The Dave Ramsey Christmas Way. Pay for a Debt Free Christmas with Cash!

This is our third cash only Christmas.  Since 2008, we have buried the credit card and have used cash only for Christmas.  January is a much more enjoyable month since I get no mail from the evil credit card companies.  Commit to the program and you have no choice but to improve your situation.
  If you follow the Dave Ramsey plan, you will build wealth much quicker.  Merry Christmas to all!

December Debt Free Update. Pay Off Mortgage the Dave Ramsey Way.

Here is my December update. Currently, I am on Dave Ramsey's Baby Step 6 (Pay off the home mortgage). Two years & 4 months into my four year plan...things are so far going as planned. We have $41,166 left on the mortgage and then we will be 100% debt free!!

Here are the 7 Baby Steps:

1. $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund  (Done)
2. Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball  (Done)
3. Three to six months of expenses in savings (Done)
4. Invest 15 percent of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement  (Doing 30%)
5. College funding for children  (Part of #4's 30%)
6. Pay off home early  (In Progress)
7. Build wealth and give!  (Can't Wait)

By August 2013, We will be on to baby step 7.  Time flies when you're having fun!

Repairing my 2005 Chevy Silverado's Sticky Accelerator Pedal. Throttle Body Carbon Cleaning.

My 2005 Cheverolet Silverado's gas pedal felt like it was sticky. I had to press the pedal a little harder to get it to accelerate from a stop. I did some online research and discovered that it was actually not the pedal but the throttle body. The throttle body develops a buildup of carbon around the outside and sort of seals itself closed.
It is less than a twenty minute project to get to the throttle body and clean it with the throttle cleaner. Quick & Easy (& cheap). I bought the cleaning spray at Autozone for under $3.

Human Body FactsThat May Surprise You. Your New Year's Resolution

1. A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
2. A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 mph.
3. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

4. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
5. A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.

6. Every person has a unique tongue print.
7. According to German researchers, the risk of heart attack is higher on Monday than any other day of the week.
8. After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink.
9. An average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime.
10. A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip.
11. An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.
12. It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown.
13. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.
14. Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
15. By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds. By the time you turn 70, your heart will have beat some two-and-a-half billion times (figuring on an average of 70 beats per minute.)
16. Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.
17. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
18. Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.
19. Fingernails grow faster than toenails.
20. Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin.