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“I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to make you appreciate the day even more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest joys of life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final goodbye.”

Bob Perks—Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul 2003

I made the decision long ago to live within my means. After my bankruptcy in 1996, I decided I was never going down that road again.

I didn’t know anything about tithing at that point, but I did know a thing or two about budgeting. When you are living on public assistance, and only have about $20 a week to feed a family of four, you know exactly how many cans of tomato soup that will buy.

Somewhere along the line, I learned the 10-10-80 principle. How this works is that you tithe the first 10% of your paycheck (or give it to charity, if you don’t have a home church). Then, you save the next 10% and live off of the remaining 80%.

This is scary when you’re poor. If 100% of your paycheck isn’t enough to get by, how are you going to do it on 80%?

What I have learned, as I elaborated in Part 3 of this series, is that when you keep your priorities in the proper order, you’ll always have enough. We never ate fancy, but we never went hungry. We could always keep at least one car running and one utility connected. In short, we learned how much “enough” really was.

However, it’s one thing to have black numbers at the end of your monthly budget. It’s quite another to be OK with the black number, no matter how small it is. As Paul said to the Philippians:

I am telling you this, but not because I need something. I have learned to be satisfied with what I have and with whatever happens. I know how to live when I am poor and when I have plenty. I have learned the secret of how to live through any kind of situation—when I have enough to eat or when I am hungry, when I have everything I need or when I have nothing. Christ is the one who gives me the strength I need to do whatever I must do. Php 4:11-13 (ERV)

Content, whatever the circumstances

Our circumstances change, and they are almost always beyond our control. Contentedness, however, is an attitude that we can cultivate and apply to any situation. It is the attitude that whatever we have, it is always enough.

If we can develop this attitude when we don’t have much, then God begins to trust us with more. For this reason, He requires contentedness as a condition of stewardship. When we are content with what we have, we are not tempted to gain more by dishonest means. As Jesus cautioned us:

The one who manages the little he has been given with faithfulness and integrity will be promoted and trusted with greater responsibilities. But those who cheat with the little they have been given will not be considered trustworthy to receive more. If you have not handled the riches of this world with integrity, why should you be trusted with the eternal treasures of the spiritual world? Luke 16:10-11 (TPT)

Have you ever wondered why so many TV evangelists and prosperity gospel hucksters end up disgraced? It’s this principle at work. They are not content with what they have. So, they take the Lord’s name in vain by using it to cheat people, building up their own treasures on earth. Their messages end up as corrupted as their hearts, and NO ONE gets blessed.

Faithfulness and Integrity

So, what does it look like to manage your money with faithfulness and integrity? There are many examples, but here are seven that I am currently trying or have already had success with:

Avoid get rich quick schemes. I went into detail about this in Part 2. This is what led to the bankruptcy I mentioned in the opening paragraph.
Save gradually. Have a goal amount ($1,000 is a good place to start), but don’t obsess about the date. Getting there is more important than WHEN you get there.
Employ the debt snowball method. Although logic suggests paying down accounts with the highest interest rate first, those drowning in debt have a psychological need to see progress. The debt snowball method involves paying off your smallest debt first, while making minimum payments on other accounts. Once the smallest account is paid off, take the amount you paid toward that and add it to the minimum payment on your next largest account. As you continue this process, you will gain momentum, and your accounts will STAY paid off.
Use a cashback credit card like a debit card. (NOTE: IF YOU HAVE GOTTEN INTO TROUBLE WITH CREDIT CARD DEBT DUE TO LACK OF DISCIPLINE IN THE PAST, PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR LIMITS AND SKIP THIS STEP.) We chose the Quicksilver card from Capital One, but there are other cards that might be more beneficial based on your individual spending patterns. We pay for EVERYTHING on this card, then pay the balance in full each month, so that we do not ever pay interest on it. With every purchase, we get 1.5% cash back. This doesn’t sound like much, but we let that bonus cash accumulate and have Capital One send us a check on the first of November, which then becomes our Christmas Fund. This year, the check was for $687.62.
Pay cash for everything. Once you have completed step 3, paying down all your debts, don’t make new ones. Pay cash for everything you get (or use the cashback credit card from step 4, but ONLY if you are paying the balance in full EVERY month). If you don’t have enough cash right then for a large purchase, a car for instance, wait until you do, or find another way to leverage your income (or add to it). If contentedness is your priority, this will prove easier than you might think. We made our last car payment on September 5, 2013—over seven years ago. We have paid cash for a newer car since then.
Save more than you need to. This is my most recent method. As retirement has now become a visible light at the end of a tunnel that is getting shorter by the day, I am realizing that my 3-months’ expense savings milestone may not be adequate as a nest egg. For this reason, we have paused our debt snowball and are only making the regular mortgage payments on our home, which is our only remaining debt. Our reasoning behind this is that we will likely be selling the house before we pay it off completely, even at the accelerated rate. So we are doing a “reverse snowball” of sorts and taking the amount that we had set aside for paying down the mortgage quickly and putting that into an interest-bearing savings account, which we will not touch until after we have ridden off into the sunset.
Set an example for your children. The first six steps are of little use unless you pass on the wisdom to your children. They understand more than you might think. Don’t insult them by withholding the concept of money management until they are “old enough to handle it.” The danger you are courting there is that your children will develop an attitude of entitlement, rather than contentment, which can become hard-wired into their personalities long before they ever learn what a spreadsheet is.

