MORE OPTIONS

Life is about making choices. We will have to make decisions whether we want to or not. Making the right decision is always the challenge. Having options available is the key. So many people have burdened themselves with their poor decisions. Decisions have consequences. So many people do not understand that they live in a world of cause and effect. Their decisions will have results.

We make financial decisions all the time. Our view of money is determined by our value system. We live in a nation where death is prized more than life. Abortion and homosexuality are physical death. They are first and foremost spiritual death. Debt is financial death. Debt leads to bankruptcy and poverty. It is a state of want. Debt is based upon the unearned. It is seeing something with your physical eyes and coveting it without the immediate means to pay for it. This is death to an individual’s future. It is the mentality of a slave. Slavery is death to freedom and independent judgment.

When you are in debt, you own nothing. You only own what you have paid for. The way to handle your financial situation is learning contentment. Contentment is a spiritual attitude of being satisfied with one’s present condition. When someone is content, their goal and decisions will be not to live beyond one’s means. The only way to rein in your financial situation is by establishing a budget. A budget categorizes your means (income) and your expenditures. A budget provides you with objective financial information. The numbers are the numbers.

Staying out of debt gives you more options. Your income is not all spoken for. You can invest money in a new opportunity. You can go out and eat at your favorite restaurant without having to worry about what to order. You can put more money in savings. You can increase your children’s allowance. You can start a part time business and potentially work to where it is a full time business. The options could go on and on.

Proverbs 22:7 is true, "...the borrower is servant (slave) to the lender." Lending money is a lucrative business. Being able to lend money means that the lender has excess capital to loan. To be able to lend means that some point the lender has been frugal in his business dealings. Remember it is better to be a lender than a borrower. It will definitely give you more options and having more option is a good thing.

FINANCIAL ACCEPTANCE

It is probably a defense mechanism when your first reaction to a situation is one of denial. It takes time for the mind to accept a new reality because a new round of integration must take place. We must relearn things from what they have been previously. Denial is the first step into acceptance. Denial is an attempt to evade a new reality. We think that this cannot be happening. This is all a bad dream and I will wake up and everything will be as it was before.

When things do not change, but actually worsen, then our next mental step is to think, it might be true. The signs are obvious for all to see even if the causes are not. This intermediary step is half way between denial and acceptance. If you were walking a flight of steps, you foot would be half way between the previous step and the next step. You are beginning to think differently about the present situation. Your mind has almost completed the integration process.

When the integration process is complete, you come to the point of acceptance of the new situation. Your mind comes to peace about the situation. This is the point where you think, I knew this all the time. You probably had a foreboding at the beginning of the new situation that the ending result would be what it presently is. How long it takes to go from denial to acceptance depends upon how quickly an individual integrates the new situation in his mind.

Staying in a state of denial without acceptance is not mentally healthy. It demonstrates an inability to integrate concretes into concepts. I have come to grips with the incredible price inflation that we have been experiencing. I have come to accept that prices are not going to go down anytime soon. I do not know if the recent price inflation is a result of shortages, increased demand, or monetary inflation, or a combination of all three. All that I know is that I have accepted it.

Acceptance does not mean that we are satisfied with the present situation. It is time to look for causes for the price increases and seek ways to see that they are reduced. We live in a world of cause and effect. There are logical reasons why prices are increasing. If they are because of government intervention in the market, it is time to scale back the government’s involvement to what the government should be, a police man.

If the market is allowed to function properly, then supply and demand will come more in line. It is when the government gets involved that things get skewed. This is because a government operates on different principles than a business. A business is involved in the positive, where the government is concerned with the negative. A business grows by earning a profit. A government is financed by taxes. The government needs to be reigned in and limited so that prices can decrease and we can begin a new round of integration that is psychologically pleasant. The price increases have caused much psychological pain. I am tired of pain. I prefer financial peace.

FUNCTIONING IN THE REAL WORLD

It is amazing how little people in our day know about the real world. There is a reason for this situation, it is the public education system. This system is an artificial world and its curriculum is based on an artificial world. The graduates and dropouts of this system find themselves unable to cope with the real world. Things have not gotten better, but have progressively degenerated year by year. One wonders what the final result will be.

One thing that we can be assured of is that man will always seek to cheat. Our government cheats us everyday with our unbacked money. If the government cheats, is it any great wonder that other men cheat also? Cheating at the top will also be done at the lower levels. One can cheat themselves and this occurs often. Not saving money is a way of cheating yourself. Not living on a budget is also a way of cheating yourself. It is living beyond your means.

We live in a personal world even if man attempts to make it impersonal. This personal world will make itself more than apparent. We are living in difficult financial times. Prices are continuously on the rise without any seeming relief in sight. I have been in a state of denial that somehow prices will decrease. Once prices hit a certain level, they are inflexible downward. This is because of our inflated money.

People have no idea what is causing all these rising prices. All that they know is that their money does not purchase as much as it used to and they were caught off guard by it because they spent money without any thought. In other words, they did not realize that we live in a world of scarcity. When someone goes to a store and sees all those goods on the shelves, they think that there is an unlimited supply. Such is not the real world. It requires much effort to get products on those shelves. Man creates nothing ex nihlo. He is not creative, but inventive.

When you have to borrow money to pay for everyday needs, you are living in a fantasy world. This situation is the ultimate in not understanding finance. This is poor financial management and can only be the result of having no financial plan in place. An Associated Press Survey found that six in ten baby boomers were finding it difficult to pay for essentials and utilities and that they were having to cut back on entertainment and dining out.

What should be apparent is that the baby boomers basic theology is relativity. They have been taught that there are no absolutes and this would hold true in the financial arena. The absolutes of finance are now making themselves known and these baby boomers are finding themselves unable to function in the world of absolutes i.e., the real world. The spiritual always precedes behavior. Their behavior is just a reflection of their theological state of relativity.

