Wisdom and Finance

Proverbs 21:5, 20

Mark S. Bollwinkel

November 8^th, 2015

The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome about their, and his, struggle with following the moral laws of the Hebrew faith.  I wonder if his words don’t sum up what many of us feel about the struggles in our own lives:

“What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise…I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes.  I can will it, but I can’t do it.  I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad and then I do it anyway.  My decisions such as they are don’t result in actions.  Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.  It happens so regularly that it’s predictable.  The moment I decide to do good…parts of me covertly rebel and just when I least expect it, they take charge.  I‘ve tried everything and nothing helps.  I’m at the end of my rope.”  (Romans 7:14-25, Eugene Peterson, The Message, Navpress, Colorado Springs, CO, 1993)

            For example: I am a dieting expert.  You name the diet and I’ve done it.  I can explain the affect of eating too many carbohydrates vs. proteins on brain chemistry.  I can look at a portion of food and estimate its calories and fat grams.  I have lost and gained back thousands of pounds in my life time.  I am a diet expert, and when it comes to food I know exactly what Paul is talking about; “I decide not to do bad and end up doing it anyway.”

            My hunch is that a number of us feel the same way about money in our lives.  We don’t lack knowledge of what to do with money but as in Paul’s words, “What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way but then I act another…”

            In his book Enough; the Joy of Simple Living and Generosity (Abingdon, 2009) Rev. Adam Hamilton points to two distinct places where middle class Americans consistently waste their money; impulse buying and eating out.

            I am a sucker for sales at the grocery store; it drives Bonnie crazy.  I love “2-fers”, ‘buy one and get one free’.  It may make sense on an item you use all the time but the notion of getting a good deal can really pull me over the line.   You never know when you might need an extra five pound jar of capers or a second roll of Christmas plastic wrap even in July!  Grocery store marketing experts place the staples of milk and bread in the back of the store so we have to cruise by all sorts of other treats along the way to the basics, and then stare at them as we wait in the check-out line.  I mean, who can resist the latest National Enquirer article of Michele Obama’s visit with the Martian predicting the second coming of Christ?

            We know we shouldn’t go to the grocery store hungry and tired…like on the way home from work…and that we should always go with a list of what we really need and stick to it or we’ll end up impulsively buying stuff we really don’t need.  The call of those “2-fers”, the sales suggesting we can get something for nothing, makes us do what we really don’t want to do.  Or so it seems.

            Kiplinger Magazine suggested that at 4:00 p.m. each day, Americans will spend $136 million deciding what to eat. (Kiplinger Nov. ‘09)    The average family of four in America eats out 4.3 times a week.   It is estimated that the average family would save $6,000 a year cooking those same meals at home. (Hamilton, p. 36)    We eat out because we’re exhausted from work, because the kids are picky about what they will and will not eat, or if we’re single because we don’t like to eat alone.  We eat out because we are running from one activity to the next and we don’t have the time to plan and prepare.

Most of us can recall Jesus’ parable of the “Prodigal Son” in Luke 15; the younger of two sons asks his father for his share of the inheritance, goes off to a foreign land and throws it all away on riotous living.  He comes home only to receive his father’s extravagant forgiveness and grace.   The word “prodigal” in the original language means “the one who wastes money”.  Prematurely asking for inheritance, usually a piece of farm or pasture land which could have provided for the son for the rest of his life and then cashing it out and spending it all is a waste of wealth.  The son’s poverty was self-induced.   Pastor Hamilton suggests that for the middle class majority in America the challenge isn’t poverty but working a life time and looking back only to ask of our wealth, “where did it all go?!”

Half of Americans have less than $25,000 saved for retirement (Hamilton, p. 32)

What does wasting money have to do with God?  In fact it is a deeply spiritual challenge.

“Are we spending our money consistent with our life’s purpose?” (Hamilton, p. 37)  Here at Church of the Wayfarer, we suggest that the purpose of life is “Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out”, our way of summing up Jesus’ greatest commandment to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40).     

“Are we pursuing a purpose in life bigger than our personal satisfaction?” (Hamilton, p. 39) We can answer that question by looking at how we spend our money. Money isn’t bad in and of itself; it’s “the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil” (I Timothy 6:10b).

Wealth can be a tool we use to fulfill our life purpose.  Taking care of our families and their future, making a positive difference in the world, enjoying the blessings of life that God has given us, investing in people and places, these are all part of God’s promised future.

Wealth can be a tool we use to fulfill our life purpose.

