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Here’s a financial superpower: Cultivating an ability to interact with desirable things through lenses other than acquisitiveness. Art, homes, cars, clothes, gadgets, services–the world is full of beautiful, useful things! But they don’t all have to be ours in order to enjoy them and appreciate their existence. In our culture, the act of buying–in and
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I was in the restroom of a local grocery store this afternoon, when I realized that one of the automatic faucets–the kind where you wave your hand under the faucet to turn it on, it dispenses water for a given time period then turns off–was just turning on every five seconds as if a phantom
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Imitation and rivalry and two sides of the same coin, which is why kids so often end up in either the same financial patterns as their parents or their opposite. When those kids get married to people coming from other households, then, there is all sorts of opportunity for the continuance of this imitation/rivalry cycle.
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Kevin Kelly says, “What you actually pay for something can be twice the listed price because the energy, time, and money needed to set it up, learn, maintain, repair it, and then dispose of it when done all have their own cost. Not all prices appear on labels.” At the extremes, there are emotional prices
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The Christian season of Lent, which begins today and serves among other things to remind us for forty days of our mortality, has something to say about YOLO, and it is this: If we are mortal creatures living lives that could end at any moment, then the inclination to spend our moments on Instagramable trips
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Desire and imitation are the most natural things in the world to human beings, but ordering our desires and deciding who to imitate are not innate skills. They have to be developed. And if we do not intentionally develop those skills in communion with those sharing a particular ethic or worldview, then they will be
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I have never been what I would consider a prude when it comes to gambling, though I have not historically been much of a gambler outside the confines of NCAA tournament bracket pools. That being said, gambling as a cultural idea has changed rapidly in the last few years as many forms of gambling have
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It’s customary to live a lifestyle that matches your profession and income and all the accoutrements that come with those, but while it is completely natural to “look like” a person who does what you do, it’s also important to be able to step back and see where the “look like” becomes the baggage of
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What if less really is more? What if those of us who are rich would become richer in the truest of senses by becoming poorer? This is the model of Jesus. Too often just about the only thing I hear in wealthy Christian circles on the topic of generous, sacrificial giving is something like: “You’ll
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Part of the journey of generosity is slowly allowing the walls we put up around our most precious resources to be torn down. For some of us, being generous with our time and presence is hardest. For some of us, giving money away in meaningful amounts is hardest. But this is a journey we must
Meaningful Returns 