Money, the Root of All Evil?
I'm thinking in a few directions this morning and having trouble deciding what one to talk about. One can be a bit of a sticky subject but some of my thinking was slightly altered about this last night. I think I'm going to talk about money, dun, dun, dun!
Money is one of those conversations that tends to be avoided but avoiding something doesn't make the problem go away. Thankfully Randall and I have a similar approach to money, we are both sort of cheep. If I'm going to buy anything I'm going to try and make sure it's the least expensive way I can get it. Randall tends to be the same way. This is helpful for our marriage since 2 people with very different spending styles can have a lot of conflict. I'm not saying we don't have problems at all, we definitely do, just not really with our spending.
Part of our spending style I think might have a fair bit to do with necessity although even when we were both working and didn't have kids we still were mostly frugal. Right now however, things are pretty tight for us financially. For the entire summer Randall has only been able to work 4 days a week with no overtime plus there have been 2 weeks of shut down so far and one more coming up the end of the month. With me being a stay at home mom this means our numbers aren't exactly matching up. We aren't overly concerned though because we know that his work is going back to overtime hours and 5 days a week in September.
To be honest I'm sort of conflicted about money. I don't really feel the need to have the biggest and best of everything and as long as I'm making ends meet I'm not that concerned. This might be in part because I'm never really had an excess of it. I spent a lot of time in school that I paid for mostly myself. I worked a lot of hours while attending classes and paid for all my housing, car, food and other expenses. I ended up with a small student loan but nothing exorbitant.
Now I've started a new path as a Body by Vi promoter and there is potential in that to earn a very significant income. I realized last night that I have been feeling a little conflicted about that. On one hand I have been excited about the possibility of helping facilitate some health changes and transformations in the people I know and love. On the other hand doing this would potentially mean I would be making a substantial income. I know some of you are saying "Where is the downside?" The problem that I have with this is I am coming to realize I might be sort of uncomfortable with money. It's hard to explain. It almost like I think if I have it I will appear self indulged, selfish or ungenerous. I mean, I mean I'm sure some of you have heard the verse "It's easier for a camel to go threw the eye of the needle that for a rich man to enter Heaven." I think I'm frightened that I will become self centered, vain and selfish if I did have money. Now I am not saying that this is the opinion I have of the people I know that are a little more well off but I'm concerned about my will with the temptation to be over indulgent.
Last night I was at a Body by Vi event and there was a speaker at the end named Kyle Pacetti. He's a rather high ranking Ambassador for ViSalus. This means he makes a LOT of money. During his speech he spoke (I felt like it was almost right to me) about the money itself. He said "Money is not evil. You can do evil things with it or you can choose to do good things with it. I tell you the orphans I'm able to support don't think money is evil. You have to have money to be able to help others." This was a bit of a wake up call for me. I know this might be quite obvious to many of you but I was treating money like it was evil and I was going about things with that in mind. I was approaching this business as a means of getting out of debt but thinking that if I were to take it much further that would almost be wrong. Then it was a bit of a catch 22 because I wanted to help people with these products but felt guilty about the possibility of making money from that. I am not giving myself permission to do this to the best of my ability because not only should I be putting my best effort in I don't see the potential for earning as a drawback any longer. Only as an opportunity to do even more good.
Money is one of those conversations that tends to be avoided but avoiding something doesn't make the problem go away. Thankfully Randall and I have a similar approach to money, we are both sort of cheep. If I'm going to buy anything I'm going to try and make sure it's the least expensive way I can get it. Randall tends to be the same way. This is helpful for our marriage since 2 people with very different spending styles can have a lot of conflict. I'm not saying we don't have problems at all, we definitely do, just not really with our spending.
Part of our spending style I think might have a fair bit to do with necessity although even when we were both working and didn't have kids we still were mostly frugal. Right now however, things are pretty tight for us financially. For the entire summer Randall has only been able to work 4 days a week with no overtime plus there have been 2 weeks of shut down so far and one more coming up the end of the month. With me being a stay at home mom this means our numbers aren't exactly matching up. We aren't overly concerned though because we know that his work is going back to overtime hours and 5 days a week in September.
To be honest I'm sort of conflicted about money. I don't really feel the need to have the biggest and best of everything and as long as I'm making ends meet I'm not that concerned. This might be in part because I'm never really had an excess of it. I spent a lot of time in school that I paid for mostly myself. I worked a lot of hours while attending classes and paid for all my housing, car, food and other expenses. I ended up with a small student loan but nothing exorbitant.
Now I've started a new path as a Body by Vi promoter and there is potential in that to earn a very significant income. I realized last night that I have been feeling a little conflicted about that. On one hand I have been excited about the possibility of helping facilitate some health changes and transformations in the people I know and love. On the other hand doing this would potentially mean I would be making a substantial income. I know some of you are saying "Where is the downside?" The problem that I have with this is I am coming to realize I might be sort of uncomfortable with money. It's hard to explain. It almost like I think if I have it I will appear self indulged, selfish or ungenerous. I mean, I mean I'm sure some of you have heard the verse "It's easier for a camel to go threw the eye of the needle that for a rich man to enter Heaven." I think I'm frightened that I will become self centered, vain and selfish if I did have money. Now I am not saying that this is the opinion I have of the people I know that are a little more well off but I'm concerned about my will with the temptation to be over indulgent.
Last night I was at a Body by Vi event and there was a speaker at the end named Kyle Pacetti. He's a rather high ranking Ambassador for ViSalus. This means he makes a LOT of money. During his speech he spoke (I felt like it was almost right to me) about the money itself. He said "Money is not evil. You can do evil things with it or you can choose to do good things with it. I tell you the orphans I'm able to support don't think money is evil. You have to have money to be able to help others." This was a bit of a wake up call for me. I know this might be quite obvious to many of you but I was treating money like it was evil and I was going about things with that in mind. I was approaching this business as a means of getting out of debt but thinking that if I were to take it much further that would almost be wrong. Then it was a bit of a catch 22 because I wanted to help people with these products but felt guilty about the possibility of making money from that. I am not giving myself permission to do this to the best of my ability because not only should I be putting my best effort in I don't see the potential for earning as a drawback any longer. Only as an opportunity to do even more good.
Craig Groeshel has a book called "Weird". It has a whole big section on money. it is fascinating and has been earth shaking for me. He was saying that if you own a car, you are the richest 2% of the entire population on the entire planet. It doesn't matter if it is a nice car or not, but any car. I am in the top 2% of the world in terms of richness already. Those verses about the eye of the needle are about me! It has been a fascinating mental journey for me. He also talks about how we don't consider ourselves rich if we know someone who has more money than we do. (Which of course will always happen) He is pretty amusing writer so far too.
ReplyDeleteI will have to look for that book. I think I am starting to come to grips with things and that as long as I am responsible with what I am given things will work. I think that being part of the richest 2% of the world makes me feel sort of guilty and also shallow in a way that I might need to talk about in a following post.
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