Blog? Blog?

So I've been very, very bad about blogging recently. Probably because I've either been stressed and/or dealing with stuff that doesn't blog well. I've also been thinking about 1st Samuel (Bible book) recently, but will restrain myself from actually blogging on it for a few more days.

I was reading a book on money this weekend and it was talking about the idea that our financial decisions fall into two categories: Short-term (taxes, debt payments, giving, life style, and savings), and long-term (investment, major life purchases, charity, children's education, etc.) The author was talking about the idea that the longer term our perspective was, the better our financial decisions were likely to be.

It wasn't terribly revolutionary for me, but the short/long-term breakdown was very helpful. I tend to feel pressured to make too much happen too fast, and it was helpful to see goals broken down into short and long-term. I think I've also been a bit too influenced by the "If you were to die in a year, how would you spend your money/time/life?" questions.

The reality is that if I knew that I'd die in a year, I could afford to do things that I couldn't do if I knew I'd live twenty. I could probably deprive myself of sleep and vacation for a year. For twenty...not such a good idea. I'm realizing that I see the "If you were..." questions are really cool for emphasizing reflection priorities, but not so helpful for actually formulating a plan. It's the same thing with "What if Jesus was coming back next week?"

I also don't like an entirely long-term strategy such as "I'm going to invest my money and when I die, give it and all its interest to my church instead of giving regularly now". I'm not sure that my church could pay it's bills via this stratgy.)

Another point that the book made was about people: Financial planning and wisdom is a means to an end. Financial displine and wisdom is not unique to Christians. What makes Christians unique is the ends toward which they spend their money. Well, what ought to make Christians unique. Statistics are a little frightening about both the ends and means of how Christians actually spend their money.

Sigh. Now I'm thinking of some financial habits I should really change. Time to quit musing deep insights and go apply them.