The Challenge We All Face

         As a kid my siblings and I would play a game (we called it stores) where each of us would choose a profession and then run that store for the others, we would set up a mock economy using enlarged Legos as currency. If you were the one who ran the bank, then it was your job to add money to everyone's account every night, which would in turn inflate the economy to the point money would be useless. I tell you this story because as a kid I didn't really know how money worked. I had my first job when I was fourteen getting paid five dollars an hour, I would take bare root trees and pliant them in pots, and this job was hard work. I wouldn't have been able to keep that job without my parents teaching me how to work hard, growing up I wouldn't get the point of way we needed to keep the house so clean all the time, but now that I have grown up a little bit more I couldn't be more grateful for what my parents taught me. So over the years I have gone from not knowing much, to learning how important hard work can be for making money, to who I am today as college student managing bills like rent and tuition. I like to think I have gotten better at managing money, I'm still not perfect at it though.

        Can anyone be perfect at managing money?  I think that we could always learn to be better at it, I want to be good enough at it so when I get married and have kids to rase I can support them. I also hope I am able to do this well enough so that my wife wouldn't have to work, and with some research I have learned that having a dual income isn't always better. 

        I heard recently about a couple who had some kids but they wanted more for them so they decided to have the wife start a full time job as well. To be able to make it so the wife could work there had to be some sacrificing, obviously less time with the kids, but also they needed another more reliable car so that she could get to work. Later they found themselves paying for unexpected things like after school programs, babysitters, they had fast food more often because its hard to cook after a long day, the husband would start buying his own lunches instead of having the wife make them for him. After some time they had an accountant look through their finances to see how much more they had been making with the second income. It turns out, to the dismay of the wife that all those sacrifices were only making them around a thousand extra a year. So can we as faulty humans be expected to know what is BEST to do with our money?  

        I think the answer is that we can learn. But that learning comes down to trusting in Christ. I know that the lord has many purposes for us in this life, and with how the world is now we need money to be able to accomplish some of those things. The way the lord has provided for us to accomplish his will is the law of tithing, if we just follow this law he will bless us with the ability to do his will. I have a strong testimony of tithing.

"In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. in life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson"- Tom Bodett