September 4, 2018 • Page 2 shop online at www.missourivalleyshopper.com Dave Says Paying Off Credit Cards Dear Dave, How do you feel about taking money out of savings to pay off credit cards? Peggy Dear Peggy, I’m okay with this under two conditions. One is that you cut up the credit cards, close the accounts, and never use those things again. The second is that you don’t wipe out your savings in the process. Leave something in there, so you’re covered in the event of an emergenDave cy. Then, rebuild your savings as fast as possible once the debt is out of your way. You have to understand, too, that credit cards aren’t the problem. The credit card debt isn’t the problem, either. They are just symptoms of buying things you don’t need, with money you don’t have, in order to impress people. Take a long look in the mirror, Peggy, because the person who’s looking back at you is the problem. Overspending, disorganization, not earning enough … whatever label you want to slap on this situation, you are the reason for the problem. Once you understand and accept that, and you start living on a budget and staying away from debt, you’ll have taken your first real steps toward financial peace! — Dave RAMSEY The other night it was hot. Hot during the day, hot at night. Heat seems to define summer for us, in many ways. But in spite of that, after a day in the outdoors, we built a fire. A small fire. A “hat” fire, which mountain people define as one you can put in your hat. Why so small? Because it was hot and we didn’t need the heat. Why the fire? Because we need the fire. It is the hearth. It is the touchstone to our past. It is a link with countless generations of ancestors who have sat here looking at the flames licking up on the chunks of firewood and taking us back endless years, countless years, to what was then. Through the flames and later the glow of the coals, we can see things that we can’t see at any other time. We can hear music in the crackling. We can be comforted by the fire, which is our best friend as Need Life Insurance With No Dependents? Dear Dave, I’m 35, single, and I have no dependents. Do I need a life insurance policy? Larry Dear Larry, In your situation, if you have enough cash saved up to pay your final expenses — and you don’t have any debt — there’s no reason for you to carry a life insurance policy. No one will be harmed financially by your death, and no one would be deprived of the income that would be lost if something unexpected happened to you. Even if you have a mortgage on a home, the house will normally sell for enough to pay off the mortgage. However, if you have debt, or if you don’t have some money stashed away in savings, you might want to consider an inexpensive term life insurance policy. At your age, if you’re healthy, you can get $100,000 worth of coverage for just $10 to $15 a month. Remember, you don’t buy insurance to leave an inheritance. You buy life insurance is to make sure there’s enough money to take care of your family and final expenses. You wouldn’t want your parents or someone else having to foot the bill! — Dave * Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business, and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. He has authored seven bestselling books, including The Total Money Makeover. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 12 million listeners each week on 575 radio stations and multiple digital platforms. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com. well as a potential destroyer, at the same time. How many times have we looked into the flames of a small fire, just like this? It’s beyond counting. Sometimes the fire has been in a fireplace with all kinds of louvers and vents and controls, and yet even then we shut off the lights and sat quietly, looking into the fire and taking ourselves back to our beginnings. It is important that we do this, so important to our emotional health that we willingly pay extra for a modern city house or apartment that has a fireplace. It doesn’t make any sense at all. No sense at all until you look into the fire and those same questions come along. Who am I? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? Is my life being spent for the right things? What more can I be doing? ing & t Din men r ta i n n te E 2 Big Days in Delmont, SD Historical Society of Delmont Kuchen Festival • Sept. 8 (Downtown Delmont) Twin Rivers Old Iron Harvest Festival • Sept. 8 & 9 (At the farm, ¼ mile West) • Parades • Tractor Pull • Quilts, Crafts and Art • Flea Market • Demonstrations & KUCHEN Visit www.twinriversoldiron.org or www.delmontsd.org for more information By Daris Howard Do we remember other fires in faraway places? Places where the weather is different, the animals are different, the people are different. Remember using wood from other kinds of trees? Remember sitting around the fire with others who are only with us now during these quiet times by the fire and in the sanctuary of memory? We ask ourselves these questions, but the answers can only be found in the silent glowing of the coals, and we can only hope we stack up right in the long run. Because when we look into the coals, at the end of a long day, it’s our way of going home. In the Classifieds In Print and Online!