How to Stay in Debt

A friend of mine does very well for herself, she makes $125k a year.  Keep in mind that is double the MEDIAN US income per person.  So, she makes more than double the average worker.  She informed me Sunday that her spending on her credit card is unsustainable.  One would think this is a good thing, a wake-up call of sorts.  Negative ghost rider.

Her biggest issue is she tries way too hard to fit in, for someone in their mid-20s to mid-30s this is understandable.  You are likely in an apartment, a small one and hanging out with colleagues after work, and the like.  You may also be going on dates/parties etc.  However, this behavior needs to be grown out of, it’s a sign of a maturity process.  It hasn’t stopped in fact it got worse.

I do not care what part of the country you live in, a 6-figure income should be more than enough to sustain the life of a couple/family, let alone a single person.  This is where budgeting, and expense management comes into play.  In addition, knowing needs vs wants as well.  This person has shown repeatedly they are not capable of doing this.

Interest rate on car loan?  Yeah, it’s over 30%, that’s not a good rate, that’s a good loan shark rate.  The credit card rate is likely about the same mind you.  You wreck your credit in this country you will pay at every turn.

Student loan debt?  Sure, just make a minimum payment like your other loans.  This person is checking all the boxes.

Her biggest problem?  It’s not her debts believe it or not, it’s her lifestyle.  She refuses to be an adult, instead opting to a college fueled party life.  For someone closer to 40 than 37 mind you.

As hard as this may be to fathom, it is not hard to correct this, but it’s not a diet she needs, it’s a lifestyle change.

First?  Knock off the happy hour and late-night partying.  You are an adult not a college kid anymore.  Happy hour is famous for the “I’ll have a couple drinks, well better get an app, well another drink please….aw shucks I better order food…. maybe dessert too?”  Next thing you know that cheap mixed drink turned into a bill of around $100.  Instead of this being a one-time thing, you have made it into a daily thing with your friends.

Second?  Learn to cook at home, you have cable shows, YouTube, and cookbooks.  Cooking at home costs a fraction of going out.  You can even grab a bottle of booze/liquor/wine for a fraction of going out.  Don’t believe me, look it up for yourself.

Third?  Pay your bills first.  Every paycheck.  After paying rent, pay your bills.  Your credit score will thank you later.  Do not save money, extinguish all debt as humanly possible.

Til next time

Johnny Does

Only Hirelings Scatter the Flock

We here at Really Right are vindicated once again on the issue of Covid and church attendance.

The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. –John 10: 13

A survey released last week found that a third of Americans have stopped attending religious services in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

The survey, “Faith After the Pandemic: How COVID-19 Changed American Religion,” was released Thursday. Conducted by the American Enterprise Institute in conjunction with the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the survey examined findings of the 2022 American Religious Benchmark Survey, which asked 9,425 participants about their religious self-identity and attendance from February to April 2022. The participants were selected for having previously taken part in similar surveys in 2018 and March 2020.

According to the results of the survey, 33% of Americans do not attend religious services at all post-COVID, as opposed to 25% before the pandemic. Also down is the number of Americans that attend either regularly (24%) or monthly (8%), as opposed to a pre-COVID cumulative number of 36% (26% and 10%, respectively), Religion News Service reported.

1/3 of Americans do not attend religious services in the post-COVID era: poll

According to the survey, conservatives, adults 50 and older, married adults, and those with a college degree remained likely to attend a religious service. However, while the percentage of Americans who attend in-person religious services has more than doubled since July 2020 (then 13%), standing at 27% in March 2022, this is still below pre-COVID numbers, the survey notes.

Further, the survey also shows that the percentage of conservatives who never attended religious services post-COVID has gone up, from 14% to 20%. Likewise, women, who the survey contends are more likely to attend religious services, also experienced a decline in attendance, with the percentage of women not attending religious services up from 23% to 31% post-COVID. A similar increase happened in men, the survey notes, with 34% of men not attending religious services as opposed to 28% before COVID.

Among Catholics, the percentage of white Catholics who never attend services has gone up from 11% to 18%. Among Hispanic Catholics, the difference was higher, with 10% not attending as opposed to 20% post-COVID.

So, there you have it, proof that scattering God’s sheep has caused many to be lost—probably for good.

The survey also notes that “[C]hanges in worship help us understand how the pandemic has diminished — perhaps permanently — the role of religious participation in the lives of individual Americans and society as a whole.

Oh, the church I have been attending has been hemorrhaging of members, money, and good will with many people angry with the clergy but not because of Covid.

