Are we going to make it through the next few months? Even a quick peek at the news for the last four years reveals an angry torrent of people screaming at each other or worse.
Watching from the sidelines, there are so many similarities between politics and sports. In politics and sports, both sides cheer for their own team and some people take it way too far. The difference is that at the end of the day, the sports fans usually know it’s just an ephemeral game. The people glued to their team’s news source haven’t figured that out.
Have you ever thought about how there are always about 50% on one side and 50% on the other side? The political teams don’t take permanent, principled positions. Rather, they are two riverbanks following a meandering course of public opinion and fighting to control their half of the river. They would have you believe there are only two opinions, and if you question anything about their side, you must be part of the other team. Can we please get more people who freely admit that not everything from the other team is wrong and that there might even be a third or fourth answer to a particular question?
A country where people are quicker to argue than to listen doesn’t bode well for our future. How would things be different if we only talked about politics when people asked our opinion? Hateful, predatory internet culture has now somehow become what we expect from our political candidates instead of rational, respectful discussions between people who happen to disagree on the best way to solve a problem. Political debates and speeches frequently sound like people trying to fit in the name-calling and zingers that will make their team yell “OOOOO! They got you!”
So if you do tell me about your political viewpoints, expect me to change the topic or just make my way out of the conversation even if I’m voting for your candidate. I’ll do my own reading and research before I vote. If we do have a chance to talk, I’d rather have a conversation about Jesus than about a political candidate. Imagine what our country would look like if all the Christians focused as much time on the Bible as they do on their news source.
Our family had a brush with COVID again, but thankfully it was extremely light, and we wouldn’t have even suspected it if we weren’t being overly cautious and testing before visiting with some highly susceptible people. I was surprised to see how much the guidelines had changed since the last time I read them. Due to some unknown combination of herd immunity, vaccines, improved scientific knowledge, and political pressure, there’s no more mandatory 5-day isolation, 5 days of masking, etc. My stance on this has always been to follow what the experts are saying because I don’t have access to as much data and knowledge as they do. But that means I’m aligning myself with guidance that will change. It’s great when guidance changes because more data has become available, but regardless, the guidance still changes.
As I was processing all that, it struck me how many people in this world do the same thing with their religion. They base it on what the leaders of their religion are saying today. Some churches even put out a regular magazine just to keep up with all the changes to the religion. Current rules and guidelines can disagree with what was said before and now you’re just expected to change your life view and align with the new writings.
You know what never changes? God’s Word. My faith is based on what is written there, not on what any human says or writes. That document has been unedited and unchanged for thousands of years. I’m thankful to be a part of a church body that bases all its teachings directly on the Bible. Teachings today are directly in line with what was taught hundreds or thousands of years ago. I don’t have to wonder if the core foundation of my life is going to get shifted by what a human decides when they wake up tomorrow.
Interested in learning more? Or just interested in free burgers and hot dogs? We’re having our annual outdoor worship service and cookout this Sunday at 9:30am in Bellevue.
I have a nephew graduating high school and heading off to college. With that comes a lot of thinking about how much to invest in college, how much debt to take on, and what your earning power will be when you graduate. It also gets me thinking about the importance of investing. It’s something many people realize too late in the game.
I’ve been thinking for weeks about how to put this into a blog post but then I listened to a recent “How To Money” podcast episode and it covered it perfectly. So whether you read this post or not, consider checking out episode 842 – Millionaire Mission.
When I was young, investing seemed really complicated, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. That podcast is an interview with the guy behind MoneyGuy.com, but there are plenty of other popular financial sites that will help you avoid debt, make smart decisions, and get in the habit of saving 20% or more of your income.
I don’t want to try to summarize every little thing because they do it much better than I can, but here are a few key points:
Save money in the market. Literally anything helps. There’s a great page on the “Wealth Multiplier” at MoneyGuy.com which shows the impact of compound interest. If at age 20, you put $95 per month into the market, you’ll have a million dollars by the time you’re 65! Or putting it another way, if you spend $1 when you’re 20, that takes away $88 when you’re 65. Early investing has unfathomably large impacts on your future.
Be conscientious about every dollar that you spend. Look at a report at the end of every month and year to see where your money went. For example, let’s say that starting at 20, you spend $10/week on coffee. If you invested that instead, you’d have $145k when you’re 65. AARP has a great calculator for showing the value of regular investing.
