Personal Money Tips

I heard a concept lately and it sort of got me thinking. It’s about ownership. I heard this from Crown Financial ministries. Crown Financial ministries teaches and helps people with their money using biblical based principles. So they cover topics like borrowing, tithing, lending etc.

I would like to get opinions from readers here what they think of what I’m writing next. All comments are welcomed. Well the topic I heard is about ownership. In the bible, everything belongs to God. And even if you are not religious, logically, we enter life without anything, we leave life, that’s when we kick the bucket without taking anything with us. So can we really say we own anything? What do you think about this concept of ownership?

God is owner, we are managers or trustee, money and stuff are what we use or manage.

Agree, disagree, not sure? What are your thought and why? If you can speak with personal experience the better.

I haven’t posted lately to this site but worry not, I’m still alive and kickin and so is this site. Like mentioned earlier, that I took part in the 30 Day Challenge which participants learn to make $10 within 30 days. I’m happy to report that I managed to make the $10. Actually it is $11.53 to be exact. The more important point is that I learned a process that could be repeated. By the way, some one else using the same process made more than $10k. This goes to show with a little bit of imagination and a workable process, what difference can make to expectations. But I’m ok, I prefer steady sort but will aim higher next.

What else happen in between? Some of my articles on this site got stolen! I’m aghast. Mostly ramblings here with some useful stuff once in a while, anyhow I hope to have those articles removed by whoever “borrowed” them.

Okay, something to do with money. I have one of my old cars refurbished. Old like in more than 10 years old. The mileage is pretty low for a 10 year car. So instead of selling it and paying a few grand again, I thought to have the car repainted and touched up. Prices of cars here being what it is, it makes sense to keep a car as long as possible. Labor being still cheap here, it makes sense to repair rather than sell.

Rather surprisingly, or not, Yahoo finance also put up a similar article. In that article title Drive Your Car to Death, Save $31,000, they compared changing a Honda Civic every 5 years with all the repayments, depreciation etc versus, keeping the same car for 15 years. Well $20,500 is the amount of money you’ll save plus another $10,300 is interest from opportunity cost if you have invested the money. Sound pretty good.

In the past, I’ve made the decision to run my cars up to 10 years. But living in a relatively small country and staying in the city, I don’t run up high mileage. I expect at the rate I’m moving about, in 10 years, my vehicles would probably just covered 200,000 km. Yep, that is kilometers, not miles. Cars today can actually cover up to 200,000 miles with proper maintenance, saving you a bundle.

If you are living in a country where labor is expensive, then it makes more sense to really keep up maintaining your car, doing stuff you can do yourself. Regular car wash and wax protects the paint so that it won’t look like you’ve just driven off the junkyard. Keeping to manufacturers’ service intervals etc. Common sense stuff.

Last note about cars. Replacement parts for smaller cars tend to be cheaper. Not talking sports cars here ok. I mean brakes, tires, etc not only are cheaper but last longer too.

So, I’m back and will post more regularly.