Frankly, I think closing during Covid has put many congregations into a death spiral from which most will never recover. I look for a gradual death for my current church. Demographically, it’s all but a certainty. The fear of offending people with the Truth causes the clergy to fail in its mission of equipping the saints to deal biblically with life’s challenges.

My pastor hopes we can just hide-out within our church and all the bad stuff will Passover us. He seems to be perfectly fine with our culture and world going to hell as long as they leave us in peace. I seem to recall something about hiding your light under a bushel basket, but my sense was that it wasn’t a good thing for churches to do. Maybe seminary graduates know something we don’t.

Negotiations: Trump vs McCarthy

I know, I know I’m whacking poor Speaker Kevin again, but I want to illustrate a point I failed to make in yesterday’s blog.  One thing that irritated the establishment GOP and the Left is Trump’s negotiation skills.  While many likely went out and bought Art of the Deal, you could have saved your money and just watched. 

Trump is a master at negotiating because he knows exactly what he needs and has his finger on what the other side wants.  He knows he can give the other side some while getting all of what he wants.  A perfect example is the stimulus checks, he insisted they have his name and signature on them.  The Democrats got a check, the GOP was fine with it (the bloggers here were not) but Trump got what he wanted.  Also look at the judges Trump got onto the court, he tried to negotiate, knew it was pointless and told Mitch McConnell via the media to “go nuclear.”  Suddenly Mitch turned conservative on Trump’s judges.  Bottom line, Trump knew how to negotiate and when to let someone else (media) do it for him.  Case in point, Lindsey Graham.  Either his balls finally dropped, or he realized getting called out in the media was going to burn him badly, suddenly he became a fire breathing conservative.

Contrast that to Kevin McCarthy, our new Speaker.  McCarthy strikes me as the awkward kid no one liked growing up, then he realized if he gained power folks would like him, and if they didn’t, he could wield his power and change their mind.  His negotiating skills bear that out.  During his time in the Assembly in Sacramento, and in Congress he always seemed to negotiate from behind.  This is the opposite of Trump.  McCarthy would start at zero and try to get to 50/50.  He would call that a win, to be fair Ryan, and Boehner before him operated the same way.  Boehner was known for chain smoking and crying, Ryan was known for being a policy wonk and speaking in robotic terms about GOP talking points.  It is because of these 3 “conservatives” that people like those on this blog have given up on the party.

In fairness to the 3 aforementioned leaders of the party, I will say again, what does the GOP actually stand for?  I heard my entire adult life, get us elected and we will; cut taxes, reduce spending, yada, yada, yada.  It never happens like that.  I’ve watched for 20 years the GOP giving the other side at least half of every deal, likely more, even when we had sizable majorities in the House and Senate. 

Even the Trump tax cuts had to be bulldozed through by the Trumpster himself, and even then, they are temporary.

I will go back to my point on McCarthy and my perception of his upbringing again.  McCarthy and other folks who negotiate like him are always trying to “buy friends” or in their case “buy votes.”  They do not want to be the mean guy who upsets anyone, so as a result I’ll give you what your side wants if you don’t say mean things about me.  Remember the chief goal of a politician is not making good on campaign promises, slogans, or other sayings, it’s about getting re-elected.  In the case of McCarthy, it’s about keeping a majority as to guarantee him the speakership.

Congrats to the Democrats on getting at least half of what they want.

The Chief

Sean Hannity is Dooming the GOP

Happy New Year. To those of us in California, I hope you are weathering the storm.  It has been a crazy first couple of weeks for the national GOP.  Speaker McCarthy has already been a trash fire.  Here is my take on things.

First off, remember back to when Donald Trump was elected President.  First thing he said to Congress was “Let’s get a plan to repeal and replace the health law.”  Predictably they did nothing.  The law stands in place today.  I see this current Congress playing out the same way.

First, the Speaker vote was embarrassing on every level.  How does it take 15 votes to elevate the Minority Leader to Speaker when no one else even ran against him?  How can one be so tone deaf?  McCarthy had to have known the hard right, aka the real conservatives, were tired of the status quo. Why didn’t he reach out to this group and negotiate behind the scenes with them? He only had two months to work out a deal, but it seems he did nothing until after he started losing votes.

Did McCarthy think being a smug prick was wise toward this group?  They embarrassed him!  The items the Group of 20 or so asked for aren’t out of line at all.  A motion to dismiss the chair is never out of order, unless Madam Pelosi is Speaker, but McCarthy didn’t want to lose power.  The members of that Group of 20 who lost committee assignments wanting them back, this isn’t out of line either.  Term limits goes back to the old Contract with America circa 1994.  I’m not seeing much out of order here.  Put it up for a vote, when it goes nowhere…. say sorry, I tried but we must move on.

