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.