• Call 665-5884 YOUR RADIATOR HEADQUARTERS! Hatchet Woman I grew up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere in Idaho. Our nearest neighbors were a mile away in one direction, with no one living beyond us the opposite way. I could ride my horse out through the rangeland for miles and never see anyone. So when I arrived in New York and was assigned to work in Buffalo, it was a whole new world for me. “How do we get around?” I asked Walt, the young man with whom I was assigned to work. “How did you get around at home?” he asked. “A horse or pickup truck, mostly. Sometimes a tractor, if it entailed farm work.” “Well, here you walk or take a bus,” he replied. My first bus trip across town was a new experience, and I almost lost Walt when we had to do a transfer. If I had, I probably would have never found my way back to the apartment and would have learned to sleep on the streets among the people our religious work often took us to. But Walt found me, and I was okay. Our work took us into some tough neighborhoods as we tried to serve and help people. That’s why when Walt first mentioned our landlady, it made me nervous. I saw her in her yard whacking at a bush with a big machete. “Who’s that?” I asked. “Oh, that’s Hatchet Woman,” Walt replied. “She’s our landlady.” The name Hatchet Woman made all sorts of ideas run through my mind. I decided it would be best to keep an eye on her. But Walt didn’t seem to give her a second thought. And though over time I found her to be somewhat of a salty woman, the more I got to know her, the more I found her to be just an eccentric old lady. So one day I asked Walt about the name. “Oh, Hatchet Woman?” he replied. “It’s a long story.” Walt told me he and the young man before me had come into the area and looked for a place to stay. They found the ad for the small apartment and went to check it out. Betty, Hatchet Woman’s real name, was very businesslike, and they soon agreed on a lease. Walt said he quickly learned that when Betty was upset, she liked to take a shovel, a hoe, a machete, or a hatchet out to whack at weeds or overgrown shrubs in her yard. She said it made her feel better. But he said the way she went after the bushes was a bit unnerving. Walt said one day he and the young man he was working with came home, and Betty was especially annoyed at something. She had a hatchet and was using it to hack away at a small tree that had started growing in the middle of her roses. As she chopped at the tree, she was getting cut up from the thorns. “We considered helping her,” Walt said, “but the way she was wielding that hatchet made us reconsider how safe that would be.” So the two young men went to their apartment, and watched Betty out the window. “We didn’t think she could see us through the window,” Walt said. “But she would chop away for a while; then she would look in our direction and let out a load of profanity. We were beginning to feel quite nervous, when after one of her outbursts, she stood up and threw the hatchet in our direction. “The young man I worked with turned to me and said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I am out of here.’ He headed down the stairs, out the door, and ran straight into Betty. She looked at us and said, ‘Could you boys get my ladder and get my hatchet down for me?” Walt said they both froze and looked at her. “Finally,” Walt said, “I squeaked out ‘Hatchet?’ She nodded and said, ‘I threw it at a squirrel, and the hatchet got stuck in the side of the house. Dang squirrels! Always chewing holes into the attic.’” Walt grinned. “And that’s how she got the name Hatchet Woman, but I would advise not calling her that to her face.” Gov. Daugaard Proclaims September Attendance Awareness Month PIERRE, S.D. – The 2018-19 school year is underway, and Gov. Dennis Daugaard has proclaimed September • Great Parts • Great Warranty Attendance Awareness Month. “Time out of school is learning lost,” said Mary Stadick On-Hand & In-Stock! NO WAITING! Smith, interim secretary of the South Dakota Depart1007 Broadway Ave ment of Education. “All it takes is missing 10 percent of Yankton, SD NEW! 605•665•4494 a school year to negatively impact student achievement. That equates to just two or three days of school per ¢ Save 10 Off A Gallon Of Gas When You Use Your Sinclair Card month. With that in mind, I encourage school districts, communities and families $ to examine their local 1.75 ML school attendance rates and work together to get $ WOW SAV and keep those rates high.” E $6 1.75 ML The South Dakota $ Department of EducaIncludes Cucumber Flav 1.75 ML tion has been working to or raise awareness about the $ importance of regular at750 ML Includes ALL FLAVORS tendance through outreach to schools and other stakeholders. Research indicates that by sixth grade, chronic absenteeism We’ll Match All Local Advertising Prices! is a proven early warning sign for students at risk for dropping out, and by ninth grade, good attendance can predict graduation rates even better than 8th grade Tree Trimming, Removals & Transplanting test scores. More information about the importance of consistent school attendance is available at http://attendanceworks.org. Cox Auto Lor t ices BaildeyC’salveisrh C1r4.99 Pr Ir Best eam 42.99 Town! Prairie Organic Vodka 25.99 In Crown Royal 25.99 Cork N Bottle 1500 Broadway, 665-3881 Hartington Tree LLC TREES FOR SALE: EvErgrEEn • ShadE ORNAMENTAL FALL IS A GREAT TIME FOR PLANTING! Yankton 605-260-1490 Hartington 402-254-6710 Contact Information Fiddlers on South Dakota PO Box 226 • Sioux Falls, SD 57101 • Phone: 605-880-0436 info@fiddlersofsouthdakota.com • www.fiddlersofsouthdakota.com Serving Southeast SD & Northeast NE Kent & Kyle Hochstein • Licensed Arborists www.hartingtontree.com Find What You’re Looking For! in the Classifieds. In Print and Online! Call 665-5884 www.missourivalleyshopper.com