However somehow McCarthy was not the biggest clown in the circus these past couple weeks, that award goes to Sean Hannity of Fox News fame.  Full disclosure, I do not have cable. I watch bits and pieces while I work-out daily, about 20 minutes max then I turn something else on.  Hannity spent each night on his show trying to go to bat for McCarthy for reasons I do not understand. Hannity kept saying its “his turn.” 

(Editor’s Note: this is the same logic that gave us such great political luminaries as Bob Dole and John Kerry as frontrunners for President. It was their turn. Yuck. Also, this was actually McCarthy’s second turn to try for Speaker, but he dropped out last time after it went public that he was poking interns on the side. Somehow, I missed the apology tour where he got the wife to “stand by her man” as he faked contrition for getting caught.)

Hannity’s argument was that the Speaker’s job is reserved for only the powerful elite.  Hannity rolled out Newt Gingrich and a whole host of GOP establishment types to bully the Group of 20 to “just relent.”  He even went as far while interviewing Lauren Boebert, one of the Group of 20, to tell her “You and your colleagues should stop your circus.”  Little did Sean understand, no one else wanted the job of Speaker, they just wanted concessions on a couple of things.

Sean and Kevin got their way, but at a major price.  McCarthy is wounded. First why hold a vote when you will not win, then decide to hold a “vote-a-rama” whilst watching your vote totals keep dropping?  What is the definition of insanity? This shows an alarming lack of leadership. McCarty had to have known this would happen.  Then he, just like Hannity, chose to sit back and insult and make fun of that group.  This creates hurt that can backfire big time. Little does Hannity understand that Group of 20 is not a rubber stamp for McCarthy.  Worse yet, if they vote in blocks against it, his “agenda” goes nowhere.

Speaking of which, what is the GOP agenda?  I never heard a plan, let alone ideas.  Seems to me the plan is just block Biden and investigate Democrats. While that is admirable, fixing the issues plaguing this country would be a better start.  McCarthy and Hannity do not understand that voters want solutions not more inaction.  I am seeing nothing out of either.

In closing I will say this Hannity looks and comes off as a total clown.  I think he views himself as a kingmaker in the GOP, he is the opposite.  I actually used to like him. He held the Democrats to the fire and held the GOP accountable.  He does not hold the GOP accountable at all anymore.  His ardent support of McCarthy proves one of two things; either Fox executives are telling him what to say, or he just wants to remain relevant with the GOP leadership. 

It’s odd really. Hannity used to go on nightly monologues about lower spending, less regulations, lower taxes. Now he goes out of his way to elevate a CA moderate who at best likes to play nice with the other side. And folks wonder why no writer for this blog is registered as a Republican anymore?  Hannity blew all of his credibility; or maybe he was always this way? At his best, maybe he just mimicked Rush Limbaugh for his nightly talking points and now that Rush is gone he’s showing his true colors. Makes you wonder.

The Chief

PS Wanna bet Hannity called McCarthy a “good conservative” as the Speaker votes were being held?

T Minus Two Weeks

By the time I’ve posted this blog, I will have two weeks until I kiss my state job goodbye. I think on my calendar at work, its marked as Bobby’s Johnny Paycheck Day or some such thing. Oh, Johnny Paycheck is best known for a song he did in the 1970’s called, “Take this job and shove it.” I doubt anybody but me knows or cares about this one last slap at my employer, but it’s intended as sarcasm.

Anyway, I’m making a bunch of decisions with little time to think about them. Thankfully my wife is in on my decisions and deliberations. As long as we agree, things should be OK. Oh, one benefit of retiring in January is that I have only one five-day work week during my last month of employment.

Just for entertainment value, I also got a jury duty summons for my last week. Since it’s a four-day work week, and my group number is just over halfway thru the pack, I doubt I have to show up but who knows? Whatever happens, its my last jury duty in California. I can’t wait to get out of this place.

Our new home, in a much more freedom loving place, is slowly coming together. The inside is warm and cozy but in need of drywall and finishes. Also, the wife seems to agree that we each need our own area to work so Really Right looks to be on track for a full-time office. No, I don’t plan on going full blogger 24/7 but I might finally write a book or two like I’ve been wanting to do.

The reduction in income is balanced against the payoff in completing the house. I’m looking forward to having more of a hand in completing our house. When I do work on projects, I harken back to some sage advice offered in one of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies; “A man’s got to know his limitations”. Sometimes I skip doing work due to a lack of knowledge and sometimes due to a lack of insurance. I’d rather let the guy with liability insurance do some types of work rather than do it myself.

I’m not really retiring, just changing jobs.