If investing is complicated, you’re doing it wrong. Start by maxing out your 401k and/or your Roth IRA. These give you tax advantages later so there is a limit on how much you can do per year. Once you hit that limit, open an account with Fidelity or Vanguard and buy an index fund like VTI. Do not invest in individual stocks because that’s a guaranteed losing game over the long run. (For more info on that topic, read this book.)
There’s so much more to learn, ways to pay minimal taxes, getting completely out of debt, etc, but the main message here is start investing TODAY. You literally cannot afford to wait.
Last year was my first time attending a retreat held by our area churches. I had a great time and instantly signed up for this year’s retreat as soon as they created the sign up form. Unfortunately, this year’s experience was dramatically different!
I decided to make the most of my trip to the Olympic Peninsula so I left earlier in the day so I could play a round of golf at Rainshadow Disc Golf Park. It’s one of the most highly rated courses in Washington and it didn’t disappoint. The holes are very well thought out and there is a lot of elevation change. Many holes have extreme penalties for throwing off the fairway because the fairway ends up being on the ridge of the hill with a steep drop-off on each side. Since I didn’t know the course (and I’m not that good), I mostly just played short throws that would stay in view, and I didn’t concern myself too much with my score. I shot a painful eight over par on the front nine and only one over on the back nine.
After finishing the round, I still had plenty of time, so I checked out the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. I didn’t feel like paying the entry fee just for 30 minutes of walking around, so I checked out the surrounding county park instead. I’d love to go back with more time to explore though.
Dinner isn’t provided on the first night of the retreat, and I stopped for a quick bite to eat at Jack in the Box. It was so gross when I went in that I should have just turned around, but I felt obligated to buy something since I had already used their restroom. And since it was just me without the family in tow, I didn’t think too much about it. But then the fries tasted really weird. That’s odd. They were so weird that I ended up not eating them all. Strange. But whatever.
When I showed up at the Men’s Retreat, I felt off. I figured it was probably just getting old and not being used to eating a lot of fast food. But as I met up with some of the other guys from our church and walked around, it got worse. By the time the event started, I knew something was wrong.
I’ll save you the biological details but suffice it to say that it became obvious that I had food poisoning. I skipped the evening session, went straight to bed, and laid awake all night with trips to the bathroom (trying very hard not to make any mess in my room!) At 3am, I called it quits, made a beeline for the ferry in my little window of time when I felt ok after a vomit, and got back home. I proceeded to feel worse and worse throughout the day, but I was very thankful to be home and have Tyla to help me out! By Sunday and Monday, I was able to keep some fluids down and slowly build my strength back.
After looking forward to the Men’s Retreat for a full year, it was a complete bust. But hey, there’s always next year right?
I believe it’s important to watch where all our money goes so I’ve been through many different apps over the years including Microsoft Money, Quicken, and Mint. Mint lasted me for a long time but it recently closed shop after being bought by Intuit. They claim that they moved the “important” features to Credit Karma but nothing about that was useful to me. So it was time to find a new money tool.
After examining a few, I landed on Monarch Money. I went through the free trial and ended up signing up for a year. (It helped that there’s a half price deal for people coming over from Mint for the first year.) So far so good. I don’t need a lot from a tool like this. I just need it to connect to all my various accounts, update smoothly, and then let me categorize the line items.
Connecting to all the accounts was pretty straightforward. The only hiccup continues to be one investment account through a small company, but they were always a challenge even with Mint.
There was a lot of work initially to map Mint’s categories to Monarch’s categories, but they had a UI for that. Once it was set up, it wasn’t an issue. Categorization seems smoother than Mint. Mint had auto categorization rules but Monarch’s rules just seem to work better.
I could stop there and just share my experience, but if you’ve made it this far, maybe you’re looking for a money app as well. I do have a referral code you can use that gets you a free month and then I think I get a month for free as well.
About a month ago, I pulled the trigger and removed a bunch of “habit” apps from my phone. Instagram, Reddit, and my news app all got uninstalled. I decided I’d go for at least a week and see what happened. The result scared me enough that I’m still on a break from them.
I found that I would unconsciously pull out my phone and tap the screen where Instagram used to be. I purposely left that spot blank just to make the point to myself and I wish I had a way to track how many times I clicked that empty space!
It’s been a month now. Reddit is still uninstalled and so is my news app of choice. I can still access both of those on the web if I choose to, but that one extra step is enough that I rarely go there. (This isn’t going to be a fun 6 months of US news reading anyway so I’m fine skipping that mess.) Instagram did get reinstalled, but I limit myself to viewing it about once per week and I use the obscure UI menus to only look at posts from people I follow and skip all the suggested posts. Doing that in bulk helps me realize which accounts I’m interested in and which ones were just there to keep my feed populated with new stuff so I’ve been able to cut down on what I subscribe to.
