Good Cent$

1 My Story From Nonsense to Good Cent$ One day in May 1989, I counted up all of my debts and was shocked to find that I owed $45,000 to various creditors ($15,000 on a new Chevy Scottsdale pick-up truck, $3,000 to the IRS, and $27,000 in unsecured credit card debt). By today’s standards that may not seem like a lot, but at the time my struggling landscaping business was bringing in an annual income of less than $20,000. I might as well have owed 45 million dollars. I felt defeated and depressed. Collectors called constantly. Thank goodness I didn’t have a cell phone then, or I might have gone completely crazy. My financial problems affected every area of my life in a negative way. One collector told me, “Murrell, you’re a disgrace. You can’t even pay your bills. People like you make me sick.” I hated hearing that, but I had no money and a ton of debt. How could I argue with the guy? How did my life get like this? Well, my pathetic story begins back when I was a kid going to school. The basic subjects were taught well enough, but there was absolutely no teaching on personal finances – none in elementary school, none in junior high, and none in high school. Even in college, I received no teaching on personal finances. I grew up in a big family. My dear old dad used to tell people, “I have six sons and each one has two sisters”. People would respond in near horror. My dad would laugh and tell them, “Relax! They each have the same two sisters. We only have eight kids.” Coming from a family that size was great fun. I never felt a lack of friends because I had quite a few friends at home. Of course these “friends” were also my fellow competitors for our parent’s time. It was very difficult for my parents to cover all the bases with every kid. They were good role models, and they did a great job raising us, but they didn’t teach us a lot about personal finances. They did teach us one thing, though; they paid cash for almost everything. Think about that; eight kids, a house, a car, Catholic schools, etc. and they paid cash for almost everything. Amazing discipline! They handled money the right way and we kids saw them doing that. I wish that modeled lesson would have penetrated my brain a little deeper than it did. Growing up Catholic was great. The Church taught me a lot about life and God and loving Him and my fellow man, but I can’t ever remember hearing a sermon on personal finances. More than two thousand Bible verse deal with money, but the Church didn’t teach the subject. With very little teaching on finances at home and no teaching at all on the subject at school or church, it was just a matter of time before I would make a serious financial mistake. I remember the day it happened very well. I was walking toward an auditorium at South Texas Jr. College in downtown Houston, where I was a first year student, when I heard a guy yell out, “Hey, chief, how about coming over here and opening up a department store credit card account? It only takes a few minutes”. At first I was not sure he was talking to me, but he soon let me know he was. “Come on, man, you need this. It’s financial freedom.” He wouldn’t shut up, “It only takes a few minutes, man. This will help you start establishing a credit history. Then you can get more cards and, man, it just keeps on growing.” I guess I was frowning or something; maybe because credit and credit cards were still foreign to me. Maybe I knew deep down that there was danger here with this hyperactive credit card salesman. Anyway, he must have felt I was too cautious because he started in on me again, “Man, with this card you can get in on sales even if you’re short on cash at the time. And listen, it is just cool to be able to whip out a credit card when you want to buy something.” I should have run away from that sales table as fast as I could, but I didn’t. I lingered and listened to more hype. Then I took a wrong turn in my life. I signed a piece of paper saying I wanted a credit card. Stupid, stupid, stupid!!! In a few minutes I went to class. In a few days the department store credit card table was gone. In a few weeks, I received my brand new credit card in the mail. In a few months, I was in debt. In a few years, debt had stalled my life. If only I would have had Good Cent$ back then, my life might have been easier. After using the card a few times, I received my first statement and was happy to see that, although I had charged $240, I only had to make a minimum payment of $10 for that month. The next month I charged another $50 and still only had to pay $10 for that month. Wow! What a deal! Soon after, I received an application for another department store card in the mail. By now I was liking this credit card thing, so I filled out the application and mailed it back. Bingo! I was accepted. Now I had two credit cards. The first card had a credit limit of $500 and I was almost there. My plan was to begin paying that card off and use the second card for purchases. Great plan except I soon maxed out the second card without paying down the first one at all. I was just a few months into my credit card career and I already had $1,200 worth of debt at an average interest rate of 11.9 percent. (The rate would be a lot higher today.) In my utter brilliance, I decided that the way out of this was to get more cards. I quickly amassed $5,000 in credit card debt. Eventually, I applied for and was approved for a Master Card. Now I could charge anything, anytime, anywhere. When my total debt reached $10,000 I began to struggle to make the minimum payments. When the minimum payments no longer covered the monthly interest, I was sunk. I had too much debt and not enough income. By the time I was twenty six years old I found my first gray hair. To add to my problems, I bought a truck in 1975 and replaced it in 1980, then replaced the 1980 truck in1985 and replaced the 1985 truck in 1989. Every truck was new, so my monthly payments and insurance costs went up each time I bought one. All during this time, I was trying to get my landscaping business off the ground. It had been my dream since I was a kid. I loved the work. I loved being outdoors. I loved learning about plants. Unfortunately, the business didn’t grow because I didn’t operate it on a budget. With no budget, I didn’t have enough money on hand to pay taxes, pay insurance premiums, buy equipment, etc. I used credit card checks for a lot of that. Big mistakes! I was living in a fantasy world, thinking I had a business that would start to grow, but I was doing nothing to change the situation. I put up with a struggling business, debt, and harassing creditors for years. I hate to have to admit that now, but that is the way it was. I woke up that May morning in 1989 and wondered if I would ever get out of the miserable mess I had gotten myself into. I am a Christian. I believe God can help in any situation and that He is especially good at helping us in what we think are hopeless situations. I began to pray for His help.................. ..................... In the pages ahead you will learn about what I call the “Good Cent$ Budget”. I want you to begin using the budget today and continue it for the rest of your life. I also want you to pray for God to help you work out your budget. When God is leading you, you will be blessed. Also, consider this, living without a budget is living in a fantasy world. I know because I lived in that world for a long time. Living on a budget is living in reality. I know because I now live there. My prayer for you is that you get off to a good start in your financial life and that it never becomes a problem for you. Do what most people don’t do – live on a budget.