On the day that taxes are due, how can you become richer, not poorer?
How can you have spiritual riches that far supersede the accumulation of material gain?
April 15, 2008
A Steward, Not a Slave to Money, Part 2 w/Ellie Kay
Welcome again to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris telling the great story that’s all about Jesus, even on tax filing day. This is part 2 of a program called “A Steward, Not a Slave to Money” and joining us is Ellie Kay, America’s family financial expert, author of the book “How to Save Money Every Day” and we’ll tell you how to get a copy of that a little bit later. And if you missed yesterday’s program with Ellie we’ve put that up on our website as well, haventoday.org. And when you go there you might want to read about her book “How to Save Money Every Day”. Just go to haventoday.org.
CM: Ellie, a believer in Jesus Christ, thank you for joining us and coming back on the program today.
EK: Well, thank you Charles. It’s really great to be back.
CM: Hey, we had people who just so appreciated the advice that you offered yesterday and we talked about this, these are turbulent times for more people than ever. The economy of the United States right now is in disarray, thousands of mortgages are being called due every day. Gas prices are at an all time high and you gave us some good advice yesterday. And I think you’ve probably got some more to give us today but why don’t we start out with something that’s just a little more fun. Sometimes we all need to just get away and go on a vacation, so the question’s come up here in our shop, “Would you please ask Ellie Kay how I can save money but still get to take a vacation?”
EK: Well I do think that it’s really important to be able to take vacations. I look back on our family vacations and those have been some of the very best times for family bonding. And yet there’s a way to do it on a budget because you don’t want to violate your sense of biblical stewardship by going into debt, further debt even, to be able to pay for a vacation. So sometimes it’s just a matter of being creative and adventurous and kind of thinking outside the box if you will. So one of the things that I suggest is for people to look at a sight such as homeexchange.com and that is where you will actually trade homes with somebody else in a different part of the country and so what you’re basically paying for is gas to get there and back. And there’s all sorts of sites so that can increase your comfort level when it comes to something like this. A lot of times you might just be going to someone’s vacation home and doing it that way so there are a lot of alternatives. Now another way to save money on vacation and be adventurous at the same time, for the whole family is to volunteer your way to a better vacation. You can do this by going to wildernessvolunteers.org and they have all different kinds of sites where you family goes to, for example a national park of some kind and you get your housing and your food taken care of and you get to explore the park but then you’re also doing things in terms of re-vegetation and helping to make the park a better place for other people. So it, it’s a fun way to be able to do that.
CM: That’s a great idea. Now I know you told us on the program yesterday, and if anyone missed that they can go to haventoday.org and they can listen to that program as well. And also we’ve got a link to your website too. When you were married, you and your husband had $40,000 of debt that you needed to do something about and that probably interfered with taking vacations too didn’t it, because you wanted to be debt free?
EK: well, it did. And what we had to do was we had to get creative and so what we did when we were that far into debt is we made little day trips our vacation and we explored places that we had not seen before. Whether it was going to a museum on a day when they had free admission or whether it was going to a national park and hiking the trails with the babies in backpacks. And you know there were a lot of fun ways to do it. But we were very restricted because that much debt will really choke you. I mean it stifles your ability to do a lot of things.
CM: Did you find any creative, original ways to help overcome that debt?
EK: Yes! One of the things that we did Charles, that was so critically important was, we said, “OK Lord, we’re going to, you know, we’ve got $40 grand in consumer debt and here’s the kicker, nothing to show for it. Nothing. Nothing that we could sell to try to pay down that debt, nothing to show for it.” So we said, “OK God we’re going to do things your way.” And part of that is that every dollar that comes in that’s not accounted for, it’s extra, whether it’s $50 from Grandma Lotteman on my birthday or whether it’s a refund on insurance premiums that we pay. Whatever comes in, whatever windfall, we’re going to take that check and we’re going to apply it to that debt. So I just love to see how creative God can get when you just invite him into the equation because one of the things that happened was I went on “The Price is Right” and I was a part of that game show and I actually won the showcase. So it was so much fun! I won $20,000 worth of prizes and merchandise and I won a 21 foot HiLo travel trailer that we put in the newspaper as “brand new, never been used, won on a game show”. We had 2 bidders show up for it and they bid each other on it and we were able to take what we sold that for and put it towards a part of our consumer debt. But it didn’t stop there because as I’ve said before, God blesses you so that you can be a blessing to other people. And the other thing that we won on “The Price is Right” was a $3500 cooking range, now this was one with 2 ovens, a griddle and 8 burners. Now we lived in base housing. It took up all of the kitchen, made a great conversation piece in the living room.
