Sacrifice of all things

“… a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; …” Lectures on Faith, Lecture Sixth, paragraph 7

It is obvious that Abraham and many prophets of old sacrificed everything, and the saints of recent times in being persecuted and crossing the plains sacrificed everything, but how are we modern saints sacrificing all things? Who do I know that has sacrificed all things? Who has given up their time, talents, and possessions, even their very lives in service to their calling? Today’s prophets and apostles certainly have no personal life, nor any real possessions. There are many with whom I am acquainted who give their all in their callings as bishops, stake presidents, relief society presidents, even teachers, home teachers, and visiting teachers in fulfilling their callings. They give all of the time required to execute that calling in the service and uplifting of others. (Ah, there is the key to the answer to another question.)

How has that sacrifice produced the faith necessary unto life and salvation? Having given all and being asked for more, being stretched beyond their capacities, within that rarified atmosphere when there is nothing left, Christ steps in to fill the gap. In that filling, when one knows that they have nothing left to give and they see the hand of God work, then their faith grows, even to a knowledge of Christ and His existence and concern for us. They then have knowledge of this one thing. “And this is life eternal, to know God and His Son Jesus Christ.”

Some other religions require the sacrifice of all things. Why don’t they have power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation? Certainly many Muslims have given their lives as suicide bombers because of their great faith. Buddhist monks give up all to meditate and become one with god. What is different about their zeal that would not bring them life and salvation? The key was mentioned earlier. The focus is to uplift others, bring relief, comfort, peace, and happiness to others, to alleviate suffering, and make this a better world. The suicide bomber is filled with hatred and is bent on destruction. The whole religion is one of restriction and taboos on the rights of others and forcing them to follow their prescribed way. The Buddhist monk is often centered on finding peace for himself. However, as they and the Mother Theresa’s of this world seek the betterment of mankind, they often do see the hand of God in their work, and their faith grows in this one thing. Certainly, these individuals, as they seek to uplift, serve, and sacrifice will be receiving all of the truths of the Gospel as it is presented to them in its fullness. Because of their desire to serve others, they will recognize the voice of the one who gave the great sacrifice and come unto Him. They too will have life and salvation.

The key is to sacrifice for the same goals as our Father in Heaven has for us. In giving up all in this quest, we gain His presence and become fellow workers with Him and gain that true knowledge of Him, which brings life and salvation.

In Dresden we got to visit our fourth daughter, Antje Urban. She showed us the beautiful city and I learned about the destruction of Dresden in February 1945. I had heard about it for years and now I was there and visited the Frauenkirche. I saw how the British RAF pilots from 1945 had paid to have the church restored and marveled at the great artists who had worked to recreate the great interior, the organ, and the great architecture. It was also interesting to see how the city had been transformed from the gray communist era town to a modern, vibrant, colorful city. Also, one of my favorite experiences was riding on the 1834 steam boat up and down the river. It was still powered by the actual, original steam engine that still ran on coal.

Austria Cycling Tour in the Rain

We took a wonderful bicycling tour of the area around Salzburg where the "Sound of Music" took place. Then it rained and hailed and flooded and turned cold and made the whole tour wonderful. Because of our wet circumstances we joined forces with two couples with whom we scrambled for busses, taxis, and trains and became very good friends. We still rode bicycles and saw the beautiful countryside of Austria.

Switzerland with Br. Kopfmann

We had a great reunion with my favorite companion from my mission, Br. Kopfmann. We spent the day in Basel and visited his mother. Then we went to Lucern where I finally saw the town and the lake about which the Jodel, that is playing on the video, was written.

Truman & Macil 65th Wedding Anniversary

Vicarious Living through my Kids

Date: 1/14/08

To: My Kids

I was just thinking about each of you and how I love you. It started out with me thinking about Kevin getting 4th chair in the first all region band. I experienced what I never achieved vicariously through him. I am so happy for him and feel, as it says in Mosiah, to “give to each his due,” but for a father, it is as if to say, I could have done that too if I had tried. Therefore, I sin by an expansion of pride and self aggrandizement through the hard work and accomplishments of my children. I have felt that way for each of you as you have been elected to school office, win talent shows, get good grades, graduate from school, get married to wonderful additions to the gene pool, and so many accomplishments. Each thing each of you do glorifies your mother and me. Is this what happens to our heavenly Father as we add to His glory? Is it a sin to grow in pride and glory because of your great kids?
As I sprint through life, I feel like I am at a smorgasbord and my eyes are bigger than my stomach; so many things to see and do and so little time to experience it all. But with my children and grandchildren my reach into the experiential realm spreads and grows like the tendril roots of a great tree. I love the way you bring back video and pictures from your experiences and share those with me. Mark with your instant video historical assessment of the year, and Becca with your blow by blow interpretations of your children’s antics reported frequently and eloquently in your blog page. The same with Jena and Kathryn’s telephonic and photographic reports of your comings and goings.
I just love you all so much and, as my favorite comedian, Bob Hope says, “thanx for the memories.”

