Understanding Money

While Joshua and I were traveling back from San Antonio on the second day of the New Year, we were talking about money and our inability to see the pitfalls involved in its use – especially in regards to debt. I have always wrestled to succeed in the area of money and I can vividly remember begging God to give me a job where I could earn $20,000 per year. I reasoned that if I could earn that much, all my money worries would be gone.


Many years later and well past that amount of earning power, I still have struggled to make money work for me. I have studied and attempted to apply numerous training courses related to the proper handling of money and still have felt that I lacked understanding of the whole concept, until we were talking and I realized a simple truth that had eluded me all these years.

We reasoned, Joshua and I, that in my current tax bracket, with my current withdraws for insurance of various types taken automatically from my check, a very modest savings plan at work and the tithe I give of my gross income, for every dollar I spend, it costs me $1.40 to earn that dollar back. That is staggering! It was a sort of epiphany to realize our cell phone bill which is about $160.00 really costs me $224.00 to provide for that bill. Our rent of $1250 per month really costs me $1750 of earnings to cover that necessary cost of living.

Suddenly I began to understand why I feel I am always loosing the battle with money. I had been taking on bills, car payments, cable TV, cell phone payments, etc., without understand the real cost; looking only at what I was being charged rather than what it cost me in total earnings required to pay it.

Something had to give and since my earnings are going to increase only modestly from here on out, the other side of the equation must necessarily shrink by the 40% I am falling behind. That, in and of itself, is going to be a painful year-long process. Not only do the expectations of my wife and our children have to change, my expectations will have to change drastically.

In some ways it has slowly begun. I have held off letting Mama and Chase get new cell phones. I have asked Chase to eat out with his friends on only five dollars rather that the eight dollars he feels like he needs. I have put on hold all but the most necessary plans for my training in naturopathy. It is frightfully discouraging, but it is only temporary.

I feel like I can now begin to apply what Dave Ramsey has been trying to tell me for almost two years – to live within my means. Until now I had no clear vision what my true means were. I wish I had understood this before the move to Texas and the money for the move had come to our accounts, but I didn’t understand. The holidays from Thanksgiving through New Years and the move required for the girls and Grandpa and Grandma made a quick end to any surplus we could have seen had I reasoned things out differently. There is no one to blame but me and I have to confess that I would rather be flat broke and loved than to have a surplus and be resented as “tight” or “cheap”. Somewhere there is a balance.

Maybe this is old news to everyone else, but it sure was helpful (and slightly terrifying) information to me.