Ellen Simon, AP Business Writer writes, "Compared with older people, a greater percentage of younger baby boomers, those 45 to 54, said they were cutting back on medications, prematurely withdrawing retirement funds and postponing paying bills." Beliefs have consequences. These baby boomers are acting upon their beliefs. They falsely believed in no absolutes and now they are having to take drastic actions to make ends meet. They are having to finance their present with future funds, their savings.

In the same article, a forty eight year old hospital finance worker named Debra Koziol has made some worthwhile adjustments with this new financial reality. She is carpooling with her sister and she takes her lunch every day. While these are admirable changes, they were only prompted by circumstances. It is better to have foresight and not have circumstances dictate your actions. The frugal have been brown bagging from the beginning. Eating out everyday for lunch is an expensive proposition. Being frugal teaches us to live within our means and to avoid unnecessary expenses.

Koziol says about taking her lunch to work, "The food is better. Some of this is creating better habits, not so much waste." Yes, frugality is an efficient system as she has discovered. Eating better food will also help with her health, thus saving her more money in the future. What is disconcerting though is that it took her to age forty eight before she realized the benefit of frugality. Think of all the years that have been wasted on relativity. Frugality is always a virtue.

FREE MONEY

What do you do when you get money that you were not expecting, all of your credit cards are paid off and you have no other debt. What you do with free money shows your attitude toward money. Most people should take this money and pay down their debt. They will not. They can always find something to spend it on that has more priority with them. They have no thought for the future. If you get it today, you spend it today is their motto.

I remember my parents telling me that money burned a hole in my pocket. The prophet Haggai called it putting money in bags with holes in them. The reason that people do not know what to do with free money is that they have no financial system in place to direct their actions. People like this believe that there is some mystery associated with money rather than thinking in terms of money absolutes.

Money like anything else that exists possesses certain properties. My parents also told me that money did not grow on trees. Our money today may come from trees but you cannot just go and pick it like fruit. It must be earned. One thing that needs to permeate our thinking is that money is scarce. We are living on a fixed income. This means having a budget in place. One needs to be aware of their financial situation. It is not a mystery. Money can be controlled. This control takes what people lack, self-discipline.

Without self-discipline, money will control you rather than the other way around. The government is sending out free money through the stimulus tax refund. I received mine by direct deposit on May 9, 2008. This is money that is extra. I already know what I am going to do with it. First, 10% will be paid for a tithe and the next 10% will be put in savings. This will leave 80% to be used in whatever way I choose.

I do not need to pay down any debt so, with the remaining 80%, can spent on whatever I wish. One of my daughters needs new glasses, so she is going to get them. My other daughter needs a new mattress for her bed. It is also Mother’s Day on Sunday. I do not buy and sell on Sunday, so I will take my wife and daughters out to eat. Whatever is left can be spent on some other need. The key is not overspending. Plan out what to spend the money on after taking care of the tithe and savings. Keep track of your expenditures and stop before you spend the whole amount. This is how the frugal handle getting free money. Go and do likewise.

ADVERTISING YOUR FOOLISHNESS

People are so hungry for attention that when they receive it, they may not like what it looks like in reality. The media is always looking for people that they can build a story around. What the media’s point is, is not clear many times. When reading newspaper stories, we are led to believe that this represents the present state of things, when in reality, it may be about those on the margin. It is difficult to quantify the numbers so that we can imagine the magnitude of a problem.

We are living in the year 2008 of our Lord and our knowledge of how to live is not very advanced. There is nothing we can do about the past, but to learn from our mistakes. There comes a time when it is foolish to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Making a mistake one time is acceptable, to keep repeating it is contemptible and yet this is what happens on a daily basis in our country.

Being frugal is the key to keeping your finances under control. The starting point of frugality is recognizing that we live in a world of scarcity and that each and everyone of us is living on a fixed income no matter how much money we make, with inflation, our incomes become even more fixed. This being the case, it requires us to have a budget in place. We must know our sources of income and what we spend our money on. This is where accounting comes in. You cannot control your spending unless you now what you spend your money on. Once you identify what your spending is then you can control your spending.

There was a recent AP story called "CLEANING OUT, CASHING IN, More Americans unloading prized belongings to make ends meet." Those who are unloading their prized possessions are distressed sellers. Those who have been frugal with their money will be able to buy these goods at bargain prices. It is wise to look for distressed sellers. All that they care about is getting some cash. They are cash strapped. They are desperate. This is the wrong position to be in.

One example from this story represents the opposite of being frugal. Christine Hadley is a 53 year old registered nurse from Reading, Pennsylvania. She says that she was a clotheshorse and liked splurging on Dooney & Bourke handbags. She was living with a boyfriend who left her and she has had trouble finding a job. Apparently, she is unemployed. She was forced to sell over 80 items to pay her unpaid bills.

Hadley says "I need the money for essentials—to pay my bills and to eat." What world was she living in prior to this one? It does not matter if times are good or bad, anyone that was living like she was is just one payday away from being bankrupt and homeless. Not that age is the important thing, but at 53 years old, she should have learned a few things by now. She was living beyond her means and now she has been forced by reality to sell her possession for her previous overspending.

She needs money for essentials and just to eat. This woman has been foolish with her money and in my mind, it is embarrassing for others to know just how foolish she has been. The question will be, will she learn from this experience or will she continue the same pattern once she finds another job? Old habits are hard to break. I predict that she will return to the same patterns of overspending. She was buying the clothes and handbags as an emotional release. Unless she gets her emotions under control, she will be doing the same thing over. She needs to learn to look at her financial situation objectively, not emotionally.