That Will Never Work

This post is going to be a little different from most of my past posts.  I decided to share some of my tips and words of wisdom I’ve learned over the past few years since losing not one but three jobs in the course of the time between 2009 and 2016.  When your financial world is ripped out from under you and you blow through all your savings to stay afloat, you tend to learn a thing or two, so here we go and don’t bail on me after the first one.

One – Tithe

If you are a believer in Jesus, then you need to tithe.  No ifs ands or butts, you need to tithe.  In my opinion, tithing is the number one thing as a believer you need to do for your finances to prosper.  Money is a hard thing for us.  Us as in myself included.  I struggled with tithing so much and fought it for years until I finally obeyed but when I finally did God started doing miraculous things in my finances with 90% of my income that 100% never did.  People still say tithing is Old Testament, but Jesus came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it.  As a believer though, you don’t do this in your own power.  You must lean on God.

Bring all the tithes (the tenth) into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you [so great] a blessing until there is no more room to receive it.  Malachi 3:10 (AMP) 

Two – Save

According to a Motley Fool article in 2016, more than six out of every ten Americans have less than $1000 in savings.   Let that set in.  More than 60% of us in America have little to no savings.

You can setup savings so easily now that you really have no excuse not to save.  You can have $10 every paycheck dumped into a savings account or $20 put in a 401k or other retirement account the same way.  If you do automatic savings, you easily get used to living on less and you really don’t feel a pinch in your pocketbook after a while.

Three – Cut Where You Can

The biggest thing I did when I was let go the second time from employment since 2009 was to cut small things and reap rewards in having lower bills which resulted in me not going into the red every month which is what I was doing and living off credit cards to stay afloat.  Here’s the big three things I learned to do then and still do today.  I have been told by people that these don’t make a difference, but they do.

• Cut off your electronics at night.  I have a power strip on my entertainment center and I flip the switch off every night before bed. Most TV’s and electronics use some amount of electricity when off.  Per Green Energy Efficient Homes, some TV’s use as much as 50 watts when turned off just to be in standby mode!  Just flipping off the electronics every night saved about $5 the first month.  That’s $60 per year!

• Cancel satellite, cable or other paid TV providers.  I was paying $40+ per month for satellite and it was basic channels!  I finally cut satellite off and got a digital antenna (about $50 one-time purchase) and got subscriptions to Hulu and Netflix (about $20 per month total).  After paying for the antenna, I save $240 per year just from cutting satellite and frankly I have so much more to watch now via Hulu and Netflix than I ever did before via satellite. 

• Watch your HVAC unit like a hawk! I’ve been shocked at how many people let their heat and air units run all year long and don’t bother to ever cut them off.  For me, my electricity bill is mostly from my heat pump.  When temperatures are nice, I keep the unit off and use ceiling fans or small fans in the house if needed.  Only when it gets in the mid 80’s do I really need the air conditioning on.  Not only will keeping the unit off until really needed save you a ton of money monthly on power bills, it will save you a lot on maintenance on the unit.  HVAC units are like cars,if you maintenance them on a regular basis, they will probably run for years, maybe even a decade or two.  The unit in my first house was about fifteen years old when I sold the house and it still worked.

Four – Always Be Willing To Learn

Even if you are great with money, you can always learn new things.  I’m still getting a handle on some areas of my financesbut I’m on a five year plan now and if all goes well I should be almost completely debt free after five years.  That will be amazing to be debt free!

Five – Dream And Set Goals

A friend of mine who has gone on to be with the Lord always envied me for traveling to Israel in 1998.  She would say things like, oh I wish I could do that.  Finally I told her she could!  I told her that if she set aside a little money each month, eventually she would have the money to travel to Israel.  

Sadly she never took my advice and as time went by she retired and never had the money to travel.  She died not long after she retired without ever visiting a place that meant so much to her.   I don’t want to live like that.  

I want to visit Europe, I want to visit Asia and Australia.  Will I make it there?  I don’t know.  But I hope to make it at least to Europe next year.  I’m planning to save money and do my best to make that happen and trust the rest to God.  You may not be able to save but $1 a month but start there.  Who knows, in a few years you have may have a few thousand in the bank and can go on vacation!  You never know until you try.  We all have areas where we need to grow and I hope you will get some encouragement out of this post.

Until next time.

But Seriously

Suicide: it’s a word we don’t like to use and even less talk about.

As I was sitting here reading Jimmy Wayne’s book Walk To Beautiful (I highly recommend it) he mentioned a letter that was written to him from a man that had been struggling with thoughts of suicide and it got me thinking.

I probably have never told many people this, but I have struggled with suicidal thoughts many times going back to my teen years.  I couldn’t tell you why I was depressed as a teen other than hormones, but as an adult male, overweight and unmarried I struggled many times with thoughts of wanting to end it all.  Believing the lies of the enemy that no one cared. 