CM: Right
EK: but we actually donated that to a church’s food pantry, actually their homeless shelter/soup kitchen, so we got a $3500 tax deductible
CM: Tax credit, or tax deduction sure.
EK: Yes, so that was really cool. It is just, it is amazing how when you invite God into your finances what he will do.
CM: Amazing. Well, we talked about this yesterday but I felt like we didn’t talk about it quite enough. Probably, we know there are many people, many Haven Today listeners that are undergoing economic duress right now with the economy. Maybe they’ve lost a job, maybe their home mortgage has been called due, they just couldn’t afford to make the mortgage payments. We were talking yesterday about how to save money on food, which is a big item that people can save money on right way. Any thoughts? You, by the way besides being known as America’s family financial expert, you‘re also known as a “Coupon Queen” and maybe you can give us some more advice on that or other ways that we can save on our food budget?
EK: Well, you know Charles, when we started out in life, my husband and I over 20 years ago we saved money on groceries because we had to. It was the way that we got groceries, the way that we paid off bills. Now you fast forward and we don’t need to do that anymore and yet I still coupon, I still have a coupon box. Literally it’s just in front of me on my desk all day long and I kind of look through there for a lot of different things that we have coupons for. But we do it, I do it now because it’s a fun hobby and it makes me a$150/hour. So it’s a hobby that really pays and whether you do it out of necessity or just because it’s fun it’s a great way to use coupons to save money. How do you do that? Well, the first thing is that you start to shop according to the sales and you start to layer the savings so you don’t only buy something when it’s on sale, you have a coupon and then you don’t just stop there but you try to shop at a double coupon store. And to find those you can go to my website, elliekay.com and you can link into the links page and there is a site there that will link you to every double coupon store in America, so you can find out where the double coupon stores are. But, you don’t want to just stop there.
CM: OK, we’re at 2 layers so far, OK, keep going.
EK: Well, actually we’re at three –
CM: OK, we’re at three!
EK: Yes, because we’ve started with the sale ads and then we have coupons and then we have double coupons.
CM: Alright.
EK: So we’re going that rate. Now the other thing is to sign up for your store card. That’s called a “clip-less coupon”, that’s a 4th layer. And that allows you to get things on sale and even if you’re traveling across the country, just sign up for it right there at the register when you’re checking out. It could save you 20-30% on groceries that you’re buying. So be sure you sign up for that, and then add a store coupon. Now these are the things that are printed in the store’s circular. Now just this week here in California we have Vons and we have a store coupon for Colgate that it makes the price for that product 2 for $4 and I have a $2 coupon off of 2 and then Von’s will double coupon, so by using that extra layer of store coupons in conjunction with all of this I’m going to get toothpaste for just $ .50 a tube. And you know, that’s a good way to do it.
CM: I think I’ve met people like you before. I’m very impressed, by the way. And my wife would be very impressed as well. Any other ways to save on food?
EK: Yes, the next thing that you need to do is look for unadvertised clearances inside the store. So these are things that pop up all the time. They don’t have room in the store’s circular that they mail out or that are in the newspaper so you bring your coupons with you to the store and you shop those unadvertised specials that can be anywhere from half to 75% off, so that can save you a lot. And then the final area is that you go to a store that will participate in what’s called price “comping”. And that is, if you don’t have time to go to all the different grocery stores around town and spy their loss leaders – now those are the things that are on the front of their circular that are sold at a loss – and so you want to take all of those to one place. You go to a price comping store and that is at a place like Super Wal-Mart. They offer price comps and you take in your sale ads and you get the price on all these sale items in one place. And you don’t have to shop all around town, you save time, you save money, you save gas.
Cm: What about going on the internet, speaking of just online, is that a way to save? I know my wife more and more has been doing shopping – especially at Christmastime – online, on the internet then she doesn’t have to drive out and visit half a dozen stores just to look for one item and they might or might not have it. What about that?