Pastor Hamilton outlines six simple “do’s and don’ts” that can really have an impact on maximizing the wealth that God has entrusted to us (Hamilton p. 43).  It’s all about having a plan and setting some goals:

1)         Pay your tithe and offering first. What if our first check of each month was an investment in the things that matter the most to us, whether it’s the church or a charity or a non-profit organization that is making a positive difference in the world?  What if we gave first to God’s dream for the future rather than waiting till the end of the month to see what’s left over after we pay the bills?  Wouldn’t it be great to begin each month feeling good about where some of our money is going even if it’s a relatively small amount?

2)         Create a budget and track your expenses. We have a friend that has carried around a small notebook for years tracking each and every expenditure.  You would be shocked how positive and powerful such a habit can be.  Most of us live in a state of benign neglect when it comes to our money.  One of the first steps toward financial peace is to keep track of where it’s actually all going.

3)         Live below your means, simplify your life.  This one is the easiest to say and the hardest to do for us in this culture and time.  Carol Partridge was a parishioner in our church in Alameda 20 years ago when she went through a difficult and painful divorce.  Carol was a banker and was living “the good life” when it all fell apart.  Being a person a deep faith she used this terrible time to make something positive happen.  She became a Peace Corps volunteer and was assigned to Macedonia.  She loved the experience and people so much she came back and went through the process of becoming a United Methodist missionary.  We got to meet her here in Carmel last December.  She was assigned to lead the Christian Education program for the United Methodist church in Eastern Europe.    Although she lived on one-tenth of her income before the divorce, she was never happier in her life.

4)         Establish an emergency fund.  This would be a separate savings account that we can get in and out of quickly, equal to about one month’s pay for the emergencies that come up like a new set of tires for the car, if the air conditioning goes out in the house or the Giants get into the play-offs and you have the chance to buy some tickets.  You know what I mean…emergencies!  Rather than using the credit card with all of its added expenses, use that emergency fund.

5)         Pay off your credit cards, use cash/debit cards for purchases and pay off each month.   Don’t just pay the minimum payment each month, put off the vacation, put off the new purchase until we get those credit cards paid off. Don’t borrow money to pay off money you owe like taking cash advances off one credit card to pay off another.  You will know joy when the credit cards no longer run your life.  And ask for help if you don’t know how.

6)         Practice long term savings and investing habits. Tithe to your future each month too, set aside 10% of what you earn for your retirement and you’ll never regret it. If we were to begin saving $25 each month in a ROTH IRA at the age of 18, and increased it to $200 a month by the time we were out of school and had our first job, we would retire at 65 with over $1 million tax free (Hamilton p. 46).  

             Six powerful ideas that can simplify our lives and focus our resources and wealth on purposeful living.   For most of us, none of this is new!  It’s not ideas that we lack.  Most of us have the knowledge needed to make our financial lives healthy.  Rather it is something deep inside that we lack which keeps us from such health.

            In our Hebrew scripture reading from Proverbs this morning we heard ancient truths:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance,
   but everyone who is hasty comes only to want.
²⁰Precious treasure remains^* in the house of the wise,
   but the fool devours it.

            These words were collected from oral tradition and written down by the priests of Israel thousands of years ago.  Folks just like us have been struggling with the challenges of managing money and living a purposeful life since the beginning of civilization.  I take great comfort in that.  We are not alone.  If this is a terrible time in your financial life, you are not alone.  There are resources to help and helpers who have been there who can stand by you in the journey.  And folks just like us have known all along that spirituality is a key in actually living out what it is we intend to do.

            The words attributed to Paul written to his young preacher Timothy say, “...for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it…” (6:7) Every now and then we need to take a deep breath and consider why it is we are working so hard.  Why it is that making so much money, we never feel that it is enough.  Why it is we were put here on earth.  When we frame our money management within the context of our purpose in life it brings God right back into the center of who we are and what we are doing. 

And God knows it’s all too easy to forget that in the rush and demands of our daily lives.

The Quakers, the Shakers, the Mennonites and the Amish Christian sects have all attempted to codify a God-centered simplicity in their communal life knowing full well the challenges that come with it.  We sing their song “…tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free…” not as a quaint reminder of those folk but as a reminder to ourselves of such truth; it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free.  To live that gift, we don’t have to reject electricity but we do have to recommit ourselves to God-centered lives in managing the tremendous wealth we’ve been given.

Adam Hamilton offers us this prayer:

Lord, help me to be grateful for what I have, to remember that I don’t need most of what I want and that joy is found in simplicity and generosity.

Amen.