 plan, $10,000 per year per student. But it doesn't do much good if that money isn't earning the way it could otherwise. You can only put $4000/year into a Coverdell account. But if you put $4000/year into a Coverdell from the time he/she is born until age 17, the contributions add up to $72,000. With earnings compounding the amount is more like $200,640 at 10% per year.

So, I don't buy the 529 plan thing unless there's a good one available to you.

Pay Off the House Early

If you're debt-free, have an emergency fund, are saving for retirement at 15% of your gross pay rate and you're saving for the kids' college expenses, what do you do next?

Use any extra money (which by now you see you have a lot of) to pay extra on the mortgage principal. You'll be surprised how fast your mortgage goes away when you can dedicate a lot of money to the principal because your financial house is in order.

Build Wealth

After you're debt-free, you have an emergency fund, all your major goals are funded, your retirement savings is clipping along, you have plenty for the kids' college expenses, and the house is paid off, what do you do with all that money? You only have groceries, utilities, insurance, clothing, and other spending to pay for. No more house payment. That leaves you quite a chunk of change.

Now you get to use the house payment to build wealth. You take that house payment, or a large portion of it anyway, and invest it in a regular, taxable brokerage account. Invest it wisely. Consult a fee-only registered investment adviser to help you find the best investments.

Then you can take some money out of that vacation fund and sit on the beach while your old house payment is making you rich!

You Don't Need a Credit Score

A good credit score is NOT essential for survival in the modern world. In fact, the best credit score to have is zero. If you have no debt you have no credit score.

This will mean you'll have to get a mortgage company that does in-house, by-hand underwriting to get a home mortgage. But if:

• you've paid your rent and utilities on time every month for two years,
  
• you have a decent income with no debt,
• you only want to borrow 80% or less of the total price, and
  
• the payments won't be more than 25% of your take-home pay
  

You are a good credit risk and these circumstances show you're responsible with money.

Examining Paradigms

Why am I blogging? I've learned a lot of lessons because I've made a lot of really dumb choices in my life. I wish to share my own ignorance and lessons learned with anyone who cares to read them. I hope you will glean some form of wisdom from my mistakes.

I also learned that the only way to change what you don't like in the world is to make choices and take actions that will make the world change in the way you want to see it. The world won't change just because we want it to. We have to do something to make those changes happen.

I made a lot of those mistakes because I didn't stop and think things through myself and ask my own questions and review my own thoughts. I listened to others and didn't take time to process all the information coming at me, consider what all the information meant, and how I might best deal with my situation. I DIDN'T THINK FOR MYSELF. I DIDN'T CHECK IN WITH MY OWN FEELINGS.

I've believed myths my family and society taught me, and later found out they were just that, myths. Well, more like illusions, or maybe dillusions. We are brought up to believe certain fundamental things about our world and ourselves. These are paradigms. For example, some of our current paradigms are:

1. humans are not destroying Earth
2. life happens to us and we have little control over it
3. a good credit score is essential for survival in the modern world
4. science and religion are at completely opposite ends of the belief spectrum
5. religion and faith are the same things
6. it's best to have a single career at a time and depend on that career for your sole support
7. being miserable in your good-paying job is acceptable
8. you can't have a car without car payments
9. you can't live without debt
10. God punishes us if we do something bad
11. most people are doing ok financially
12. education itself is the key to success
13. education is best measured by standardized tests
14. teaching children to think and solve problems is done only when the material for the standardized test has been learned adequately
15. maximizing individual potential only happens to a few great people
16. all things exist without our actual experience of them
17. reality is all the stuff out in the world
18. thoughts are not reality

The point is, we take many things for granted. If history is any teacher, our progeny will later find that many of our paradigms are not true, just as we have found many of the paradigms our ancestors believed were not true.

Because I began thinking for myself and listening to my feelings about everything in life, I began to recognize that many of the above paradigms are not true. I even believe some of them will prove dangerous to our survival if they aren't changed pretty soon. But the most important thing I've learned is to trust my own thoughts, ideas, instincts, and feelings. I listen to others and read constantly for more information and varying viewpoints. I love a good debate. But I've learned to take information and process it, and then trust what I make of it myself. I never trusted myself or my own abilities to make solid decisions before recently. So much of life tore my self-esteem down, and I believe the most damaging thing low self-esteem does is teach you not to trust yourself. That's a bad place to be. If you can't trust you, who can you trust, and who will trust you?

As I write, I will address these paradigms in separate posts. I'm sure I'll have more on my mind than what's listed above. I always do. I've kept handwritten journals for years. Blogging will be easier because I can type faster than I can write by hand.

I only hope you don't find what I write boring. It may make you mad, sad, happy, anything, but I hope not bored.

Please feel free to leave comments and discuss what's on your mind. I'd love to hear what you think.