This pause also helped me realize that I do like using Instagram stories to throw random content out into the ether to be consumed by anyone who chooses to use it. It feels more friendly than spamming text threads with too much content (which I probably do anyway.) That’s one of the same reasons that I like keeping this blog up too.
For now, I feel better reining things in a bit so that the phone is mostly just a utility that helps me in my life instead of a dopamine producer that I open out of habit. This isn’t the first time I’ve done stuff like this so I know it will creep back in, but at least there are periods of sanity.
A relative is going through a class in school where they are picking stocks to see who can make the most play money over the course of the class. On the surface, I think it’s a fine idea, but if this is the only exposure that the students have to the stock market, it might do more harm than good. Picking individual stocks is risky at best and pure gambling at worst. It can be a fun hobby but it should almost never be used as a real investment strategy. So what to do? I sent them some thoughts and figured I would post it here as well.
John Bogle, the visionary behind Vanguard, shares his wisdom in the book “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” which I’ve written about before. It’s concise, backed by research, and a must-read for anyone thinking of investing their money. Bogle’s book dispels common myths about investing. Here’s the bottom line: picking individual stocks or relying on mutual funds managed by others is a losing game over the long haul. Sure, there might be temporary hot streaks, but consistently beating the market over decades is effectively impossible. The market wouldn’t work if it was possible to consistently beat it.
So, what’s the winning strategy? Low-cost, total market index funds.
Total Market Index Funds: These funds bundle everything in the stock market. When you invest in them, you’re effectively buying a slice of the entire economy. It’s the ultimate diversification.
Low-Cost: The fees associated with these funds are ridiculously low—around 0.03%. Why? Because there’s no human actively managing them. It’s all math, ensuring that the fund mirrors the composition of the entire US market. If a company represents 3% of the total US market, its stock will constitute 3% of the fund.
The only thing left at that point is to figure out which actual funds to buy. This is where strategies can vary a bit, but they’re generaly fairly similar. Here are two popular strategies:
VTSAX and chill. This is the simplest version of investing. VTSAX is as low cost fund that covers the entire US economy. Buy this one fund, don’t touch it, and reap the benefits when you need the money.
Split between US, international, and bonds. You can vary the percentages based on your stage in life, but here’s a good starting point:
70% VTI – Low cost, total US market index ETF.
10% VXUS – Low cost, total international market index ETF
20% BND – Low cost, total bond market index ETF
Of course it’s important to remeember that all of this investing has a bigger tax burden than tax-advantaged accounts like a 401k or IRA. Investing directly in the market is generally only something to consider after you’ve maxed out your better options. Financial health can feel overwhelming but as I’ve written about before, this flow chart does a great job of breaking it down. Or if that’s too much, start with Dave Ramsey’s 7 Steps.
I’m no expert and you shouldn’t blindly follow anything I’ve written here, but you should have your own opinions about this. If you’re going to rely on individual stocks, you should read Bogle’s book and be able to explain why you think he’s wrong. It’s so easy to get sucked into thinking this has to be complicated, but the complicated route will almost always lose you huge amounts of money down the road.
I belong to a national church body called the “Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.” Every month, they put out a video called “WELS Connection” to share what’s happening around the rest of the synod. The videos are short and are usually shown after church. As a kid, it was always fun to see the TV wheeled out and the VHS tape popped into the VCR. Each video started with a very 90s song called “Come to the WELS.” (Any of you fellow members over the age of about 25 now have this song stuck in your head.)
The videos use a different song today, but it got me wondering how long that song was used. It’s fairly difficult to find any information partly because there isn’t much available and because there’s a more popular Counting Crows song called “Come to the Well.”
After searching around on YouTube for more time than I’d like to admit, I realized I should check the WELS website and sure enough, they have an archive that goes all the way back to 2009. In September 2009, the videos switched from “Come to the WELS” to “Jerusalem the Golden” and then in June 2013, they switched to “In Christ Alone” which is still in use today.
But I still have unanswered questions. Who wrote “Come to the WELS”? Who sang it? Who decided to replace the flutes at the end with kids singing? Was the whole song rerecorded for that change? What does Pastor Rosenau think when he looks back at his Jan 2009 appearance? What’s Pastor Bill Burnhardt up to? What would happen if you listened to that song for an hour straight?