Suicide is one of those things that people don’t like to talk about until it’s too late. People talk about it after it happens and will say things like: Oh if I only had known they were struggling I would have reached out to them. Honestly that’s a lie many times.

I’ve seen it myself when I reached out to people and they brushed me off or gave some excuse or worse didn’t even respond to a text or voicemail.

At some point I had to stop depending on people and start depending on God to keep me focused and in a right frame of mind. 

Battlefield Of The Mind is another great book I read by Joyce Meyer and it addresses how we can cast down wrong thoughts if we will only get into the Word of God, the Bible and apply it to our situations. If we will, we will see change in our lives along with the help of the Holy Spirit who is there to guide us and loves us deeply.

If you struggle with thoughts of harming yourself, first stop and take another direction.  I encourage you to read Battlefield of the Mind and of course the Bible and reach out further if you need professional counseling.

The days when depression leads me to despair are few and far between, but I notice they can attack on days when I’m not rested or have let me diet slip so I try my best to stay vigilant with those areas. 

Know that you are loved first by God and then by myself and many others. Our society is just too much in a rush these days to slow down and care for our fellow man it seems.  Don’t choose what seems like the easy way out of life and lose the chance at real life.

Until next time…

Life In The Slow Lane

Hello everyone and welcome to another installment of “Will Wes Fit On A Coaster?” 

Today’s episode brings us up to date and gives a little insight on what our intrepid coaster rider is up to.

I’m back for an update on my quest to get healthier, lose weight and never have to make another coaster or amusement ride walk-of-shame as long as I live.

To give a little background on this update, in April 2015 I fell several times during training for and running the Marine Corps. mud run in South Carolina that F3 calls their Super Bowl each year.

The following months I began to experience a lot of back pain which stopped me in my tracks from exercise and eventually contributed to me to losing focus on my diet and as a result I gained back all 56lbs I had lost between 2014 and 2015.  By July 2015 I could barely walk without pain. Life sucked.

I went to doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and nothing worked.  It felt great while they worked on my back, but as soon as I tried to walk or exercise at F3, it started hurting and I wasn’t going to go the surgery or drug route.  Then I had a thought, which I think was probably a whisper from God: Go try yoga.  

Yoga? What in the world?  That weird, wacky thing where they chant and twist themselves into knots? Um, no.  But I checked into it and low and behold there was a small studio in Mint Hill, five minutes from where I used to live.  Bettie was wonderful!  It wasn’t weird. She basically took us through a series of stretching exercises, with a positive thought for the day, and that was it!  Nothing weird, no worshiping the dead as someone online said yoga encouraged, nothing but a great experience.

After my first class I could tell a huge difference in my back.  Within several weeks I had increased mobility, my posture improved and I was feeling much better.  I’m still not bendy and can’t stretch like many people in class with me, but it has made a huge difference in my life.  

I use several of the poses at home to help stretch before F3 or if I just start getting tight.  Going to yoga class is also a huge part of my recovery.  I never stretch as long at home as when I’m with a group and a teacher.

Funny, that’s a lot like F3.  I never worked out as hard at a gym as I do at F3 with a group and a leader.

Go check out yoga sometime.  Not hot yoga, but restorative yoga or a beginner’s class.  Mint Hill Yoga is great if you are close.  Also F3 now has a yoga/stretching workout Wednesday mornings at Mathews United Methodist Church parking lot at 5:30.  All F3 workouts are free.

To give an update on my weight loss, I’m down again 45lbs and want to lose another 55 which would give me a total of 100lbs!  It’s still staggering to realize how overweight I have been for the past fifteen years.  I’m not trying to get down to 185 like I was in 1998 but 225 would be a wonderful place for me right now.  I would fit on any coaster or pretty much all of them.  Some are just very strict and have tiny seats which don’t work well for my build.

So overall 2017 is going strong and I’m thankful for my progress.  

MyFitnessPal and F3 have been a lethal combination to the fat cells in my body.  

Until next time.

So… what’s the past six months been like? Hmmm, well I won’t go with the negative right away.  Oh why not, let’s go for it!  I’ll make it short though.

So as you know, my back has been causing major problems to my weight loss plans and my life in general.  And towards the fall of the year I was very discouraged.

I’d gained a lot of weight back from slackness on the diet and from the fact I couldn’t really workout or walk without pain.

But wait, here comes the good stuff…

So one day it came to me: screw it I’m going to start posting again anyway.  If I’m in pain, I’ll stop and stretch if not I’ll be careful and keep pushing.

And then all of a sudden my back started to improve.  Weird.  It’s almost like my Moses and the Red Sea moment.  Moses had to step out in the water before God parted the seas.  While Moses was safe on dry ground, nothing was happening.  But as soon as he put his big toe out of his comfort zone into the waters then things started to happen.

