Greed

My daughter and I were having lunch the other day and were discussing financial matters. I have to admit I love that I can have adult conversations with my adult children. I'm glad they love and respect me enough to value my opinion, even if they don't always agree with it. As we discussed money (and how little of it she has as a "starving college student") it reminded me of how much I have changed in this area of my life in the past two years. It all revolves around my view of money.

There are very real reasons why Greed is classified as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I'm not Catholic, and this isn't going to be a religiously zealous blog post (I promise), but in my life, and the lives of seemingly everyone in our post-modern society, greed has been a powerful drive. On this post (the first in a long, long time) I'd like to talk a little about how my life has changed for the better in the last two years, and hopefully help my adult children see the error of some of my ways in order to, perhaps, not repeat my mistakes...

About five years ago my wife and I ended a small, two-year business venture we had begun, and the ending was made even more bitter by a huge financial hit we took because of it. Some of it was in our control, and some of it was not, but that's a story for another day. Our financial well-being suffered greatly for the next few years and we found ourselves quite a bit in debt. My wife then began reading a book that we have used since then to change our lives for the better. The book was "Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey.

Dave Ramsey himself will tell you he didn't come up with the core ideas about what makes his system work. He simply applied them to his life, and now "preaches the gospel," so to speak, to others. Put succinctly, the Dave Ramsey plan is about living life debt-free. My wife really had to let me chew on this idea for a while. It took me about a month to read the book and get on board, and it is one of the best decisions we have ever made.

Now, I can't sum up the entire book in just a few paragraphs, but suffice it to say that by following Dave Ramsey's "7 Step Program" my wife and I are on the verge of (besides our mortgage) being debt-free. After two years of buckling down, dealing with financial emergencies (like unexpected medical bills), learning how to deny ourselves things we really don't need, and living simply, we are two weeks away from being done paying off almost $42,000 in debt.

In two weeks there will be no credit cards, no car payments, no medical bills, nada-nada-nada. The amount of money we have retained in interest by killing-off all these bills is staggering. We will then finish off our emergency fund of cash as soon as possible, and head off to paying-down our mortgage as fast as we can as we finish some projects around the home that we have put off for a while (like fixing bathroom plumbing, etc).

Don't get me wrong. This was NOT easy. There were times we strayed from the path and overspent our cash instead of socking it away at debt, but by-and-large we have been very, very good about it, and now here we are. Can I mention that number again? Forty-two-thousand-dollars!

But more important than all of this is the point I need to drive home. There is nothing wrong with money. It is a tool that, when used wisely, can be used to help us each live well and to help others in need. We live in a post-modern capitalist society. Money is a necessity, unless you choose to live as an ascetic up on some mountaintop in BFE. For me, it was my change of heart and not my change of financial art that made all the difference. Three maxims to take with you today:

1. 'True happiness in life comes not from having more, but desiring less.' -Buddhist philosophy
2. "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." -St. Paul writing 1 Timothy 6:10 (NIV)
3. "The accumulation of things will not make you happy." -Obi-Dave Kenobi paraphrasing about 6,000 years of human history related to the study of wealth
   

Not always easy to follow, but simple to understand. I went from being a person who collected things (what I now like to call "junk") to being a person who gave away and/or sold a lot of his personal collections of things. I have kept a few baubles that have personal meaning to me, but the rest of it is now gone. I understand the desire to have more stuff, but in the end all you have are rooms full of things that sit there and collect dust. You do not use them, and you can't take them with you.

I say all of this not to gloat or try to outright sway anyone to my point-of-view, but what I can tell you is this: I have never been more in financial peace in my whole life. There is no financial anxiety every two weeks when I get my paycheck. There is no arguing with my wife and kids about matters financial. There is a plan for the here-and-now, and for myself and my families' future. I'm not afraid of swings in the stock market, or even losing my job.

Anyone can do this, no matter how much money you make. It's all about attitude. What do you want versus what do you need?

No more greed. This is a good thing!