EK: Right, it’s really easy to save money online if you kind of know what you’re doing. And there are three basic tips to saving money online and once again we’re talking about layering here. You know, we just talked about layering savings at the grocery store, well you do that online as well. The first layer is going to be finding the best price. And in order to do that you go to a search engine such as mysimon.com or you can go to shopbot.com and nextag.com. These are all sites that will search the internet and find the very best price on what it is that you want. Let’s say that you want some levity in your life on tax day and you’re going to order the complete season of “I Love Lucy”. It will search the internet and find the best price on those DVDs. Then the second layer is that you don’t want to pay postage on those “I Love Lucy” DVDs and if you want to you want to try to get an additional percentage off. So you go to a coupon code site. And that is a site like dealhunting.com or couponcabin.com. And when you go to these sites they give you the code to enter in order to get free postage or to get an additional percentage off or to get a free gift. So that’s the second layer of savings. Now the third layer is, why not get a rebate for the items that you’re going to buy anyway? If you go to ebates.com then you’ll find that there are thousands of participating online stores that every time that you buy something there it will go towards a rebate. And a lot of families are finding that if they shop this way that at the end of every month they get a rebate check and it really adds up. As a matter of fact, what’s fun for me is that I went overseas to speak to the troops that are stationed in bases in Europe. And of course they’re having a lot of difficulty because of the value of the dollar versus the Euro or the Pound and I heard from them -
CM: Just sanctioned, yes
EK: Yes, it was really great Charles, because I heard from them after I gave this same presentation talking about savings and quite a few of them wrote to say, “Wow we’re saving half price online by following these tips!”
CM: My goodness, that’s great. Well, if you just joined us this is Haven Today, Ellie Kay, America’s family financial expert is on the line with us. We’re going to tell you a little bit later how to get a copy of her book, “How to Save Money Every Day” and she’s mentioned her website, we’ve linked it to haventoday.org as well. Now, there’s something about being a good steward as a Christian. You don’t want to be known as a deadbeat, especially out in the world. It’s a bad testimony. I’ve heard that said all my life growing up. And one of the things I’m thinking of Ellie is this idea of your credit score. And it’s not based on how much money you make, is it?
EK: No it’s not. Your credit score is based on how well you manage your credit and how well you are paying it back. So there are ways to improve your credit score but Charles I’m sure you’re already aware that FICO’s now, Fair Isaac’s Credit Scores, they are not only impacting your mortgage rates, your refinancing rates as well as your automobile rates. Those are the most common areas that we look at FICO score but now employers are actually checking FICO’s to determine whether they give you that job or whether they give you a promotion. And not only that, but FICOs now impact your insurance premiums. You could pay more because they consider you a greater risk if you have a low credit score. They can impact if you move into another house, whether you pay a $300 security deposit to hook up your electricity or whether you pay nothing at all. I mean, it impacts so many different areas of our life that it really pays, whether you want these FICOs for credit or not, well it pays to have a good FICO score.
CM: Well, it certainly does. Any particular ways you can think of to get a better score?
EK: There are really three easy ways to be able to improve your FICO score Charles. And the way to do that, number one is to pay your bills a day early rather than a day late. And something that simple can improve your score. What I recommend is you go online and draft your account online to be able to pay on time every time. And then the second step is that you pay even $5 or $10 more than the minimum because it shows up on paper that you’re paying down that debt and that looks very good for your FICO score. And then the third thing is to make sure that all of your credit cards have no more than 50% charged on them of the available credit. It’s called proportionality. For example, let’s say you have a card that has $6000 on it and you don’t ever want to charge more than $3000 on that card. Even if you’re going to be able to pay it off in 2 months, you’re going to carry a month or two with over 50%, so you want to make sure that all of your cards have 50% or less. And if you do those three things you’re going to see that your FICO score can improve radically in 60 days.
CM: My goodness, that’s great. Yesterday we talked about saving money on gasoline. What about anything else related to someone’s car that they can save money on?
EK: I used to be an insurance broker
CM: Oh, alright
EK: and I found out all the ways to save my clients money. So with a simple phone call to your existing insurance broker, if you ask the right questions, you can save anywhere from 10% to as much as 25% on your insurance premiums. For example, let’s say you’re a stay at home mom or your wife’s a stay at home mom, do you know it costs less to insure a vehicle for a stay at home mom than it does for someone who drives to and from work every day? So make sure that the most expensive vehicle is rated on that rate, the stay at home mom rate. And then also ask your insurance provider – and it varies from state to state, all these discounts I’m about to mention – but ask them for all the different discounts that are available. For example, if you store your car inside a garage rather than a carport or on the street that’s less of a risk it could reduce your premiums. If you’re a non-smoker you could get a break. If you’re children are good students they can get a good student discount. And then if you’ve been stopped for a speeding ticket and rather than getting the ticket you take a driver’s safety course, well that’s great it doesn’t go on your record but don’t stop there. Take that certificate from the driver’s safety course and fax it in to your insurance provider and you can save money that way too.