Love,

Dad

Pursuit of Happiness

Pursuit of Happiness

1/14/09

Wandering along the waterfront where the huge yachts are parked, I am drawn by the most powerful pull to worldliness to which I can be exposed. All around Ft Lauderdale there are boats/ships, canals, drawbridges, and hundreds of services for the yacht owner. All destinations in the world are open to the boat owner of a sea worthy vessel. The advertisements always show a smiling 30, 40, or 50 something (you can never really tell) couple leaning over the rail of their 100+ foot runabout with half consumed glasses of champagne with the sun setting over the sea. They are so happy to have the world as their foot stool, and you know if you only had a few million, you could be happy too.

Then I was walking along by the dock, lusting after these buxom beauties, when I spied one of the chaps washing the deck and polishing the chrome. He was obviously not the owner, but just being a part of one of these floating jewels should have happiness growing up from the decks into your legs and your whole body. I gave my usual southern “Howdy” and he didn’t even look up. He was down right impolite in his disregard. Then I saw the real owner. He was grayish, slim, obviously successful in the way that he walked. Dressed casually and in bare feet, he climbed the teak stairs to one of the 3 or 4 decks above the white and chrome hull of this magnificent craft. I hailed him, not in the Beccaesque “Ahoy matey,” but in a more genteel “Howdy.” Again, no response. He really didn’t look that happy, not like the ads showed that you must be if you plunked down the dough to experience such ecstasy. He even appeared to have a scowl, like, “How dare you address the great impresario of business and finance? Don’t you know that I scammed everyone of you stupid stock holders out of millions while I ran the company into the ground to buy this boat? Now love me because I have all of this great stuff.” It is funny that as you work towards having people love you because of your wealth or beauty that you actually alienate everyone around you.

When you drive around Ft Lauderdale, you obviously are bumping into these people who are the owners of these yachts. They certainly don’t look like the people in the ads. I guess they are so worried about making the payment on the loan they took out to have that piece of happiness, they don’t have time to be happy. The problem is that they can’t keep their disgruntlement to themselves but take it out on you by cutting in front of you in traffic and in line at Burger King and are generally pushy because they have to hurry up and work harder to make that money to pay for the boat. These are the people that make our economy hum with productivity by making stuff that we can buy and throw away into the landfill so those same people can lament the growth of the landfill and global warming while having a cocktail party on their green house gas emitting yacht paid for by the Chinese produced landfill material that they sold to us.

Life is generally interesting in that we all spend our time working to fend off starvation and accumulate something so that we can hang up the jock and retire. But that requires the same skill as judging the amount of meat and potatoes to dish up so they are finished simultaneously. You certainly don’t want to run out of money before you run out of life, and the reverse is almost as distasteful. If you quit too early to have some vim left to enjoy sitting around and fixing things around the house, you might need to go back to work later doing the only thing you will be able to physically do and that’s be a greeter at Wal-Mart. Or if you time it wrong you will have to depend on our government for social security benefits. What is amazing, after spending 40 years paying into a “trust” account, when you attempt to withdraw your money, they act like it is theirs. I suppose the reason that I worry about retirement funds is that I sure don’t want to have to ask the government scumbags like Ms. Odel at Health and Human Services (amazing that they name it exactly what it isn’t) for a cent. They dehumanize the very humans that go there for services.

I suppose that the United Order was an attempt at providing a system where a person wouldn’t have to worry about the future just plunk along in life and when you hit a rough spot the rest of society will pull you along. The problem is that everyone wants to be pulled along and then there are no pullers, even in the church. Only in the micro-society of families does that idea seem to work. Certainly that dynamic works for the feeling of love and nurturing that comes with parenthood. The pulling is then passed from the parents to the children who then have children, etc. Why is it that blood really is thicker than water, that family ties really do mean something to all people, even in la Costa Nostra? Interesting how the church turns people back to their families for support, including financial, when they have hard times. It is also interesting how the church is frequently the substitute for family when we live far apart, but even that is a poor substitute. It provides that emotional and physical support that would normally be provided by extended family if living within close proximity. Unfortunately, the nurturing has to be done by assignment. “Hi. I’m your home teacher. I love you. It is my calling to love you.” Did the first Christians feel so much like family that they could share all things without jealousy or fear of not getting their fair share? Will we ever get that way again? Does a parent ever feel that he/she is not getting their fair share? I am afraid that what we are seeing on some occasions is that unnatural response. That unnatural response is because we are getting fed a lie from the world media machine.

