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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.