Song: Trust and Obey
Performed by:
From a brand new album as given to us by 3 young Canadians and an album they’re calling “The Hymns Project”, well Ellie Kay, America’s family financial expert is on the line with us. Normally is on CNN or Fox News or just a couple weeks back you were in USA Today being quoted there. Let’s say I love the Lord. I’m a follower of Jesus Christ. I’ve really gotten my life financially messed up. I don’t need to just save money, I need to totally restructure the way I look at money, any overall suggestion on how I can budget better or how I can get the spiritual help that I need to be a good steward?
EK: Well, one of the things that I recommend for believers and whether you have a history of being very good with money or if you have a history of being very bad with money or you’re somewhere in between, I really recommend you go to crown.org and you take a biblical course on financial stewardship. Now there are thousands of churches across the country that offer these courses and it may not even be your own church but maybe a church in your community. And when you go through this course you will find not only how to do things God’s way and how you’ve been falling short, you’re going to find wonderful fellowship and accountability from others who are walking the same road that you are walking right now, the path to financial freedom and others who have already walked it, who will help mentor you along the way. And when you surround yourself with a support system like that, in a church, in and among a group and body of believers then you are setting yourself up for success and you are setting yourself up to finally be able to change those negative patterns that have been hitting you for year after year after year. You can break free of those and the way to do that is by going to God’s Word and walking with other believers who will show you the path.
CM: Well, I think we’d better pray and would you mind if I asked you Ellie to just lead us in prayer and those of us who are listening would not be just better financial stewards of what the Lord has given us but that we would draw closer to the Lord and then that would give us strength to be better stewards. Would you mind leading us in prayer?
EK: It would be a privilege and an honor to be able to do that Charles.
Father God we just come before you and we thank you for who you are. We thank you that you are our Abba Father, that we can just run to you and into your arms and we can find the comfort and strength and protection and love that we all so deeply desire and that we’re looking for. Father right now we come before you for our finances. For those who are listening right now Lord Jesus and for their children as well, we pray, Lord, that you would just come into the equation, come into our financial lives. For those who have had a pattern of not following you Father God, we just pray this un-confessed sin would just come before you right now and we confess that before you Lord that we desire to do better. Father we thank you that you own the cattle on a thousand hills, we thank you that you honor those who honor you and we pray Lord Jesus that you would do a mighty work among the people that are listening right now. We pray Lord Jesus that you would free them from the bondage of debt, from the fears that they have over the economy Father and that they would operate in a greater measure of faith Lord in terms of their money, especially Lord than they have ever operated before. We thank you for this wonderful ministry, safe Haven, we thank you for Charles and his dedication and his commitment to you and putting you first, always and only you Lord Jesus because you are the Famous One, we thank you for who you are and we are just blessing your name Lord Jesus and praise you for our salvation and for who we are in you. We pray all these things in the Mighty Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, amen.
CM: Ellie Kay, thank you so much for leading us here in prayer on this special Haven Today, the second part of a program called “A Steward, Not a Slave to Money”. Now we’ve been talking about Ellie’s book and you’ve been hearing some really practical, first rate suggestions on how you can get your financial house in order. She’s written a book called “How to Save Money Every Day” and we have that book for your gift to Haven Today. We’re asking for a modest gift to the ministry and then we want to get this in your hands. We already have it in our warehouse and we’d like to get it out the door to you as soon as possible. You can call us at 1-800-654-2836, that’s 1-800-654-2836. When you call, let us know the station you’re listening to and be sure and tell us you want a copy of Ellie Kay’s book “How to Save Money Every Day” and we want you to have that as well, right away. Now you can go online and read more about the book if you’d like to and our internet address is haventoday.org, h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org and when you’re there look around a little bit. Maybe you’d like to send us a prayer request. Maybe you’d like to get a sample copy of our “Anchor” devotional guide to help you read God’s Word and pray every day, haventoday.org. But be sure and make your gift to the ministry and get your copy of “How to Save Money Every Day”.
I’m Charles Morris with Ellie Kay, thank you for being with me and with Ellie. Would you come back again tomorrow? We’re going to talk about the joy of the Lord in light of the book of Philippians. We’ll do it together here on Haven Today.
