Joel 2.28: "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions."

My son, Joel Lamar Rozier, was born June 20, 1977 in Augsburg, West Germany. We were so happy to have a new addition to our home. Joy (Joel's sister) was kind of jealous. He took away some of attention that she had all to herself. One day, after Joel had been crying, Joy said, "I don't like him, take him back to hospital."

Joel was almost six months old when we flew back to United States. Germany was okay but it was not United States.

Joel had blondest hair, bluest eyes, and cutest dimples! He sure was a pretty baby boy! His mom doted on him. I did too. As a young child, Joel didn't begin to talk as soon as Joy. He babbled and when he talked, his mom and I could understand him. He also had a hard time of distinguishing colors (slight color blindness).

He celebrated his fifth birthday at airport in Los Angeles, California. We had driven cross country, with a brief stop in Roswell, New Mexico, where my mother-in-law lived. We also stopped and spent two days near Phoenix, Arizona where my first cousin, Master Sergeant Lee Johnson (retired, U.S. Air Force) was stationed.

I got a kick out of Lee. he took me around town and showed me some of South Georgia style barns he had built. Lee could build and fix anything. Often, he made more money doing this than what Air Force paid him. we had a very good visit with lee, Charlotte, and boys. We were stationed in Germany at same time and visited each other there.

Joel started kindergarten, and his speech impediment was such that other kids made fun of him. He wouldn't talk in school. He went through speech therapy for several years which helped much.

Joel was eight when I became a single parent. He missed his mom but he went on and whatever he tried he did it with all his might. Joel is a whiz on computers and also has a wonderful business head.

When Texas Instrument put out their home computer, we got one. I built a computer desk and began to learn how to program. My typing skills are more or less hunt and peck, so I had to go slow on all those "$Q/?" symbols (on a program).

One morning, I went downstairs, and there dressed in one of my old Army T-shirts was Joel. He was sitting at computer console with instruction book nearby. He would look at book, type a few symbols, and grin. He was hooked and only seven years old. He became a whiz, and with his mathematical abilities, soon knew a lot more than I did about computers.

He was also developing his business instincts. i would find my granola bars missing---he would take them to school and sell them for a quarter. Joel collected, bought, sold, and traded many items over years...comic books, baseball cards, video games. He's always had two nickels to rub together.

People ask themselves this question regularly, and not just about cars. Unless you have control of your finances there is no way to tell. You have to know how much your income is and how much your bills and expenses are to find out if you have enough left over for any purchase.

The only way to accomplish this is to have a budget in place. Your budget has to be as accurate as possible and include money for your long and short term savings. All of these things must be considered before you can determine if you can afford to buy anything.

The best way to start is to determine how much disposable income you have. You do this by only using your take home pay plus any other income you may have after any deductions.

The next step is to put down on paper all of your reoccurring bills such as your house payment or rent, utilities, phone, internet costs, car payments, insurance, etc. These are fairly simple to determine, however, you will have to estimate bills that do not have a constant payment each month like your electric bill.