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Every year, the area churches affiliated with the WELS and ELS combine to host a men’s retreat. I’ve known about this for years but have never attended myself. This year when I got the email, I thought, “Hmmm… I think I want to go to this one. I need to remember to bring it up with Tyla and see what she thinks.” A few minutes later, she came in reading the same email and said, “Ben! You have to go to this retreat! Professor Paustian is amazing!” Mark Paustian is a professor at Martin Luther College, and she had him for a couple classes. He was scheduled to be the guest speaker at the retreat. I took her advice and signed up immediately. Over the next week or two, three other MLC grads heard about the retreat and encouraged me to attend so I could hear Professor Paustian.
The event was held at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. It’s only about 35 miles away but it either requires a ferry ride or a drive around the south end of Puget Sound. The event starts Friday evening so I checked in, met up with a couple other people, and we got a quick dinner at a Mexican food truck called Burritos y Tacos on the northwest side of the golf course. Then we headed back for the opening session where Professor Paustian explained what he’d be sharing over the weekend and talked to us about being “transparently Christian.” He shared examples like purposely reading Christian books when he’s out in public or simply including church activities when people ask about your weekend.
There were 76 of us in attendance so that requires a lot of sleeping space. We stayed in building 225 which is a group housing dormitory. It’s a historical site so the accommodations are simple, but I had my own room and a shared bathroom. Our group brought a large selection of snacks, drinks, and games so there was optional fun happening there until late into the night.
After waking up early and walking around the park, Saturday morning started with breakfast in the group dining facility and then we headed over to the USO Hall for more classes. Our course was on apologetics which is an intellectual defense of the truth, rationality, and core beliefs of Christianity. We went through various aspects of it, but the repeated message was that you’re not there to argue specific facts with people, but the goal is always to point people to the message of the gospel. Our consciences tell us that things are wrong, but only the gospel reveals the saving message of Christ. Jesus died for our sins. There’s nothing we have to do or can do to earn heaven. He did it all for us! This is a simple message that is unfortunately unique to Christianity and even unique within many circles of Christianity. Human reason says that there must be something we have to do, but God’s mercy is an affront to human reason. He loves us more than we can ever imagine.
There were a few hours reserved on Saturday afternoon for people to do whatever they want. Some went back to the dorms to take a nap while other groups went hiking, golfing, and shooting. I went with a group of about a dozen people to play disc golf. It was fun playing on a new course and introducing people to the sport.
After dinner, we headed back for another session before going back to the dorm for more fellowship and sleep.
Sunday morning was the end of the event and we met one more time. Professor Paustian gave a devotion/sermon and as part of a short service. Hearing a big group of men singing some favorite hymns is a treat!
If you’re in the area and are at all intrigued by these, please consider attending! This event has been going on for over 20 years except for a short COVID pause and they’re planning to hold it again next year in mid to late April. It’s a wonderful opportunity to be encouraged by your fellow Christians and hear a great speaker. Professor Paustian lived up to the hype! Tyla and I are already going through his “Our Worth To Him” devotion book, but now I’m also looking forward to reading Prepared to Answer and the cleverly titled follow-up: More Prepared to Answer.
Election Year
Are we going to make it through the next few months? Even a quick peek at the news for the last four years reveals an angry torrent of people screaming at each other or worse.
Watching from the sidelines, there are so many similarities between politics and sports. In politics and sports, both sides cheer for their own team and some people take it way too far. The difference is that at the end of the day, the sports fans usually know it’s just an ephemeral game. The people glued to their team’s news source haven’t figured that out.
Have you ever thought about how there are always about 50% on one side and 50% on the other side? The political teams don’t take permanent, principled positions. Rather, they are two riverbanks following a meandering course of public opinion and fighting to control their half of the river. They would have you believe there are only two opinions, and if you question anything about their side, you must be part of the other team. Can we please get more people who freely admit that not everything from the other team is wrong and that there might even be a third or fourth answer to a particular question?
A country where people are quicker to argue than to listen doesn’t bode well for our future. How would things be different if we only talked about politics when people asked our opinion? Hateful, predatory internet culture has now somehow become what we expect from our political candidates instead of rational, respectful discussions between people who happen to disagree on the best way to solve a problem. Political debates and speeches frequently sound like people trying to fit in the name-calling and zingers that will make their team yell “OOOOO! They got you!”
So if you do tell me about your political viewpoints, expect me to change the topic or just make my way out of the conversation even if I’m voting for your candidate. I’ll do my own reading and research before I vote. If we do have a chance to talk, I’d rather have a conversation about Jesus than about a political candidate. Imagine what our country would look like if all the Christians focused as much time on the Bible as they do on their news source.