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Showing posts from 2011

2012 I am ready for ya! (95.74%, .49 mths)

Ok, so the one thing that I am discovering about blogging is that it brings a new level of accountability into my life. It is working great for me in the debt realm so I am taking this opportunity to apply it to the life realm. New years is a time where everyone talks about resolutions. Resolutions though are often quickly forgotten, in fact in my 30ish years on earth only once have kept a New Years reso. (2006 I quit smoking and haven't had a puff since) I assume I am not alone in my numerous resolution failures and so this year I propose we do something different. Let's not just be resolute but let us set goals, real goals, S.M.A.R.T . goals. The SMART acronym is borrowed from my business back ground and stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. And so here are my goals for 2012: Physical - 160 lbs - ok so I realize I am not what most would consider fat but as I near closer and closer to the 180 mark I realize that I need to pay closer attentio

Farewell Plains Hotel! - PHOTOS

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Well friends the Plains is gone. An icon of Regina history is now a pile of rubble. Many Reginians have had their lives impacted in some form or another by this place. When I first started discussing the fact that it was being demolished I was tweeted by a friends Dad, who had the his first date with his now wife many many years ago in the establishment. For many others, (myself included) there were hazy Wednesday nights at Good Time Charlies singing Karaoke in a packed smokey bar. This demolition is not necessarily a bad thing though. In fact, I would call it a good thing. Too often we hold on too tightly to our past. We tend to stagnate and do things because thats what we have always done and not because we are inspired to do them and are part of achieving an ultimate goal. But just like without winter you dont get spring, without destruction you cannot have construction. We all need to be shaken up from time to time. Areas of our lives n

WARNING! Vent sesh in progress! (97.1%, .23)

Ok so I was torn on wether to post this, but in the end I decided to because I want to be straight up on the process of getting out of debt and that includes the frustrations and growing pains as I go along. Hopefully you can take something out of my whining :-P In the short couple of months that I have been focused on getting out of debt I have got to say this is one of the TOUGHEST things I have ever done. Never in my life have I lived on this tight of a budget, somedays there is a place in side of me absolutely screaming "THIS IS KILLING ME!!!" Which I suppose, I realize as I write this is the entire point. I am trying to get rid of the part of me that values feeling rich over true financial stability.  I am however somewhat shocked at how deeply entrenched this consumption addiction runs though. I walked into Costco the other day because I needed to pick up a  small gift for a Christmas party and walked out with the inexpensive gift I had planned but also the Lord o

My thoughts on changing the World! Unsecured Debt 97.29% Hi-lo fund .45 months

The Occupy movements around the world have without question gained peoples attention. Seems like everyone has an opinion and you can't get through 10 minutes of a newscast without something being mentioned. This virtual obsession on the topic has me absolutely intrigued with the source of the media madness. Personally I find myself an outside observer to the whole affair, as a Realtor and accountant my professional background and education would set me up as sympathizer of the 1% but as a Christian who has a deep conviction of Christ's views on social justice my heart is greatly concerned with many of the issues being called on by the 99.  As an outsider, one could easily over simplify the situation and say its all about Evil Corporate America vs A Whiny Bunch of Hippies. As I ponder it more and more though, I realize that the facts simply aren't that simple (they never are). As you look deeper into the situation you begin to see a commentary on our culture both good and ba

Tis the season... for financial planning Unsecured debt: 97.62% Hi-lo fund: 0.81 months

Howdy all! I was sent an email this morning about RRSP's so that sparked me to share some info with you all that I wrote a while ago but that I haven't posted to this blog and figured it may be useful to some of you out there.  The Basics of RRSPs What is an RRSP? An RRSP is the common name a Registered Retirement Savings Plan, a program designed by the Canadian government to promote personal savings for retirement.  How does an RRSP work?  The basis of an RRSP is that any money that you contribute to the RRSP is not included in your taxes until it is taken out. So basically if my income is $35,000 a year but I contribute $5,000 to RRSPs when I file my taxes the government only recognizes $30,000 of what I made as taxable income. The remaining $5,000 will be taxed when I withdraw it from the plan years down the road.  Further than that RRSPs also grow tax free which means any money you earn (interest, dividends) on the money in you

This ones for the young ones! Unsecured debt: 98.78% Hi-lo fund: 0.15 months

Part of waking up to the realization that my past spending habits were leading me down a quick road to destitution has done a lot for my attitude towards money. Further, it has caused me to take a long hard look at how I got in this position. I have never lacked a work ethic in fact I don't remember many points in my life when I didn't have a job, since I was old enough to push a lawnmower I have nearly always been gainfully employed. This work ethic combined with a business degree, professional designation, entrepreneurial attitude and fabulous people skills has made income generation easy for the most part for me, my problem is and always has been keeping any of it. And this sparked a question... What if...  What if I could go back in time and instead of wasting money on momentary pleasures that got me no where I would have learned early to be a saver.  And so I did some calculations for the kiddies, courtesy of the savings calculator I found at  www.daveramsey.com , hope

If it aint broke dont fix it! DAY 12 – Unsecured debt: 98.78% Hi-lo fund: 0.35 months

