Tag Archives: Clark Howard

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Submission & Stove Buying…A Newlywed Story…

Hello World,

My all-time favorite TV newlyweds...Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert Wayne...

My all-time favorite TV newlyweds…Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert Wayne from “A Different World”

I wonder how long you are a technically a newlywed…According to Psychology Today, two years is the maximum to be considered a newlywed…That’s good because although Robert and I have been married over a year now, I’m experiencing new things all the time with him and have no idea how to navigate the newness…

One area that I am ever considering is the dreaded s-word…If you are a Christian wife, you already know…I am referring to SUBMISSION (yes Jesus…the word that scares me more than a Stephen King movie…And the only reason I can sleep in complete darkness now is because I have someone sleeping with me…so I’m a scary person by nature…) Ever since my pastor, who you know is my father if you have read my blog posts for any amount of time, preached on submission this summer, I have been wondering just what it means in my marriage or any marriage…

After I got over the weirdness of thinking my father preached that sermon directly to me (since he knows firsthand that no one but God is the boss of me), I started considering just what it means to be a submitted wife…I’m still not sure, so I kinda moved on in my head…(read: relegated it to the recesses of my mind) but when I saw a FB post by FB friend and fellow author Demetria Lucas D’Oyley, also a newlywed, I began thinking about S-word again in earnest…Basically, she said was wondering about the term and noted that it was a concept that rarely came up as she consulted with various married couples leading up to when she got married and that submission seems to be only a Christian concept…She got 146 responses from that singular post…I even commented a few times…

I made a few a definitive statements probably leading people to believe that submission makes me feel like this…

But the rest-my-hand-on-the-Bible truth is that submission makes me feel like this…

I want to speak in tongues and run all up and down the church aisle because seeking guidance from God because I just don’t know what to do sometimes...

Case in point…Yesterday hubby and I went to stove shopping…We agreed on a budget…That part went smoothly…But the rest of it…not entirely smooth…

First point of contention…Hubby and I have known for several months that we needed a new stove so because hubby is always excited about buying new gadgets even domestic ones, he researched various stoves that he thought would be a good months ago….Me, ever the procrastinator, didn’t start researching until yesterday…that’s right the day we had designated to shop…

Second point of contention…When I did started my research, I started with Clark Howard…He represents all things good when it comes to lovable geekdom and saving more and spending less…He recommends that you should NEVER buy an extended warranty on appliances because they are basically useless as most appliances are pretty reliable nowadays…Hubby disagreed with Clark…

Third point of contention…The bells and whistles…Hubby has duly noted that I…and I hesitate to admit this…am not a domestic goddess…Cleaning anything (except my body) is usually not my first thought…Should we pay for additional bells and whistles like self-cleaning and what not? Hubby said yes…Me…see above…I’m all about that saving more and spending less even if means that I only clean the stove if I think someone will see it…

By now, you are probably wondering did hubby have his way or did I? I won’t share all of my business here but I’m happy to say we are the proud owners of a brand new stove…the first time I’ve ever bought a major appliance even…

But this morning, I’m wondering what was the submissive thing to do in this situation?…

If you are unfamiliar with the term submission, below is how it is mentioned in the Bible…

 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Ephesians 5:22-24

Below are a few stories, interviews and blog posts I have found about submission that I plan to read and think about…

  1. “What’s So Scary About Submission: Six Secrets About What the Bible Really Teaches?” by Kevin Miller on todayschristianwoman.com
  2. “5 Christian Men Talk Candidly About ‘Distasteful’ Women, Submissive Wives and Why Sex Is So Important” by Nicola Menzie on christianpost.com
  3. “The Top 10 Things That Submission Is Not” on warriorwives.net
  4. “7 Misconceptions About Submission” by Mary Kassian on girlsgonewise.com
  5. “Liberated Through Submission With Bunny Wilson” by Nancy Leigh DeMoss on reviveourhearts.com

So how do you define submission, and what has it meant in your marriage? Does submission only work for Christian couples?

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

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Friends & Financial Compatibility: Is There Such a Thing?

Hello World!!!

For the past two weekends, I have been hanging out with the girls celebrating birthdays, popping bottles, donning funky platform shoes, eating appetizers and spending money…

And if you read a previous post on my financial state, you know that I am trying to “save more, spend less and avoid getting ripped off.” (Clark Howard’s motto) Per my financial coach, I am curtailing my spending money to $100 a month for a while to help pay down some debt and add more to my savings…and it’s working…but $100 isn’t a lot of money it seems…And my eating out money is supposed to come from that $100 according to my financial coach…So when some friends and I decided to celebrate another friend’s birthday by taking her out to eat about a week ago, I made a game plan…And let me backtrack a little…these particular friends are fabulous and don’t mind spending a pretty penny and more on food, drinks and good times…So I made a game plan because with these friends, I’m liable to have more than my share of alcoholic beverages and then be mad the next day when I’m looking over the bill and wondering how I could have drank all of that cash the night before…