Blessed to be a blessing

I have learned what it is to have enough, and to recognize when I have been blessed with more than enough, which is pretty much all the time.

And we are blessed to be a blessing, so that everyone has enough. This goes much deeper than wealth distribution, which the government can handle. This is about an attitude in the heart of every individual by which we can find the joy in our circumstances, whatever they may be.

Therefore, dear readers, in this season of Thanksgiving, I wish you enough.

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The wealthy rule over the poor,
and anyone who borrows is a slave to the lender.

(Proverbs 22:7 ISV)

Back in 2013, we talked about the Greek word doulos, which is a voluntary bondservant, or someone who has chosen to place himself under the authority of another.

However, as we also discussed in Part 1 of this series, no one can serve two masters at once. You can’t serve God and be a slave to money at the same time. So how do we become a slave to money?

Debt

When we spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to satisfy our desires, we are worshipping creations rather than the Creator.

If we are trusting God to provide us with what we truly need, then why would we leave His service to worship at the altar of prosperity? How prosperous are we really, if we have a big fancy house with no furniture in it or a shiny new sports car we can’t make the payments on?

It’s bad enough that our nation has promoted a culture that conditions people to believe that they need. . .no, that they DESERVE shiny, fancy, new, expensive things. However, as if people going into debt for unnecessary playthings weren’t enough, now they are being encouraged to further mismanage their wealth by turning to legalized gambling to solve their debt problem.

The one-armed bandits. . .

In my tiny little town of 4,952 people, we have five locations that have slot machines. (I refuse to call them “video gaming facilities.” Aladdin’s Castle is a video gaming facility. People aren’t going to our bars to play Pac Man.)

In the month of January 2015 ALONE, a total of $100,136 was wagered at these five locations. Let’s do the math.

First, you have to be 21 to play the slots, so that eliminates about 2,300 residents. But not all of the adults in town play the slots either. Indeed, most don’t even frequent the places that have them.

In the absence of an exact statistic, let’s assume that one in five adults in town plays the slots. This estimate is probably on the generous side.

Now we’re looking at an average of $190 a month that each person is contributing to the one-armed bandits. For some, it’s probably higher than that.

So what’s the problem? Well, do YOU have upwards of $200 of disposable income each month that you can flush down the toilet? Some folks do. However, these are not the folks that typically go to bars in small towns to play slot machines.

Over half of the households in our town have a combined income of less than $5,000 a month. A family with that level of income, IF they manage their money well, should have about $100 or so per month after the bills are paid. But again, people that manage their money well are usually not found around slot machines. And remember, the actual amount being deposited here is double that much.

So if people can’t afford to be blowing this kind of cash, why do they do it? Well, duh, because they’re trying to make more. They are under the illusion that they’re going to hit some kind of jackpot and be rich. The reality is they will have even less money to pay the bills they were having trouble paying in the first place.

UPDATE

As of December 17, 2021, our population has decreased to 4535, but we now have 13 gaming facilities with a total of 65 terminals. In the month of November ALONE, over $2.4 million was wagered. The machines in our community have a 92.5% payout rate. That makes it sound like good clean fun with decent odds, but let’s break down that 7.5% loss rate.

At this volume, we are talking a PER CAPITA loss of $40.20 every month. That’s if every man, woman and infant in town were playing the slots. Using the formula from the original post date of January 2015, I come up with $432.73/month lost per adult player. That’s up from $190/month in just shy of seven years. So our population has decreased by 8.8%, but our wage-flushing has increased by 228%!

But hey, look on the bright side! For each person losing $432.73/month, our city takes in revenue of $21.65/month, so at least they’re making a difference in the community, right?

via GIPHY

Lest you think I’m going off on a self-righteous jag about gambling, there are other ways to fall into the trap of money mismanagement. I learned my lesson the hard way with multi-level marketing.

Now I admire people in this country who go into business for themselves and make a lot of money. But it never comes without hard work. If anyone ever tries to show you how you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams without having to suffer for it, RUN! Anyone who gets involved in a scheme like this hoping to “get rich quick” will find themselves getting broke even quicker.

Generally speaking, God has a plan for us each day. We are expected simply to be available, receive it, and obey it, carrying it out to its completion. This method ALWAYS leads to success, though sometimes it takes a long, long time. We may not even see the big-picture results directly. Trying to get rich quick takes our eye off the plan Jesus has for us, which consequently robs us of the potential blessing attached to that plan.

Fortunately, God’s plan for blessing us in our finances begins with a very simple test of obedience.

(Which we will learn about in Part 3—Tithing)

Tag: credit card

Whose Money is it Anyway? (Part 4–Enough)

Content, whatever the circumstances

Faithfulness and Integrity

Blessed to be a blessing