If it ain't broke don't fix it! ...but what if you aren't aware that it's broke.  They say knowledge is power, and I would agree 100% in my bible God warns in Hosea 4: 6 " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..." I think this is one of the biggest problems we face in our financial lives. Too many people are intimidated by finances so they just try and ignore them. The overwhelming amount of get rich quick strategy's and underwhelming amount of solid stewardship training that exist creates a intellectual vacuum and so people simply run a budget of, if there is money in the account spend it and if not use the credit card. I realize that's an over simplification but it unfortunately not far off. And that right there is my biggest motivation in life right now, empower people with financial knowledge so that they dont get their financial education from the school of hard-knocks. I personally have made enough mistakes and learned enough lesson

A long walk to freedom! DAY 1 – Unsecured debt: 100% Rainy day fund: 0 months

Hello, my name is David Whitrow and I’m a son, brother, Realtor, CMA, proud Canadian, Christian, rider fan, social conservative, hockey player and SLAVE! …say what… Slave? You heard me SLAVE, S-L-A-V-E, SLAAAAAVE How so you ask, well the Solomon put it best in the book of Proverbs: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” Proverbs 22:7 You see, slavery, as we commonly understand it, was abolished through out the entire British Empire in 1834 under the Bristish Parliament's Slavery Abolition Act effectively ending legal slavery in Canada at least until the 1920’s when a little thing called the credit card was invented. Mmmmm credit cards… I have had a love hate relationship with them since I first walked down that university corridor and some dude offered me a free T-shirt for filling out a silly little form, a few weeks later a little piece of plastic showed up at my door. To be honest, I tossed it aside and never reall

Street Invaders South Africa 2011 - Part 2

Ok so my apologies for taking so long on this. But WOW was Street Invaders AWESOME this year. The Africa team specifically experienced such an amazing time with God. It was easily the busiest trip we have ever had so I unfortunately had little time to update everyone but here now is the final prortion of our trip. Thank you so much for all your prayers, this trip gets better and better each year. So I left off Thursday night, Friday was an opportunity for the kids to do some Luke 10 evangelism at the mall and do a little shopping too. In the evening we went to Aion Youth group which is a group we have spent time with on each of our missions and have built an awesome relationship with. It was a powerful worship service and at the end Maranda shared a word the Lord had given her and gave testimony in the end we did an altar call and many of the kids came for prayer, God did awesome work in so many peoples hearts. And Nick in obedience to God prayed powerfully for one young man who was

Street Invaders South Africa 2011 - Part 1

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WOW What an absolutely amazing incredibly awesome couple of weeks it has been, boot camp kicked off for the leaders, Saturday July 24 th and it has been a non stop action packed thrill adventure. I look back and feel remorse over the fact that I have not adequately journalled and will likely have forgotten some amazing detail. Monday night service was our first opportunity to really get together in worship and it was awesome, there was no need to “warm-up” to the Holy Spirit these kids came hungry and seeking His presence. As always God was faithful to show up and we saw healings and inspiration through out the entire group. This would set the tone for the rest of the week passionate speaker after passionate speaker shared their powerful Words at each chapel session and worship service and the students and leaders were equipped with tools to show Christ’s love and the boldness to use them. I think in total we saw 15 people healed of various ailments including color blindness and a t

South Africa 2011 - Ready to ROCK!!!

Wow! I cant believe how quickly this years trip snuck up on me it seems almost surreal that this time next week I will be back at Eston preparing for another incredible journey to South Africa. Please continue to pray for us as we go, as always you guys at home praying is a key support in the process of what we are doing in South Africa. In particular please pray: 1: For our team to minister with power and authority as anointed members of Christs body showing His love and sharing His message of hope in all that we do. 2: that our team would come together to act in unity as one force, and that personalities would be grace filled to live together in close proximity for 3 weeks. 3: That finances would prevail, Right now we have an in country budget of $600 per person and in order to achieve all that Piet has planned opportunities for us is estimated $680 not a huge shortfall and will be able to be worked around but I believe that this trip is meant to be overflowing with what God

Think global but act local - Save the world

From Capitalism to Communism I am fast realizing that there is no specific economic ideology which will be completely sustainable into eternity, the root cause of which simply is human nature. Take Communism at its purest is not a bad idea, everyone contributes, everyone shares equally, all are provided for, no one is hungry, everyone has a role and we live happily ever after... a perfect world, that is until I want a nicer car than what you have, and you want a bigger house than I have, the covetous human nature kills the potential social equality. Guys like Stalin live in castles while the commoners freeze in the streets. Capitalism is based on growth, as long as everyone is buying and everyone is selling the economy continues and as long as there are new buyers and new sellers it grows, the major fault that I see though is that we as a planet are finite, there is only so much of our resources to go around. Eventually the oil, fresh water, arable land etc runs out and then w

My First Blog

So, I have never really blogged before but I think I would like to start. It seems to be the thing to do these days and I am hoping that it will force me to do a better job of writing more regularly. Ideally I hope to write a couple times a week, but will see how that works out. This blog is intended basically to share my thoughts and life with the world. I read a lot, you might consider me an information junky and have a lot of opinions. Twitter is my friend, I love the plethora of information that comes through it all served in bite sized little servings. I'm not afraid of controversial topics, Jesus and politics are 2 of my favorite things to talk about, though I have become incredibly disenchanted with politics, too much politicking not enough leading. I am a Realtor and a Missionary. Selling houses is awesome! Helping the world is better! You will likely hear more about both as I blog. I'm a total noob to this blog thing as well so please if you have any tips please