Considering the budgeting of life’s time and accumulated assets, what would it have been like to live 900 years? I go through life like a blue whale with my mouth wide open straining all the bits and pieces of life I can while I’ve got the chance. I run through life looking under every stone not wanting to miss anything, checking off the items on my huge bucket list. Like Mark and I go through a vacation, never wanting to waste a moment relaxing. There is just too much to experience and so little time. But what if you had 900 years? What if it was 900 years with a bunch of sheep and no internet and libraries and scuba diving? That is when you look up at the sky and make up images from the stars and stories from those images. What if you had 900 years to watch the good and the bad ebb and flow? We would have been able to experience the middle ages, renaissance, industrial revolution, and wars, plagues, and famines. It is interesting that the 9 Nephites desired to join Christ after the requisite 72 years whereas the other 3 wanted to stick around. They would not experience physical disease and pain only the pain cause by the wickedness of the world. To stand around and watch the world do stupid things for 2000 years would make me want to renegotiate my contract. But, on the other hand, with 900 years you have time to get it right. I think it is interesting that the flower child generation put all their money on a one shot bobtailed nag and they lost. With free love, drugs, and getting back to nature they ended up with HIV, a fried brain, and living in a cold, leaky, shack in the dark. Elder Bednar use to talk about how he was the 2,000 year old man. He figured that if he got 35 years of experience from each person he interviewed, he would have the equivalent experience of a 2000 year old man. That is certainly the necessity of the scriptures. They are thousands of years experience bound into a relatively small volume. But some of us cannot learn from listening, we must go and try out our own ideas, to kick against the pricks. Thank heavens for the atonement. That way we can get “do-overs.” But even those are relatively few in number until you run out of time.

So what is the point in all of this? Don’t waste your time on mirages in advertising. They promise companionship, love, and happiness and deliver, debt, solitude, and a pruny face from scowling. Social security comes from the original security of the family and the combined strength of the unit. Finances are important for independence from government intervention. Our family is yet small and relatively weak as a bulwark from a major impact from without the walls, but we are a growing small unit of Zion. Though we are apart, we are together. The gospel teaches all of the correct principles for happiness. I love you all.

Dad.

Financial Management for life

I am sorry that this entry does not display the equations properly. I am trying to figure out why it doesn't work here but is does in MSWord. It will be corrected when I figure it out.


January 8, 2009

To: All my sons and daughters (Blood related and my sons and daughters of the mission)

From: Your Dad

Re: Simple principles and equations of financial management

I want to show you how to buy a house, save for your kid’s education, and save for your retirement. You will find that your life is divided into those three main financial events. These formulas are to take the mystery out of accomplishing those three goals and to give you the power over those “financial managers” who claim to want to assist you but whose goal is to line their own pockets. These formulas will give you to tools to keep from being scammed.

Buying a house

The first thing you need to know if you can afford a house is to know what is your monthly payment. The payment should not be greater than 1/3 of your monthly income. The formula for calculating the payment is as follows.

Payment = ____C_*_i_____
1 - (1 + i) ^ (-n)

C = Cost of the house
i = interest you are being charged per month
n = number of payments
^ means to raise the portion in the left parenthesis by the power in the right parenthesis
* means to multiply

The interest used in the formula is the interest rate being quoted, say 6%, divided by 12 months in a year. So in the formula i that is to be used is i = 0.06/12 = 0.005.
For example, let’s say you are buying a house for $170,000 and the interest is 6% for 30 years. You make at least a 10% down payment, let’s say $20,000 to make this example easy. Then the payment will be:

Payment = _____150,000 * (0.005)____
1 – (1 + 0.005)^(-360)

The first thing that will mess people up is the calculation in the denominator.

(1 + 0.005)^(-360) = 0.16604

If this is not understandable then go back to high school, say to the 9th grade.





Then calculate

__0.005_____ = 0.00599
1 – 0.16604

This is the multiplication factor that you can apply to any price of house to find your payment for a 30 year 6% fixed mortgage.

So your payment will be

Payment = 0.00599 * 150,000 = $899.71 per month.

