When the Game is Over…
As a leader of a community group, we were introduced to the “MoneyWise” process a little over a year ago. As leaders we committed to taking our group through the 6 week curriculum within one year of the training. The process asks for two major action items: be willing to investigate what God’s heart is concerning money and be willing to share your finances with those in your community. It’s a frightening ask. It’s scary to be accountable to what God says about money and others who say they love you. I’m comfortable when it comes to money and sometimes l feel like I’m losing freedom to do what I want to do with my finances. Second, do I want to open the door to sinfully judge others’ checkbooks and be judged by others? There have been different levels of anxiety leading up to this process with my own community. I have realized during the process that this is an amazing way to “be known”. If Scripture really values being known, transparent, and authentic, then there is no better exercise than to practice those values. It’s been said before that “what your checkbook values, you value” and “your checkbook is the one area of the spiritual life you can’t fake.” It has been an amazing process for me, my wife, and our community. Mainly because it forces you to communicate as couples and with each other about what’s important. There’s a great budgeting exercise that asks you about ranking line items in your budget as essential and non-essential. This is where it get’s crazy for couples. The cable TV that he thinks is necessary she ranks as non-essential. The facials that she ranks as necessary he sees as unnecessary. It becomes a great communication exercise for couples that brings about “oneness” (Matthew 19) and also “oneness” for the community group. As a result of disclosing our financial budget to other couples, they discovered that I was overpaying $700 a year for home insurance. I love it when willingness to be authentic and faithful to God’s word saves you $700 a year. That’s money! I was reading in John Ortergs’s book When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and came across this chart and quote on essentials.
Below are items rated as necessities by American in 1970 as compared to 2000:
1970 2000
Second Car 20% 59%
Second TV 3% 45%
More than one phone 2% 78%
Car air-conditioning 11% 65%
Dishwasher 8% 44%
In a Gallup poll, the respondents, on average, said that 21 percent of Americans are rich. But only 0.5 percent said they were rich. Everybody thinks he needs one thing to make himself rich: more. We suffer from a phenomenon called “reference anxiety,” more often referred to as “keeping up with the Joneses.” – 194