Then the first of January I get a cold, which then turns into bronchitis and a sinus infection!  Wow, I don’t know what God is up to, but the devil certainly seems worried about this little old middle-aged Carolina boy.

It seems almost cliché, but you never know what’s inside a person until some pressure is applied.  You don’t get a diamond from leaving coal in its raw state.  Gotta put that pressure on for transformation to happen.

I’m excited in a weird sort of way because I frankly feel like God is using these hard times to toughen me up a bit and to make me a little more patient.  Although the patience is always a challenge for me.  Just watch me drive in traffic.

So for now I’m waiting patiently to be healed and getting back out in the Gloom of F3 and doing what I can and doing  a little bit more.

Until next time.

Step Away From The Phone!

We have a problem in America and much of the western world: we are obsessed with our smartphones and technology. 


Firstly this is not an attack of technology. Technology can do amazing things in seconds and help us find places when we are lost, find a restaurant, find a friend, on and on.


But I see more and more that people sit down to dinner in a restaurant and couples or groups aren't talking to each other.  They are mesmerized by their phones.  Today it reminded me of the scene pictured above from the movie Batman Forever.


In the 1995 film Batman Forever, The Riddler played by Jim Carrey, sets up his own company and sells Nygmatech gadgets that beam TV images directly into the brain.  Sort of virtual reality without the glasses.


It all sounds like fun and games until Batman discovers that Riddler is sucking the brains of Gotham dry to increase his own intelligence.  In my opinion our smartphones and technology are sucking us dry.


How much time do you check your phone during the day?  Once every hour, every ten minutes, every few seconds?  What was that? Was that this sound of a text coming through?  Oh no!  I've got to stop and read it right now!


Why have we allowed technology to become our master?  Because we have allowed it to happen. 


"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Matthew 6:24


In this verse God is speaking to money and its ease to make you slaves to it.  But you can become a slave to anything.  Are you allowing technology to rule you?  Is your technology stopping you from spending quality time with your children, parents, friends or even taking some much needed downtime?


I have made a conscious effort to limit my time checking my phone.  It will be there when I come back to it.  Yours will too.


That's all for now... until next time.

Pulse Of The Nation

This past weekend a tragedy happened when a man full of hatred opened fire on people at a gay bar named Pulse in Orlando, FL  

What is disturbing besides the obvious loss of life is the hatred of many people that claim to be Christians. Yes emphatically the Bible condemns homosexuality, but it also condemns hatred.

"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." 1 John 4:20

Of course he's talking about loving your fellow Christian, but I think the principle still applies.  If you say you follow God and are a Christian, why are you running around spewing hatred?

I'm in no way saying that you should condone a lifestyle you don't agree with, but acting like those people are beneath you and that God hates them is a lie and a shame.

If God hated sinners, why did Jesus hang around with tax collectors and prostitutes?  God loves everyone. He wants to draw everyone into relationship with himself. 

The Bible clearly says "God is love".  God showed the ultimate expression of love when in the form of his only son Jesus he suffered and died on a cross two-thousand years ago so that he could save some.  He knew he wouldn't save us all, we all have a free will.  But he still died for some of us.

Don't you think we should show love to those outside of our faith and beliefs and maybe that would draw them closer to God?  Spewing hatred and theology may sound lofty, but it's doing absolutely nothing to help.

Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 23:27 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean."

I pray for peace, I pray for God's love to flood our land.  We don't deserve his grace, but I ask for it humbly and thank him for the almost 240 years that he has allowed this country to exist and stand.  We certainly don't deserve his love or grace but he still freely offers it.

Why All The Hate?

I seriously want to know why the media and many people bash The Final Countdown by Europe and We Built This City by Starship.  I really, really want to know. What's with all the hatred for these two songs?   

For some time there seems to be many haters of the two singles, but yet back in their day they were both huge hits in the 80s.  I can name many, many more songs that I'd rather disappear from the annals of time: Achy Breaky Heart being one of them.  But when the so-called experts made a list not too long ago of the worst songs ever, the top of the list was We Built This City.

I can understand if people that didn't grow up in the 80s would dislike either song.  They are pretty typical for the era, but that doesn't make them bad songs.

Our media-driven and social media-driven society seems to have only room for one opinion and if its not the popular one, then you obviously must be wrong.

Our society screams for diversity, but when diversity rears its head, people call for conformity.  Make up your mind society!

Is it just like the Guns N Roses album Chinese Democracy that looked like it would never be released, so it became a byword and running joke?  So is it just a running joke that these two songs are terrible, and people don't even know what they sound like enough to make their own opinion?  I have to wonder.

For me, I like both songs and would never say they are hated by me.  For you, you are free to hate both songs, that's your opinion.  But is your opinion based solely on popular opinion, or your own opinion?  Something to think about.