So the birthday girl, knowing my cheap nature, started off the dinner saying that she was contributing to the bill. Obviously, that was her way of saying, “I know you’re cheap, and I don’t want you to worry about paying for my meal because I want to eat and drink what I want…” And I appreciated that…(It is typically my friends’ policy to pay for the meal of the birthday girl we are celebrating.) But at the end of the night, some five to six hours later, as I was putting gas in my car at a deserted gas station and looking around for potential carjackers, I realized that I spent $20 more than what I budgeted for.  But hey I decided to chalk that one up to the game…You win some…You lose some…It could have been worse…

So Friday night, when I received a near midnight text that the girls and their men wanted to spend Saturday evening at the Hotel Palomar, I knew that it would be yet another temptation to go outside of my budget…But like a kid following the siren song of the Pied Piper, I went along…and we had fun…and the bill was nearly $500 when DKW and I left…

Before you get me wrong, this is not a criticism of my fabulous friends…If you have the money and want to spend it, that’s your business. But it does bring a larger question into focus…is there such a thing as a financial compatibility? Do you have to hang around people who have the same spending habits that you have? I enjoy having friends of various spending sensibilities. DKW and I are cheap…We get excited about coupons and free events…But I also enjoy hanging out with my fabulous friends when I want to spend literally and figuratively a night on the town…And the Hotel Palomar is a fabulous place to spend a summer evening…The beautiful lounge is atop the hotel. As I sipped my breakfast caipiriha, felt the breeze in my locks and gazed at the twinkling city lights, I almost felt like I was at the beach…(My financial coach and I agreed that I would not take any trips until at least December so I imagine I won’t see the beach again until next year, God willing…)

We have all heard that money issues can be the death of a marriage but what about your friendships? As I said, I think it’s possible to have friends of all types.

Any thoughts?

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Random Ramblings aka I didn’t have a topic but bear with me…

Hello World!!!

As I stated in my title, I don’t have a specific topic, but that’s okay…I think you will be entertained by the random collective of thoughts that have entered my mind lately…at the very least, you will feel sorry for me and perhaps leave a comment to make my day 🙂

1. Just to get it out of the way…What grade would you give President Obama on his first 100 days? Uh duh, if you compare him to our former president, that would be a high “A!” However, financial guru Clark Howard, who truly seems like a nice man, has criticized the Obama administration for its continuing involvement in bailing out GM. Yesterday, he asked his listeners what they want to happen with GM since we are now part owners of the company through our tax dollars…

2. Do y’all think the Craigslist killer’s fiancee had any idea that her man sought the erotic services of women on Craigslist not to mention what he did to them once they hooked up…To be fair, the medical student who had planned to get married in August hasn’t been convicted of the crime, but all of this has got me thinking…When you’re in a relationship with someone, can you really be completely fooled by that person…I mean you may not know that you’re man has a gambling problem for instance, but you wonder why he disappears so much…I briefly dated this old, married man in college…Of course, I was unaware that he was married and once I discovered that, it was over…But even before I discovered that, I could tell he was lying about his age…If you and your girl both sport Jheri curls in your high school prom picture, you were not born in the 7os….

3. A subscriber to this blog (yes, I actually have a few subscribers) said that she notices that black men (and she is black) don’t bother to hold the door open for her and other women while white men or men from other cultures do…she asked me to write about this phenomenon so I decided to pay attention and see if she had a point…I noticed that some men do and some men don’t, but I didn’t notice that one group was any more likely to hold the door open for me…what are your thoughts?

4. Would you think less of a Christian person if you saw him or her get tipsy at a party every now and then? Is it wrong for Christians to drink period? A little champagne never hurt anybody…

5. Should the “swine flu” be called the “Mexican flu” in deference to Jewish people and Muslims?

6. Is it possible to really fall in love more than once in your lifetime?

7. I will have an extended post about this next month, but in the meantime, what do you think of pre-marital sex for Christians? Is it really that bad? Is it just an antiquated Biblical notion clearly not meant for people who have waited well into their ’30s to get married…(Stop looking at me…)

8. Were y’all aware that Rev. Al and Warren Ballentine will be back on the radio in Atlanta as of today? However, their programs will now be broadcast on AM rather than FM…on 1380 WAOK to be exact…that’s good news! It’s soo not true that black people only want to listen to R&B all day long as a radio exec recently told me.

9. Is anyone else a fan of Lil Wayne? I know he seems crazy, but in some sort of impish way, he is cool to death…

10. Does size really matter? If your man presented you with a little bitty engagement ring, what would you do? This was a hot topic discussion among my girls a couple of weeks ago…I don’t have to have a huge rock, but semi-huge would suffice…I would rather have a nice house than a huge rock…But TRUST and BELIEVE, that does not mean I would be happy with a simple gold band…Would it be okay to go behind his back and exchange the stone if it was too small…Steve Harvey was talking about this topic as well…Have y’all read his book? What do you think?

Any thoughts?

P.S. Doesn’t Lil Wayne look like somebody’s baby boy desperately trying to be hard in this pic? Goodness, maybe I’m maternal after all…And I also included a video for his song with Babyface, “Get Too Comfortable.” Face can make anything sound good…