Your actual payment will be a bit higher to account for payments into an “escrow” account that will pay for your taxes and insurance. The bank doesn’t trust you to pay for those on your own, so they raise your monthly payment to make sure that gets done. They will also want you to buy some life insurance to cover the value of the house in case you die. Don’t buy their insurance. It is way over priced. Go to an insurance broker, I like Northwestern, and buy a term policy that will cover the outstanding principal on the house as it is being paid off. It should cost about $1 per thousand per year. So your life insurance should cost you about $150 per year for this house. You will assign as the beneficiary the bank. They will be satisfied with that. At closing there will be “points” and initiation fees and other fees that are not understandable. That is the bank’s way of gouging you and increasing their profit as if they are not making enough already. Have them explain each one of them. Shop other banks if necessary to lower those costs. Note the actual cost of your house will be,

$899.71 * 360 = $323,895

So the bank is going to make $173,895 on that loan, more than the value of the house.
Be armed with all of this as you go to the bank. They may quote you a monthly payment that is more than it should be to make more money on the deal. They will just skim off the extra in the payment for themselves. This activity is especially true of car dealers. By the way, this formula also works for calculating monthly payment on a car. Assume the car dealer is a shyster.

Saving for College for little Johnny

Should you plan on paying for his education? By the time Johnny gets to college your earning capacity should be many times what an 18 year old could possibly do. If he/she is to get out of school in a reasonable time, 4 to 5 years, they need to be taking 15 to 18 hours per semester. Proper study time should be 3 hours of study per 1 hour of class. Therefore for a 15 hour load they should be studying or in class 60 hours per week. That doesn’t leave much time for work. I say parents should take the responsibility to pay for it with assistance from summer employment from Johnny When he/she is finished they pay it forward. That is they do the same for their kids.
So how much is it going to cost? Tuition, room, and board will be about $12,000 per year at BYU or a state school. That is an absolute minimum. So for a 4 year stint that is $48,000. For you, there needs to inflation figured into the calculation. The tools will be given here to do that. This next formula applies to saving for college or for retirement. What should the installments per month be to provide $48,000 in 18 years? This is called a sinking fund. To calculate the monthly installments use the following formula.

Installments = ____i_____ ___ * T
( 1 + i ) ^ n - 1

T = tuition or retirement
i = monthly interest earned and is compounded
n = number of months

Let us assume that you find a savings plan at a bank that will pay 4% per year. Then your savings plan will look like this.

n = 18 years * 12 months/year = 216 payments
i = 0.04/12 = 0.00333 percent interest per payment

Installment = _________0.00333_______ * $48,000
( 1 + 0.00333)^(216) - 1
So,

(1 + 0.00333)^(216) = 2.050

__0.00333__ = 0.0031699
2.05 – 1

Installment = 0.0031699 * 48,000 = $152 per month.

Note that the total payment is 152 * 216 = $32,832. That’s right. You will pay only $32,832 for a $48,000 education if you start early and use the power of compound interest.

Retirement

Building a retirement uses the same principle of using compound interest to your advantage. So you want to be a millionaire? You will need to be at least a millionaire if you want to retire. Using the same formula as the building of the school fund you can accumulate plenty for your retirement. In this example let us assume that you invest through a tax deferred 401K or IRA plan. Tax deferred is a very important consideration. Accumulate your nest egg without giving away your hard earned cash while you are in a high tax bracket. Then when you retire you pay taxes on what you take out which will be at a lower tax bracket. Within your 401K you invest in safe and secure bonds or other investments that pay a guaranteed 6.5% interest for 40 years. If you start at 25 you have 40 years until you are 65 and you want to have $1,000,000. Turning 65 when you are 25 seems like a ridiculously long time away. Now that I am sailing up to that shore, the journey doesn’t seem like it took that long. Now for the investment part using the previous formula,

n = 40 * 12 = 480
i = 0.065/12 = 0.00542

Monthly investment = ______0.00542_________ * 1,000,000
(1 + 0.00542) ^ (480) - 1

Monthly investment = 0.0004379 * 1,000,000 = $437.90

Now look at how much you have invested really.

Total investment = $437.90 * 480 = $210,192

So you put in $210,192 in and get $1,000,000 out. That is the power if compound interest and time. Now comes the real magic. Assume that you will live to be 95 or 30 years of retirement. Then use the same 6.5% on $1,000,000 in an annuity to pay out monthly in 30 years then how much do you get each month?

Monthly withdrawal = ___i * (1 + i) ^ n__ * A
(1 + i) ^ n -1

For our example,

A = annuity investment = $1,000,000
i = 0.065/12 = 0.00542
n = number of months = 30 * 12 = 360

Monthly withdrawal = __0.00542 * (1 + 0.00542)_^_360__ * 1,000,000
(1 + 0.00542) ^ 360 – 1

Monthly withdrawal = 0.006323 * 1,000,000 = $6,323/Month

So you put in $437 per month for 40 years and take out $6,323 per month for 30 years. Put another way you put in $210,192 and get out 6,323 * 360 or $2,276,391. This is all from the power of compounding.
I wish it were just that easy. The problem is earning that much money per month. When you add up the house, education, and saving for retirement you have $1,488 per month and you haven’t even paid taxes, tithing, or bought groceries. Better get a good job.